House of the Wannsee Conference
From the Discovery of the Stolpesche Werder to the Foundation of the Alsen Colony
At the beginning of the 19th century the Wannsee region was only sparsely populated, with the exception of the village of Stolpe. Since 1790, Prussia’s first led over the Stolpesche Werder and connected the royal residences of Berlin and Potsdam.
The Potsdam area, 1833
After the spectacular death of the poet Heinrich von Kleist and of Henriette Vogel at the Kleiner Wannsee in 1811, the region became a topic of conversation and people became increasingly interested in the area. The memorial for Kleist was altered several times. Max Liebermann drafted it in 1917.
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From 1863 onwards, Karl Heinrich Wilhelm Conrad, director of the Berliner Handelsgesellschaft (Berlin Trading Company), purchased building land by the Wannsee and started to build up the Alsen villa colony. The plots were sold to members of the Berlin upper middle class who built exclusive summer residences on the sites. Since suffrage depended on land ownership, the plots all had a size of at least one Prussian acre (2553 square metres). |
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With its beautiful landscape the region resembled lakeland regions in Northern Italy. Here, the traditionally educated upper middle class created a Mediterranean-style dream world with villas built in an imposing architectural style and with splendid gardens with exotic plants. It represented the middle-class counterpart of the Hohenzollern Arcadia around the royal residence of Potsdam which had been created one generation before – only a few miles away – by the royal landscape gardener Peter Joseph Lenné.
In 1813, Wilhelm Conrad who came from an old merchant family and who was a nature-lover, bought the ‘Stimmingscher Krug‘, an old inn at the Friedrich-Wilhlem-Brücke where Henriette Vogel and Heinrich von Kleist had once stayed.
In addition, he purchased 300 acres of land at the good price of 25,000 thalers.
In 1817, he had his villa built in the classical style in Königstrasse 4 where the inn had once stood. It was pulled down exactly 100 years later and the hotel ‘Wannseeblick‘ was built on the site. The ‘Alsen villa‘should be the first property in a summer town for members of the upper middle class who were tired of the city.
Map of the Alsen Colony, 1883
Conrad’s vision represented an ensemble of villas situated in a parkland and surrounded by the water of the Havel lakes. At the time, he had 14 houses built, 7 of which have been preserved.
Conrad engaged the first landscaping director Gustav Meyer, a pupil of Lenné, to draft a street and plot plan. He named the project ‘Alsen Colony‘, in reference to the national pride and patriotism of the middle class of his time, since the name recalls Prussia’s victory over Denmark in 1861. The surrender of the Danish island Alsen sealed the military defeat of the Danish troops.
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Update: 20 August 2004
