Detlev Rohwedder House

Building of the Reich Aviation Ministry, view from Leipziger Strasse , 1938 (from the south)

Detlev Rohwedder House, 2019

The Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus is a monumental office building in Berlin , Wilhelmstrasse 97 / Leipziger Strasse 5-7. The building was erected in 1935 at the time of National Socialism as the seat of the Reich Aviation Ministry . After the Second World War it was used as the House of Ministries in the GDR . The GDR was founded here on October 7, 1949. In the 1990s it was the headquarters of the Treuhandanstalt , and since 1999 it has been the seat of the Federal Ministry of Finance . Since 1992 the building has been named after Detlev Rohwedder , the second president of the Treuhandanstalt who was murdered by the RAF in 1991 .

history

Building construction, 1935

Prior use

In 1819 the Prussian War Ministry settled on the site of today's Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus . In 1919 the War Ministry was dissolved with the end of the monarchy. The building complex was subsequently used by the Reichswehr Ministry and the Berlin Labor Court. After the National Socialist “ seizure of power ”, the property was transferred to the newly founded Reich Aviation Ministry (RLM) in May 1933 . Reich Minister of Aviation was Hermann Göring .

Reich Ministry of Aviation (1935–1945)

The size and appearance of the old building complex of the War Ministry did not meet the needs of the National Socialists. In the years 1935/1936 a new building with over 2000 office rooms and approx. 112,000 m² of office floor space was built on Wilhelmstrasse at Göring's instigation and according to plans by the architect Ernst Sagebiel . What was then the largest office building in Berlin was created, designed as a four- to seven-storey reinforced concrete frame building with a flat roof, an outstanding example of monumental architecture under National Socialism .

Use in the Soviet Zone and GDR (1945–1989)

Mural Structure of the Republic by Max Lingner in the pillar vestibule, made from Meissen porcelain

Foundation of the GDR on October 7, 1949. In the center Wilhelm Pieck and Margot Feist

After the end of the Second World War , the RLM building, which was only slightly damaged, was initially used by the Soviet military administration (SMAD) in the Soviet Zone . Later the German Economic Commission (DWK) and then the State Planning Commission and the GDR Economic Council moved into parts of the building.

The building also became the meeting place for the German People's Council , which founded the GDR on October 7, 1949 by enacting the constitution in the large ballroom and constituted itself as a provisional People's Chamber .

After the GDR was founded , various economic ministries were housed in the complex. The building has now been officially referred to as the House of Ministries .

Between the years 1950 and 1953 instead of the previous large-scale stone reliefs marching Wehrmacht soldiers with waving swastika flags of the sculptor was Arnold Waldschmidt (version 1937-1941) through the portrait and landscape painter Max Lingner in the northeastern pillar porch the monumental, 24 m × 3 m wall hanging structure of the republic created in tiles from Meissen porcelain . The image originally conceived by the artist of a restrained new beginning after the Second World War and the collapse of National Socialism was revised several times at the request of State Council Chairman Walter Ulbricht and Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl , in order to ultimately represent a euphoric awakening of the German working class that succeeded in making itself to unite with the peasant class and the intelligentsia of Germany in the sense of socialism.

Image excerpts from the mural “Construction of the Republic” by Max Lingner
Demonstrators
Singers, clappers and musicians
Happy children
Craftsman and farmer
Industrial workers
Planners and family

During the uprising on June 17, 1953 , a demonstration took place in front of the building. Today the “Memorial to the events of June seventeenth, nineteen hundred and fifty-three” designed by Wolfgang Rüppel commemorates this.

The house has a paternoster elevator that was put into operation in 1982 (year of construction according to the nameplate) , which was permitted under GDR building law. In West Germany , however, the commissioning of new paternosters had been banned since 1974.

Aerial view of the building complex (from the east)

Quote from Harro Schulze-Boysen at the Ministry of Finance

In the early 1970s , a small memorial was set up in the former office of the Nazi resistance fighter and officer Harro Schulze-Boysen , who was arrested there on August 31, 1942, for the resistance fighters of the Berlin Red Orchestra, who were honored by the Soviet Union in 1969 .

Use since the reunification of Germany (since 1990)

After German reunification on October 3, 1990, the Federal Ministry of Finance moved into the building - initially as a branch. At that time, the branch office of the Federal Audit Office was also located there.

From 1991 to 1994 the head office of the Treuhandanstalt was located in the building complex at Wilhelmstrasse 97. In 1992 the building was renamed Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus - after the President of the Treuhandanstalt Detlev Rohwedder, who was murdered by the RAF . Between 1994 and 1999 the building was rebuilt and renovated.

Since 1999, the first office of the Federal Ministry of Finance has been located here at Wilhelmstrasse 97. Parts of the administration of the Federal Council are housed in the so-called 1A wing at Leipziger Strasse 5-7 . The entire building complex, including the murals and blacksmithing works , is a listed building .

literature

Federal Ministry of Finance (Ed.): The Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus - architecture and use. Berlin 1999, 48 pages.
Volker Wagner: Government buildings in Berlin. History, politics, architecture. Pp. 66-69, be.bra-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-930863-94-4 .

Movies

Goering's Ministry - History of a German Power Center. Documentation, Germany, 2016, 45 min., Script and direction: Gabriele Denecke, production: rbb for Das Erste , series: Mysterious Places , first broadcast: February 29, 2016

Web links

Commons : Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus - collection of images, videos and audio files

Entry in the Berlin State Monument List
Virtual visit to the BMF (360-degree tour)

Individual evidence

↑ Article The Soldier Relief by Arnold Waldschmidt , in: Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich , issue January 1941, ed. by the Führer’s agent for the supervision of the entire intellectual and ideological training and education of the NSDAP, Munich 1941, pp. 28-29.

↑ The exterior art at the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus: Aufbruch und Zorn. ( Memento of the original from January 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 13, 2014 @1@ 2

^ Memorial for the events of June 17, 1953, Berlin Forum for Past and Present

^ Top of the Docs. Documentation in the ARD 2015/16. In: daserste.de. P. 35, accessed on July 2, 2017 (PDF; 8.6 MB).

52.508675 13.384058333333Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '31.2 " N , 13 ° 23' 2.6" E

[1] Article The Soldier Relief by Arnold Waldschmidt , in: Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich , issue January 1941, ed. by the Führer’s agent for the supervision of the entire intellectual and ideological training and education of the NSDAP, Munich 1941, pp. 28-29.