Americans have been stationed in Germany since the end of the Second World War. Here they have led a life that has been largely independent from the Germans surrounding them. What has this life looked like?
What has it meant for the American military personnel and their families to live and work in a parallel world? What has shaped their everyday lives?
The LITTLE AMERICA photo exhibition provides a rich impression of professional and also private everyday life in the closed American military community. Alongside training, maneuvers, and military technology, the complex infrastructure of shopping centers, schools, sports facilities, and GI clubs becomes visible. In addition, the photographs record the residential areas and shared lives of the US personnel, and also focus on their families. Individual images bear witness to encounters between Americans and Germans.
The approximately 200 photographs from the 1940s to the 1980s form part of the extensive photo collection of the technical historian Dr. John Provan, which the Allied Museum acquired in 2016. Largely taken on behalf of the military, the photos present an internal perspective on life at US locations.
They were exclusively published in American military newspapers, which can also be viewed in the exhibition. At an interactive station, visitors can additionally experience the processes involved in photo production during that era.
Since most Germans were denied admission to the numerous American facilities, the photo exhibition offers a first look behind the fence into Little America, this difficult-to-access world of US personnel and their families. It illustrates what life in Germany – in their home away from home – meant to them.
