House of the Wannsee Conference
The Institute for State Research in Königstraße 71
In May 1937 the "Institute for State Research" (Institut für Staatsforschung) at Berlin University moved from Teutonenstraße in Nikolassee to Königstraße 71 in Großen Wannsee. The move was necessary on account of the Institute library's continued growth through the targeted purchase of books that emigrants had had to leave behind. The house in Königstraße had ten rooms for use by the Institute and one large room in which the Institute's library could be housed. The Institute conducted work commissioned by central bodies of the NSDAP and the state such as the Reich Education Ministry, the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht and the Foreign Office. A prime focus of its work were studies on adrninistrative law and organisation intended to lead to a better control of the German occupied "Großraum" (expanded territories). The work of the Institute was considered important to the war effort and received generous support from the "Gerrnan Society for Research" (Reichsforschungsrat) and the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).
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With the outbreak of war the Institute fell under the remit of the "Head of the SS" and from then on its main areas of work concerned the administration of occupied areas. Under the management of its Director, Reinhard Höhn, the Institute for State Research was closely associated with the SS and the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). Reinhard Höhn (1904-2000) had studied law in Kiel, Munich and Jena and qualified as a university lecturer in 1934. In September 1934 he became a full-time employee of the SS Security Service (SD) and worked there up to the end of the war as a "Full-time SD leader", finally attaining the position of SS lieutenant. In November 1935 Reinhard Höhn became Director of the Institute for State Research. He was one of the highest profile young NS lawyers and political scientists and pursued an elimination of the principles of the rule of Iaw that was particularly radical even für National Socialist standards. From 1941 to 1943 he was in charge of the publication "Reich - Volksordnung - Lebensraum. Zeitschrift für völkische Verfassung und Verwaltung" (Reich - national order - living space: Newspaper for the constitution and administration of the Volk). In addition to Höhn, the editorial team comprised four top civil servants who dealt with issues of securing control in the areas under German occupation.
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Two of the editors took part in the "Wannsee Conference" of 20 January 1942: the undersecretary in the Ministry of the Interior and SS lieutenant general Wilhelrn Stuckart, a personal friend of Höhn, and SS major general Gerhard Klopfer, undersecretary in the Party Chancellery.
Wilhelm Stuckart (1902-1953) |
 Gerhard Klopfer (1905-1987) |
During the Allied bomb attacks on Berlin a major part of the Institute library was transferred to the Sudetenland. After the wide-scale destruction of the headquarters of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Prinz-Albrecht-Straße in February 1945 Reinhard Höhn gave the RSHA some of the now vacant rooms on the ground floor of the house in Königstraße. Once the war was over the Institute für State Research was closed down together with same other university institutes in January 1947.
Reinhard Höhn fled Berlin in April 1945 and after the war worked initially as a non-medical practitioner in Hamburg. In 1956 he became head of the "Bad Harzburg Academy for Economic Executives', the premier management school in the Federal Republic. In his "Harzburg management model for employee relations" he transformed his concepts of "leadership" and "community" after previously having used them in the interests of National Socialist rule. The President of the Federal Association of German Employers' Federations congratulated Höhn on his 95th birthday in July 1999. The press obituary following the death of the "teacher of 600,000 managers" in May 2000 praised his work as head of the "Bad Harzburg Academy" but gave no mention of his activities for the SS and the SD.
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Update: 20 August 2004
