The Guardian | Philip Oltermann in Berlin
In Europe’s city of spies, it was a feat of cold war counter-propaganda: a modernist congress centre with an audaciously curved roof, gifted by America to West Berlin in direct response to the buildup of Soviet’s Stalinallee boulevard on the other side of town.
Its initiator, Eleanor Dulles, a sister of the head of the CIA at the time, announced Berlin’s House of the Cultures of the World in 1956 as “a bright beacon shining light into the east”.
Yet a year into the Trump era, the building that lies a stone’s throw from Angela Merkel’s chancellory is one of several places in Germany that is prompting questions over America’s cultural influence…read more
Image | Haus der Kulturen der Welt