Wannsee Institute
The Wannsee Institute (code name: "Institute for Antiquity Research") was a camouflaged office of the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin . It was under the SS . Since 1937 it has been housed in Landhaus Oppenheim (built in 1908 by the most important architect of his time, Alfred Messel , for the industrialist Dr. Franz Oppenheim ) in the Wannsee district of Berlin .
History and tasks
The Wannsee Institute was a secret east research institute of the SS, which basically prepared foreign espionage and created expert reports for the view of Eastern Europe, especially the Soviet Union . In 1937, Franz Alfred Six , head of the Reichsführer SS security service , appointed the Georgian agricultural expert Michael Achmeteli to head the institute. Achmeteli also became a professor at Berlin University . The institute's staff were accepted into the SS. Many of them were Germans from abroad from the Baltic States or Russia.
Maps and aerial photographs were collected, for example in order to prepare the use of bombers. The Wannsee Institute was involved in both the attack on Poland and the attack on the Soviet Union , and ultimately in the entire warfare in the east. Economic centers, bridges, key traffic routes and railway networks were spied out.
In 1940 the "Wannsee Institute" was converted into a special department of the Office VI RSHA .
Locations
The SS men who came to the institute in the pre-war years obtained civil permits and then went to Wannsee in plain clothes .
The rooms in which the summer guests of the Oppenheims used to stay had been converted into offices. The Nazis feel safer here than in the center of Berlin. Jewish slave laborers had to look after the villas and gardens that are in the hands of the SS . There was a horticultural school on the grounds of the "Landhaus Oppenheim". Today it houses a Montessori school .
The Reich Air Defense School was also nearby .
literature
- Gideon Botsch: “Geheime Ostforschung” in the SD. On the history and activities of the "Wannsee Institute" 1935-1945 . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft, 48, 2000, pp. 509-524.
Web links
- The Wannsee Institute on ghwk.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mysterious places: At Wannsee. A film by Karin Reiss; Copyright: RBB, from min 15:21. Source ADDX archive: Videos & TV recordings ( http://www.addx.de/textarchiv/archiv-index-zl.php ), Doc. No. V046.
- ↑ Das Landhaus Oppenheim: From the summer residence to the Montessori school ( Memento of the original from July 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
