The Wissenschaftskolleg is located in the Grunewald, a neighborhood of villas dotted with green as well as small lakes and lies in close proximity to the Kurfürstendamm and the city’s western center.
The Wissenschaftskolleg consists of four buildings:
- Hauptgebäude/Villa Linde (Wallotstrasse19)
- Weiße Villa (Koenigsallee 21 or Wallotstrasse 22)
- Neubau (Wallotstrasse 21)
- Villa Jaffé (Wallotstrasse 10)
There are twenty-eight apartments available to Fellows and their families in the Villa Walther (Koenigsallee 20), a restored neo-classical building, five hundred meters from the Hauptgebäude.
1. Hauptgebäude or "Villa Linde" (Wallotstrasse 19)
This building was erected in 1910 and is the Wissenschaftskolleg’s Hauptgebäude (Main Building), containing a large reception hall, two seminar rooms and a clubroom as well as the restaurant, rector’s office, and the Kolleg’s administrative apparatus. After the Dahlem Conferences found a new home in 1982, the Villa Linde became the main building of the Wissenschaftskolleg, encompassing the aforementioned rector’s office, administrative apparatus, restaurant and clubroom and additionally a large conference/lecture hall as well as one-room apartments for Fellows and guests on the top floor.
In 1893 the governmental master builder (Regierungsbaumeister) Karl Franke acquired the plot of land from the Royal Forest Treasury in Potsdam (Forstfiskus der Königlichen Regierung zu Potsdam). In 1901 the still vacant property came into the possession of Erna Linde, née Tietz, wife of the District Attorney Dr. Franz Linde, and in that same year the governmental master builder Ludwig Otte was commissioned with constructing a villa. The Linde family resided in this villa until 1921. In the stucco above the villa’s main entrance one can still see today the initials of Erna and Franz Linde—“ELF.” Living at various times with the Linde family were a gardner, a librarian and a retired captain of the cavalry.
After 1921, ownership of the villa and its gardens changed hands several times. From 1921 to 1925 the Dresden businessman Carl Richter was the proprietor, and afterward the businessman Karl Büchting. In 1935 this latter planned to tear down the villa and in its place erect three apartment buildings, but his building application was turned down. Subsequently, in March 1936, Büchting sold the estate to the Reich Air Raid Defense Association of the Regional Faction Greater Berlin (Reichsluftschutzbund Landesgruppe Gross-Berlin (RLB)), which fundamentally renovated the villa and used it as its Berlin office. According to the historical documents, in front of the house was a black board upon which was written, "For official communiques of the NSDAP and the RLB."
After the Second World War the villa was requisitioned by the British Military Government and turned into an officer’s club with mess and living quarters. With permission of the occupying forces, in 1955 ownership of the villa and its surrounding grounds was transferred to the Federal Air Raid Defense Association of Cologne (successor organization to the RLB), which then, for its part, rented the building to the British Military Government, which utilized it as an officer’s mess into the mid-1970s. In 1959 a six-car garage was built in the garden.
In 1978, on the condition that the villa would be renovated and not used for commercial purposes, it came into the possession of the Berlin Senate. In 1980-81 the Senator for Science, Research and Culture granted free use of the villa to the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin as well as the Dahlem Conferences, both founded in that same year, the villa being thoroughly renovated and partially rebuilt by the Berlin architect Dorothea Haupt.
For a description of the Villa Linde’s grounds, click here.
2. Weisse Villa (Koenigsallee 21 / Wallotstrasse 22)
This is the oldest building of the Wissenschaftskolleg. It houses the library, the Fellow Services, and guestrooms.
Through a gift of the Volkswagen Foundation in 1982, the Wissenschaftskolleg acquired another building just across the street from the Hauptgebäude, the so-called Weisse Villa (White Villa) on the corner of Wallotstrasse and Koenigsallee.
