House of the Wannsee Conference
In 1886, Wilhelm Conrad acquired a plot of 2 acres from the Postdam Forestry Office on which he wanted to have a cemetery for the Alsen Colony built. The secret chief architect of the government (Geheimer Regierungsbaurat) Johannes Otzen designed a trapezoid cemetery which was constructed in 1888. The original cemetery portal, the consecration hall and the enclosing wall have been preserved. 42 burial plots were planned along the enclosing walls, the corner burial plots were reserved for Wilhelm Conrad (south-west) and the architect Herrmann Ende (north-west). The open porch with a nave and two aisles is situated above the central axis, on a level with the graves of the western enclosing wall. A church which was also built by Otzen was to adjoin the porch later.
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Since 1874, Johannes Otzen (1839-1911) worked as a self-employed architect and was considered the most important representative of neogothic, Protestant church architecture. Since 1879, he was a professor at the Technical University in Charlottenburg, and from 1904-1907, he was the president of the Academy of Fine Arts. Otzen did not only work as an architect in Wannsee, he also lived on the eastern shore of the Wannsee with his family since 1883.
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On 24th April 1902, the industrialist Oscar Huldschinsky made an application ‘to open the new burial-place in Wannsee to Jews; if this should not be permissible for the whole cemetery, a section of the burial-place could be put aside for Jews.‘
The district administrator of the district of Teltow granted the application. Oscar Huldschinsky, ‘of Mosaic faith‘, was buried in the cemetery. The family tomb was built by the architect Otto Stahn who had already constructed several buildings for Huldschinsky.
Nearly all villa owners of the colony were buried on the terrain which was called ‘million-‘ or ‘Jew-cemetery‘ in the vernacular.
In 1918, the western enclosing wall was torn down and the cemetery was enlarged by roughly three and a half acres (9000 sqm) of land. The architect Otto Stahn carried out the extensions.
The garden arrangement, lime avenues and grave plantations of the old section of the cemetery have been preserved to a great extent and are under a preservation order.
At the cemetery wall there is a plinth with a stone cross which is approx. 60 cm high. A star of David is set into the intersection of the beam of the cross. The artist and the history of its origin and construction are unknown.
According to assumptions made by historic preservation researchers, there was a worship room in the Candide villa on Königstraße which the industrialist Louis Ravené had had built; a synagogue did not exist in Wannsee.
One of the numerous harassments German Jews had to suffer since the assumption of power of the Nazis was the prohibition to decorate the graves with flowers.
Cross with Star of David, Cemetery Wannsee
A gravestone in the old section of the cemetery commemorates the members of the Meyer family, who were deported and murdered.
The over 900 fallen in the last days of the war in Wannsee in 1945 were buried in mass graves in the Old Cemetery at Friedenstraße (village of Stolpe) and in the graveyard at the New Church (villa colony).
In 1948, Wannsee had 7504 inhabitants of which only 12 were Jews. In 1933, there had been 172 of them. In 1964, the New Church on Lindenstraße in Wannsee was renamed St. Andrew‘s Church. In 1996, the parish celebrated its 100th anniversary. Pastor and parish preserve the memory of the bygone epoch of the peacful coexistence of Christians and Jews in Berlin-Wannsee.
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Update: 20 August 2004
