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"Villa Marlier“ photo album, Berlin, c. 1916

The Winter Garden

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This lakeside villa still looks more or less just as it does on the two photos taken in the years after the building was finished in 1915. The photo on the left shows factory owner Ernst Marlier, who had the villa built, standing together his wife in front of the main entrance. The photo tells of the villa’s private use, which ended in 1940. In the early 1920s, the house and grounds had been bought by Friedrich Minoux, but in 1940 he sold it to the Nordhav Foundation, set up by Reinhard Heydrich. The Foundation bought and maintained real estate for recreation for members of the SS and the police. Soon, Heydrich had the villa praised as a new guest house, pointing out its attractive ‘rooms for socialising’, such as a music and a billiard room, as well as the lakeside terrace or its winter garden. The house was intended to be – quote – ‘a centre of comradely communication for SS leaders of the Security Police and Security Service posted abroad’. Certainly in summer 1942, this much-used guest house was mentioned as a place where there were – quote – ‘cases of excessive use of alcohol, even during the day’.

After the war, the villa was dedicated to a very different use. For over 35 years from 1952, the house and grounds were leased by the Neukölln district, a traditional working-class area in West Berlin, and became home to a school country hostel.