... bauen ein besseres Leben. Politische und kulturelle Verhältnisse in West-Berlin, 1945–1990

Like no other place, divided Berlin was a symbol and lived reality of the Cold War. The Allies’ post-1945 image production, directed at the western part of the city, painted a narrative of freedom and prosperity. Integration with the West, democracy, and capitalism were to be conveyed, and the hearts of West Germans to be won over. Propagated through advertising posters, exhibitions, educational and documentary films, the European Recovery Program (ERP), the so-called Marshall Plan, was intended to ensure economic, social, and urban reconstruction. The American way of life served as a model for the modernization of all areas of life: The Cold War was fought on both sides of the Iron Curtain, not least on the “domestic front.” With the student protests of the 1960s and subsequently the alternative, peace and squatter movements, a counterculture developed that resisted the denial of the National Socialist past, bourgeois society’s bourgeois society's predetermination, and the nuclear arms race.

Florian Wüst’s curatorial contribution to Time Without End includes documents, photographs, and publications that interlink specific historical moments against this backdrop. One focus is on the ambivalent political and cultural manifestations of the German-American relationship, which are reflected in artifacts related to film and cinema—seeing that the history of West Berlin is also a history of audiovisual media. The presentation thus draws a line from the first color television event in 1951 to Super-8 as an expression of an artistic attitude toward life and to the critique of the 1980s’ cable and digital networks. In addition to the archival materials, Wüst presents a selection of Marshall Plan and re-education films, feature film and newsreel excerpts, as well as experimental short films that complement and contrast the fragmentary image of a postwar Germany under Allied supervision.