Site lies fallow

Berlin wants to give away Goebbels villa on Bogensee lake

Joseph Goebbels' villa on the Bogensee site is falling into disrepair.(Bild: AFP)

Berlin's Senator for Finance Stefan Evers wants to give away an area at Bogensee lake with a former villa of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in Wandlitz if necessary. "I am offering anyone who wants to take over the site to take it as a gift from the state of Berlin," said the CDU politician in the House of Representatives on Thursday. So far, however, neither the municipality of Wandlitz nor the state of Brandenburg or the federal government have been interested in such a "generous gift".

The approximately 17-hectare site, on which Goebbels had a country house built, has been unused and derelict since 2000. After the end of the Nazi dictatorship, the Allies briefly used the site as a military hospital. In 1946, the Soviets then handed the site over to the Free German Youth (FDJ), which founded a youth academy there.

Building could be demolished
For some time now, ideas for the use of the site, which belongs to the state of Berlin, have been increasingly discussed again. Berlin is considering demolishing the buildings and renaturing the land because the annual costs of securing and maintaining the site run into the millions.

The Goebbels Villa(Bild: AFP)

Evers assured that the capital would not turn its back on expedient conceptual considerations if they were in the interests of the city and did justice to the complex historical significance of the site. With this in mind, he was looking forward to proposals from the federal government or Brandenburg and to the identification of possible sources of funding, such as subsidies.

Berlin feels left in the lurch
"However, should this once again come to nothing, as in previous decades, then the state of Berlin will have no other option than to carry out the demolition as it has now been prepared and addressed by us," said Evers.

Berlin had been trying for decades to find a future for the site. "But the truth is that this decades-long effort was rather one-sided." They had to rely on partners at federal level and in Brandenburg, with whom no progress had been possible to date.