Tours for adults and school groups (Secondary School and A-Level)
“How Enemies Became Friends”
An introductory tour of the permanent exhibition
In the course of an hour you will gain an overview of our permanent collection and discover the most interesting exhibits from fifty years of Allied presence in Berlin.
The first part of the exhibition in the former American movie theater, the Outpost, is dedicated to the period between 1945 and 1950. Many documents, photos, and objects recount the turbulent history of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany up to the early period of the occupation of Berlin.
The Cold War reached an initial highpoint in Germany with the Soviet blockade of Berlin and the Berlin Airlift by the Western powers in 1948/49. A visit to the British Hastings TG 503 airlift plane on the Museum grounds helps make the unique history of the Airlift more tangible.
Berlin was the front city of the Cold War. The second part of the permanent exhibition documents not just everyday life in the American, British, and French military communities up to 1994, but als
o the politically charged work of their intelligence services. The highlight of the tour is a visit to an American-British spy tunnel.
“Interior Views the Cold War”
A thematic tour of the Museum grounds and the large-scale objects
Have you always wanted to look around a real Airlift plane, inspect the desks of military police from Checkpoint Charlie, or know what the dining car of a French military train looked like?
If so, this thematic tour offers a unique opportunity to see the large-scale objects on the grounds of the Allied Museum from the inside. The British Hastings TG 503 airlift plane, the dining car of the French military train, and the last guardhouse from Checkpoint Charlie tell a particularly vivid story about the insular situation of West-Berlin and the checkered history of the Allied presence in Berlin from 1945 to 1994.
The American Outpost Theater
An architectural tour
The Outpost Theater built by the Americans in the early 1950s was considered one of the most modern movie houses in Europe. The Allied Museum presents the first half of its permanent collection in the building on Clayallee, which was designated a historic landmark in 1993.
With the art historian Franziska Jenrich, you will view the building’s interior and exterior and gain insights into the now forgotten history of Allied cinemas in West-Berlin. The tour also takes you to places not usually accessible to Museum visitors. With the help of architectural plans and historic photos, the tour traces the changes the building underwent over the years.
“The Western Powers at the Berlin Wall from 1961 to 1990“
A tour for school groups (Secondary School and A-Level)
This tour focuses on one of the Western powers’ special missions in Berlin after August 1961: daily patrols along the Wall.
At the Berlin Wall, the highly symbolic scene of the Cold War, two political and military systems confronted each other directly in their conflict over Allied rights and interests. Pupils will learn how the tense relationship between the Western powers on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other repeatedly reached crisis point in Berlin. At the same time, there was a daily routine, which included intense mutual surveillance and harassment when crossing the sector borders
Selected exhibits from the permanent collection and the current special exhibition “Wall Patrol,“ such as political cartoons from the second Berlin crisis, the ensemble of Wall and watchtowers on the grounds of the Allied Museum, and the last guardhouse from Checkpoint Charlie, which until 1990 served as a checkpoint for the Western powers on Friedrichstraße, help to illustrate the story.
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