Through the financial assistance it provided the Wissenschaftskolleg at its founding in 1981, the Volkswagen Foundation played a vital role in the institution’s establishment. On the Wissenschaftskolleg’s twentieth anniversary, the Volkswagen Foundation made a present of the Weisse Villa (see the plaque at the entrance). Formal presentation of the keys to the building took place in a ceremony on 18 June 1982 attended by the West German president. The Volkswagen Foundation made gift of the villa conditional upon the federal state of Berlin financing not only acquisition of the property at Wallotstrasse 21 ("Neubau") but the construction that was to take place on this site.
The Weisse Villa is among the oldest privately owned buildings in the Grunewald. In 1898 the businessman Carl Poppele received permission to build the villa, and the coach house with greenhouse and garage were built in 1911. After changing hands several times, in 1933 the villa came into the possession of the Mannheim family, whose money had been made in the industrial sector. In 1939 the villa was, presumably, expropriated by the Nazis and sold; the new owner was the publisher H. Wichmann. After the Second World War, as part of the effort to restitute Jews and other victims of the Nazis, Ida Lissauer (née Landsberger, and resident of Haifa, Israel) was declared legal successor to the Mannheim family and the property passed into her hands. In 1956 she sold the villa to the businessman Hans-Joachim Brauer, and in 1970 the engineer Günther Hans Kiss became its owner. Kiss renovated the structure (including installation of a spiral staircase of reinforced concrete) and used it as a place of business for his company Consulting Engineers—Planning and Construction Office.
In 1982 the Volkswagen Foundation acquired the villa and then transferred ownership of it to the Wissenschaftskolleg.
3. Neubau (Walllotstrasse 21)
In 1986, through funding of the federal state of Berlin, construction of a Neubau (New Building) was completed on the hitherto vacant site neighboring the Hauptgebäude. The Neubau contained eighteen offices and three studio apartments for Fellows and was designed by the Berlin architect Burckhardt Fischer. With the curving lines of its glass frontage and the wooden window frames and unadorned gray sandstone, the four-storey Neubau is a classic example of 1970s architecture—and in stark contrast to the adjacent Hauptgebäude. On the fourth floor is an apartment for the caretaker; and the Neubau is connected to the Hauptgebäude through a subterranean passageway.
4. Villa Jaffée (Wallotstrasse 10)
Since 1995 the Wissenschaftskolleg has rented three floors in the villa located at Wallotstrasse 10. Here are work rooms and apartments for the Fellows as well as seminar rooms and dayrooms.
The villa was designed by the architect Ewald Becher (who also designed the neighboring building at Wallotstrasse 12) and was erected between 1901-1903.
The villa's first owner was Edgar Jaffé (1866-1921), economics professor at Munich University and founder and co-editor with Max Weber and Werner Sombart of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. For a short period in 1918, Jaffé was finance minister in Kurt Eisner’s Bavarian Soviet Republic. It would appear that Jaffé and his family never themselves lived in the house that is their namesake.
In 1919 the villa was sold to Oskar Grün, owner of an ironworks in Berlin-Schöneweide. Oskar Grün resided in the villa together with his wife Franziska and their daughter Emmy and her husband, the businessman Georg Braun, and their son Herbert Braun (1906-1982). After Hitler’s seizure of power, the owners of the villa were compelled to rent rooms to guests. Owing to his political work for the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), Herbert Braun was incarcerated for half a year in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After his release in 1939, he immigrated to Shanghai; his parents followed him there, where they died shortly afterward. Herbert Braun worked in Shanghai in the import-export business and then in 1948 settled first in Tel Aviv and then in Eilat, Israel.
Under the Nuremberg laws the villa was expropriated in 1938-1939. Hermann Göring’s Reich Hunting Association (Reichsjägerschaft) used the villa as office for the Reich Hunting MuseumReichsjagdmuseum.
From 1945-1952 the villa housed a small button factory. Owing to a 1952 resolution of the Restitution Chamber of the Berlin Regional State Court (Wiedergutmachungskammer des Landgerichts Berlin) in 1952 the villa's rightful owner Herbert Braun returned from Israel to reclaim the house, where he lived until 1966. After Braun’s death, his widow Hilda Braun inherited the villa. From 1955 to 1995 a section of the villa was given over to a nursing home, initially run by the Privathospital Grunewald, and later by two nursing homes for the elderly.
