Harnack House

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Harnack House , named after Adolf von Harnack , is a building in Berlin-Dahlem that is now used as a conference venue for the Max Planck Society .

The Harnack House from the garden side in 2007
The Harnack House in 1929

history

Lecture in the Harnack House in November 1931. In the first row Albert Einstein and Max Planck

In 1926, the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society decided to found the Harnack House as a lecture and meeting center, as well as a guest house for the institutes located in Berlin-Dahlem. The Free State of Prussia provided the property and the German Reich provided funding of 1.5 million Reichsmarks. After this sum was nowhere near enough, further funds of about the same amount were raised through donations. A large individual donation came from the industrialist Carl Duisberg , but many other institutions, including trade unions , also contributed to the financing. The project received great support from Reich Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann , who was also one of the keynote speakers at the inauguration of the house in May 1929.

In the following years, the house developed beyond its core scientific tasks into a cultural center with international appeal. This development was thrown back from 1933 with the seizure of power by the National Socialists , not least through the expulsion of many Jewish scientists from Germany.

Contrary to a ban by the Reich government, on January 29, 1935, Max Planck held a memorial service for Fritz Haber, who had died exactly one year earlier, in the Harnack House.The main speaker was Otto Hahn , as Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer was not allowed to give his commemorative speech.

On February 4, 1935, the Reichsfilmarchiv was opened in the Harnack House in the presence of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels .

On June 4, 1942, Werner Heisenberg and other German physicists informed Armaments Minister Albert Speer here about the possibility of a German atomic bomb ; Speer later spoke to Hitler about this conversation.

After the war the American occupation forces converted the house into an officers' club "Harnack House". Guests included Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower .

On April 11, 1972, the officers' club housed in the Harnack House was the scene of an unsuccessful terrorist attack . Members of the June 2nd Movement , including Brigitte Mohnhaupt , placed a 10-liter petrol can on a cellar window around midnight. Although the detonator mechanism was set between 3 and 4 a.m., the bomb did not detonate. A member of the terrorist group, Harald Sommerfeld , then alerted the police to prevent uninvolved civilians from dying again.

After the Allies withdrew from West Berlin , the house was handed over to the Max Planck Society. Since then it has been fulfilling its original function as an international scientific conference and meeting place.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Martin Koch: From Dahlem to Auschwitz. The Harnack House of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society as a mirror of the successes and failures of German scientists. In: Neues Deutschland from 27./28. January 2018, p. 25
  2. ^ Wolfgang Kraushaar: Verena Becker and the protection of the constitution . Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 2010, 203 pages. ISBN 978-3-86854-227-1 , p. 48 f.
  3. ↑ Der Spiegel No. 32, 1972: Anarchisten - Im Loch , pp. 28-29.

literature

  • Eckart Henning : The Harnack House in Berlin-Dahlem. "Institute for Foreign Guests", clubhouse and lecture center of the Kaiser Wilhelm / Max Planck Society. Published by the Max Planck Society, Munich (reports and communications from the Max Planck Society, issue 2/1996), ISSN  0341-7778 .
  • Eckart Henning: Harnack House Conference Center , in: Denkorte. Max Planck Society and Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Breaks and continuities . Sandstein-Verlag, Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942422-01-7 , pp. 184-194 online, PDF
  • Jost Lemmerich : Politics and advertising for science. The Harnack House of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of Science in Berlin-Dahlem , Rangsdorf: Basilisken-Presse in Verlag Natur + Text, 2015. ISBN 978-3-941365-48-3 .
  • Max Planck Society (ed.), Susanne Kiewitz: Meeting point for the Nobel Prize winners: The Harnack House in Berlin-Dahlem , Berlin, Jaron-Verlag 2016, ISBN 978-3-89773-807-2 .
  • Michael Kröher : The Nobel Laureate Club. How the 20th century was reinvented in the Harnack House . Albrecht Knaus Verlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-641-18964-8 .

Web links

Commons : Harnack House  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

Coordinates: 52 ° 26 ′ 58.2 "  N , 13 ° 16 ′ 45.6"  E