Seeing in Sectors

Allied Life in West and East Berlin

Wolfgang Albrecht, Dieter Breitenborn, Vera Breitenborn, Nicola Galliner, Willy Huschke, Henry Ries, Barbara Schneider, Günter Schneider, Karl-Heinz Schubert, Horst Siegmann

From 1945 until the early 1990s, life in Berlin was heavily influenced by the presence of the Allies: the four occupying military forces took up quarters in their respective sectors, and lived more or less the day-to-day life they were accustomed to at home, largely isolated from Berlin’s German inhabitants. But in spite of initial bans on fraternisation, both organised and spontaneous contacts and friendships soon arose. Berliners had many opportunities for a closer look at ‘the others’ and their cultural characteristics: encounter weeks, fairs, and manoeuvres in Kreuzberg, open house days in Reinickendorf, British military tattoos and parades in the Olympic Stadium, changings of the guard at the Allied prison in Spandau, wreath-laying ceremonies at the Soviet Memorial and neighbourhood work parties of Soviet soldiers in Marzahn. The exhibition presents photographs by freelance and staff photographers of Berlin’s former state photographic archives depicting aspects of the daily lives of the three western Allies in West Berlin and the Soviet armed forces in East Berlin.