Haus am Bogensee: Joseph Goebbels' villa

The “Leibniz Center for Contemporary Historical Research Potsdam” (ZZF Potsdam) has now prepared a historical inventory, funded by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship and the Ministry for Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg, as it is said. Those responsible emphasize that the inventory should be “historically critical”.

Exciting insights in a digital exhibition
A so-called three-hour workshop took place on June 30, 2021. The project was presented in digital form in three lectures. And a digital exhibition can now be seen on the Internet , which was actually supposed to be shown on site in or on the historic buildings last year. Corona has made many things impossible.

Bogensee is the place that was largely inaccessible to the public for around sixty years. First, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels received his refuge there in 1936 and later also his workplace. These were made available to him for life by the city of Berlin. In 1946, the Free German Youth (FDJ) moved into the Nazi buildings with their “central school”. In the 1950s, new buildings in the Stalinist style were added: lecture buildings and a cultural center, as well as student housing for around 500 students. Until 1989, Marxism-Leninism was taught to selected cadres at the “FDJ Youth University at Bogensee”, but at the end of 1990 it was over.

The buildings have been rotting away since 1999
After an interim use, the buildings have been empty and rotting since 1999. The obvious intention of the Berlin Senate administration: Let grass grow over history.

At the Internet address bogensee-geschichte.de, the user now receives an overview of the entire area on a large, colored aerial photo and can then click through the various buildings. “Bogensee. “A historical site visit,” is the name of the show.

Point one: The log house, located on the eastern shore of Lake Bogensee, single-storey, 120 square meters, with a large terrace. Built in 1936 as a "gift" from the city of Berlin, it "served as a private retreat for the Gauleiter of the NSDAP in Berlin and Reich Minister of Propaganda," it says in the accompanying text, coldly and meaninglessly.



The log cabin was once referred to as a “love nest”. The love affair between the propaganda minister and the actress Lida Baarova is said to have blossomed there in secret, an affair that almost led to a regime crisis. The accompanying text from the Potsdam historians continues: “In the post-war period, the FDJ youth college used the building. From 1995 it was the residence of the forester von Lanke. It was listed as a historical monument in 2007, but suffered severe fire damage in 2015 and had to be demolished in 2019.” The various stages of decay and demolition can be seen in six photos. Apparently made by the “Berliner Forsten”, according to the photo credits.

Warm demolition scandal
The Potsdam historians do not even hint at the background to the scandal of this warm demolition. The history of the blockhouse is something like the blueprint for what the Berlin SPD Senate has been actively pursuing for decades. Grass should grow over the unfortunate history; critical historical narration at the historical site is not desired, neither under Wowereit nor under his successor Müller. The log house and its foundations have now been removed; only weeds are left here. The “Grass over History” project has been successfully completed on the east bank.

The demolition of the Waldhof from 1939 on the western side was also specifically planned in Senate circles and already expensively commissioned with reports, before the monument protection authority vetoed it again. Since 1996, all buildings have been listed. But what does that mean?

The Berlin SPD's forgetfulness of history
The Berlin SPD once appeared to be as narrow-minded and strangely forgetful or uninterested in history as at Bogensee in the 1960s, even under the governing mayor Klaus Schütz. At that time it was about the historic Wannsee villa in which the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was decided in 1942.

Since 1965, Joseph Wulff, the Auschwitz survivor and private historian, had been committed to creating an “International Documentation Center for the Study of National Socialism and its Aftermath” in the historic building. The West Berlin Senate was against it. Mayor Klaus Schütz, as Willy Brandt's successor, declared unequivocally that Berlin did not need a “macabre place of worship”. With that, the project was off the table. It took 27 years to set up a memorial and educational center in the historic Wannsee Conference building. Since 1992 it has been an integral part of the politics of remembrance.

The author of these lines already showed two years ago how the historic buildings at Bogensee could be used for vivid history lessons. The Potsdam historians are now also outlining “perspectives for a cultural restoration of memory,” as a contribution to the “workshop” was called. The historian and project manager, Irmgard Zündorf, explains in the press release that “the site has the potential to become a significant place of remembrance and learning.” This assessment is not new, and has been made public again and again for around twenty years. However, important political authorities have so far forcefully blocked all efforts and suggestions and mostly ignored them with silence.

Costs of a quarter of a million every year
Of course, there was quite a bit of money to be made from this official lack of conception. Time and again, money was made available for projects that then came to nothing with great regularity. And the so-called inventory protection for the dilapidated buildings alone, i.e. “the annual sum for management,” is “around 230,000 euros,” the state-owned BIM (Berliner Immobilienmanagement GmbH) announced three years ago. Almost a quarter of a million, year after year. Enormous sums of money have flowed since the beginning of the 2000s. An absurd spectacle at the expense of taxpayers. It is astonishing that the Court of Auditors has not yet sounded the alarm in this hidden place.

And the log cabin scandal? “From 1995 it was the residence of the forester von Lanke,” is the one barren sentence from the Potsdam Historians’ Commission. Correct. “In 2007 it was placed under monument protection,” is the next sentence. The scandal lies buried in between. Romeo Kappel is the name of the forester, head of the forestry department, who now works in Pankow. When he moved out, he believed that he could dispose of the house on his own, first cannibalizing it and then secretly, quietly and quietly demolishing it.

When the author of these lines was finally able to get closer to the building in the winter of 2006/2007 because the yapping dogs were no longer a deterrent, he alerted the Senate and the monument protection department. A query in February 2007 at the Berlin Forestry State Forestry Office: “Mr. Kappel was given the right to live for around fifteen years, and the moment he moves out, the house is cleared for demolition? Why? Who owns the house? Did Mr. Kappel have to pay rent? How high was this? Why are obvious values ​​considered worthless and destroyed here? Why isn’t the house still available for residential purposes, as it was granted to Mr. Kappel for fifteen years?”