page_title: American Spaces
section_title: America Houses
hierarchical_section_title: American Spaces / Cold War America Houses and American Centers / America Houses
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: C/O Berlin im Amerika Haus
context_page_description: American Spaces is an umbrella program of the Bureau of International Information Programs, a bureau within the United States Department of State, to provide physical locations and applicable media with which to conduct public diplomacy. Created in the early 20th century for "countering disinformation and influencing international public opinion," these spaces, of various types and sizes, often feature unrestricted internet access as well as the rental of American books, periodicals, and DVDs. Following World War II, these spaces proliferated in the form of further libraries, binational centers, standalone American Centers, and America Houses all of which were brought under the "American Spaces" program in 2008. The threat of terrorism directed against these facilities resulted in the transfer of locations into either American Corners within local libraries or Information Resource Centers within US embassies. Each of these spaces exists to spread US soft power abroad.
context_section_description: In Germany, the US Occupation forces created the first of the postwar America Houses (called Amerikahäuser in German). The purpose of these Amerikahäuser was "to further the democratic reorientation of Germany, and to foster the assimilation of the German people into the society of peaceful nations..." with which the libraries would assist. With the official establishment of West Germany concurrent with the end of occupation, US Forces had created 28 Amerikahäuser as well as 136 associated reading rooms and bookmobiles, usually co-located with US military installations in Germany. Survey data in the late 1940s indicated that these centers reached urban professional men rather than the majority of the population which still lived in smaller towns and rural areas. During the immediate postwar reconstruction of Germany, the Amerikahäuser as well as their British and French analogues served as important incubators of the German art scene as many art houses had been looted and reduced to rubble during the war. By 1974, there were Amerikahäuser in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hanover, Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart under United States Information Service as well as West Berlin. The Amerika Haus Berlin was a special symbol of outreach to the German people, much as the British Council and Maison de France were doing in their sectors. During the social foment of the 1960s, several America Houses in Germany were attacked and disrupted by left-wing student protests. A Government Accountability Office in the 1990s recommended closing some America Houses worldwide to cut costs, shifting the public diplomacy effort to extant binational centers. In 1999 with the disestablishment of the United States Information Agency, the Amerikahäuser were tuned over to local German control from which they now receive a majority of their funding. One author suggests that, over time, these houses and the binational centers that replaced them became as much a conduit for Germany to influence the US as they were ways for the US to influence Germany.
caption: America House in Berlin
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