In 1995 Hilda Braun's son Christoph Kopp, together with his family, moved into the villa’s top floor. Through a financial gift of the Berlin Lottery, the remaining three floors were renovated for use by the Wissenschaftskolleg. The new rooms were inaugurated in an official ceremony on 15 December 1995, in which Berlin’s Senator for Science, Research and Culture was in attendance. The Wissenschaftskolleg decided to name the villa after its first owner—hence the Villa Jaffé.
The villa is above all used by Fellows who are working within the framework of the thematic focus groups. Here too is headquartered the focus group "Modernity and Islam"”, and since 2007 the focus group "Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe" (EUME).
To conclude, let us cite a recent architectural-historical description of the two buildings located at the respective addresses Wallotstrasse 10 and 12:
"They are distinguished by a kind of monumentality that was still, as a rule, not a salient stylistic element in those country houses and villas erected during the same time period. This impression is derived, for one, from the edifices’ vertical orientation, owing to their slightly elevated position above the ground and their extremely high plinth floors; and for another, due to the prominence of individual building elements. For example the imposing Corinthian columns on the top floor of Wallotstrasse 12—despite the missing cupolas—constitute an unusually dominant motif for buildings of this type. This also goes for the rounded gable of Wallotstrasse 10—but without the same massiveness. Its tympan is decorated by a coat-of-arms that is being held by a griffin in the plinth’s bas-relief." (Denkmaltopogrophie Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Baudenkmale in Berlin—Bezirk Wilmersdorf, Ortsteil Grunewald, published by the Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung und Umweltschutz Berlin, second edition, Berlin 1994, p. 160 f.).
5. Villa Walther (Koenigsallee 20)
In the Villa Walther, just half a kilometer from the Wissenschaftskolleg’s main building, there are twenty-eight apartments which are placed at the disposal of Wiko Fellows and their families. This villa was built in 1912-13 and is an impressive example of that brand of late-Wilhelmine villa architecture which was in private ownership.
The story goes that an affluent Russian aristocrat commissioned Royal Building Councilor Wilhelm Walther with constructing this villa. Following outbreak of the First World War, when the Russian nobleman defaulted on payment of money already invested in the project—namely Walther’s money—this latter declared bankruptcy. Walther already had several large and lucrative building commissions to his name—the Viktoria-Insurance Building in Kreuzberg and the Bayernhof in the Tiergarten’s Potsdamer Strasse, among others. He evidently wished to utilize the Koenigsallee villa—which, according to contemporary building-law terminology, was a "single-family dwelling"—as a kind of calling card for potential clients. This helps to explain the villa’s vast dimensions and its lavishly ornamented facade, adorned with reliefs and gable mosaics as well as citations from Greek and Roman antiquity, this latter era, in particular, seen as related to if not being the mirror-image of the late-Wilhelmine period.
In 1918, following Walther’s bankruptcy proceedings, the villa was acquired by a factory owner and turned into a residential building with apartments for rent. In 1938 the building was acquired by the Third Reich under the auspices of the Reich Finance Ministry, and as of 1939 the Reich School of Finance was housed here. In the Second World War a bomb destroyed sixty percent of the building’s fabric.
After the war those still intact parts of the building were divided into apartment units. Legal successor to the villa was the Federal Republic of Germany (as represented by Berlin’s Finance Board), which planned, latest by the late 1960s, to put the property up for sale. But this failed to transpire because the villa was officially classified as an historical monument. In 1980 the federal state of Berlin acquired the property. Those surviving portions of the edifice were to be restored and at the same time the building was to have additions made according to its original plans (Cologne architect Gottfried Böhm responsible for their realization). Through a mixed-estate contract, the property was acquired by a property developer (Grundag). In 1988 the building was restored to its present state and in large parts rented to the Wissenschaftskolleg.
Here you can find further remarks on the engravings of this building.