Berlin Trip : House of Wannsee (Part 1)

I’ve wanted to visit this building for some time, but didn’t get a chance on my previous trips to Berlin. It took longer than I would have liked to get there due to parts of the rail network being closed, but I finally got to the nearby rail station and then walked the 40 minutes to this historically important site.

As an introduction, the House of Wannsee was the site of the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942. During this meeting, high-ranking Nazi officials discussed and coordinated the implementation of the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’ which was their plan for the genocide of the Jewish people (and others, but the main focus was Jews). The conference was significant because it formalised the plans for the systematic, industrialised murder of Jews across Nazi-occupied Europe. It brought together various Government agencies and organisations involved in the persecution and murder of Jews, ensuring their cooperation and establishing a framework for the genocide.

The Wannsee name comes from the lake that the house sits on the edge of, a tranquil and beautiful setting. The villa was built in 1914 by a wealthy pharmaceutical manufacturer named Ernst Marlier and it was designed as a decadent private residence, reflecting the affluence of the time. The financial situation changed for Marlier and he then sold the property to Friedrich Minoux, an industrialist with right-wing leanings.

I stood here for a while imagining Reinhard Heydrich arriving in his chauffeur driven car.

A plan of the property, the room where the conference was held is number 3.

All the documents at the museum are copies of originals. This one is a letter from Heydrich to Martin Luther, an Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office, sent on 29 November 1941. It delayed the planned meeting that had originally been scheduled for December, and changed the location to Wannsee.

In 1941, the Nazis had taken the building over, using it as a guest house for the Security police and Security Service of the SS. This is a bulletin from the organisation informing recipients about the opening of the guest house and informing leading members of the SS and the police that they can stay overnight when coming to Berlin on business matters. The document also talks about the modern amenities, the beautiful location, the good food and the comradely interaction.

This is a campaign poster from the German National People’s Party (DNVP) which was anti-socialist, anti-semitic and racist. What lovely people….. They were quite an important party that don’t get mentioned perhaps as much as they should in terms of history, as they were the largest right-wing party before the Nazis rose to power. They fell in behind the Nazis and initially they took senior roles within Hitler’s administration, but they soon found themselves shut out. Some of them opposed Hitler with some force, but that was generally more because they preferred their own particular brand of hatred to his.