Wannsee Conference (1942) in a beautiful Berlin villa

History of the Wannsee Villa homepage says that the beautiful home was first built in SW Berlin in 1914-15. The original owners of the home, merchant-factory owner Ernst Marlier and his wife Margarete, were photo­graphed standing in their front doorway in 1916. The photograph of the dining room shows how the room was fur­nished: Queen Ann chairs, Oriental rug, chandelier and wall tap­estry. The Wintergarten, the sun room next to the dining room, is still lovely. The house had 1,500 sq ms of living space, and a very large garden. One of the great joys of living in Wannsee was proximity to beautiful parks, lakes and beaches.

Ernst and Margarete Marlier sold the house in 1921, to a firm bel­ong­ing to the industrialist Friedrich Minoux. The first important conf­erence was held in this villa in Feb 1923. This was when Minoux mediated an un­successful discussion between the chief of the army command and the former quartermaster general on measures to be taken against the French occupation of Germany’s coal-rich Ruhr region.

Wannsee Villa, 

surrounded by well kept, peaceful gardens

Wannsee beach

According to the museum, Minoux was also involved in Hitler's failed Putsch in Nov 1923. Minoux believed that "on that date, which was the 5th anniversary of the overthrow of the 500-year old Hohenzollern dynasty of Germany by the Jewish-led Social Democrats", Hitler made an attempt to overthrow the democratic Weimar Republic.

In 1940, Minoux was arrested for fraud and embezzlement in his busin­esses. In Nov 1940 he sold the villa, with all its furn­ishings and art works, to the Nordhav SS Foundation set up by Reinhard von Heydrich. The foundation's role was to build and main­tain vacation resorts for the SS Security Service. Hey­drich, Himmler's second in command of the SS, wanted to use the Wannsee villa for official functions and as a hol­iday resort. It offered renovated guest rooms, a music room, a billiards room, the gorgeous winter garden and terraces facing the Wannsee.

With the invasion of Poland in Sep 1939, the persecution of European Jewry was raised to unprecedented levels. But worse was to come in June 1941 after the onset of Operation Barbarossa against the Sov­iets. On 31st July 1941 Hermann Göring gave written authorisation to Heydrich to prepare and submit a plan - he had to create a Total Solution of the Jewish Question in territ­ories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organisations.

 

The Wannsee Museum rooms,

as lightfilled and spacious as they were in 1914

Thus the Wannsee Conference. It was a meeting of 15 senior government officials of Nazi Germany and SS leaders, held in the house on 20th Jan 1942. Called by director of the Reich Main Security Office Rein­hard Heyd­rich, the conference was to ensure the cooperation of administrative leaders of various government dep­art­ments, each one an expert on Jewish affairs or European train systems..

A]Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of Reich Main Security Office.

B]State Secretary Roland Freisler, Reich Ministry of Justice.

C]Rudolf Lange, Commander of the Security Police.

D]Alfred Meyer, Deputy Reich Minister for Occupied Eastern Territories.

E]Heinrich Müller, Chief of Amt IV (Gestapo) in the Reich Main Security Office.

F]Undersecretary of State, Martin Luther, Reich Foreign Ministry.

G]Karl Eberhard Schöngarth, Commander of Security Service.

H]Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, Permanent Secretary at the Reich Chancellery.

I]State Secretary Josef Bühler, General Government.

J]State Secretary Erich Neumann, Office of Plenipotentiary.

K]State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart, Reich Interior Ministry.

L]Adolf Eichmann, Head of Referat IV B4 of the Gestapo.

M]Georg Leibbrandt, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories.

N]Otto Hofmann, Head of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office.

P]Gerhard Klopfer, Permanent Secretary of the Nazi Party Chancellery.

It took less than two hours for Heydrich to outline how European Jews would be rounded up from west to east, and sent to the General Government i.e the occupied part of Poland. Once the mass deportation was complete, the SS would take complete charge of the extermination camps.

Many records were destroyed. And it was only in March 1947 that the Wannsee Conference even came to light, by accident. One copy of the Wannsee Protocol with circulated minutes of the meeting survived, found by the Allies among files that had been seized from the German Foreign Office.

In 1965 the villa was proposed as an ideal site for the study of Nat­ional Socialism and its Consequences, organised by historian Josef Wulf and largely financed by the World Jewish Congress. But the Ger­man gov­ern­ment was not prepared to allow the Jews to buy the property or use it as a document centre. Only on 20th Jan 1992, EXACTLY on the 50th anniversary of the conference, the site was finally opened as a Holocaust Memorial and as the House of the Wannsee Conference Museum.

Most of the ground-floor rooms have large panels on the walls with text about the Nazi era and the Holocaust, along with a collection of pictures related to the evacuation of the Jews, as planned at the Wannsee Conference. The Joseph Wulf Bibliothek-Mediothek on the second floor houses a large collection of books on the Nazi era, plus other materials such as microfilms.

Reinhard Heydrich on the front cover of
Professor Mark Roseman's book

The 75th Anniversary Wannsee Conference Commemoration will be taking place in Melbourne on the 29th January 2017, chaired by the Federal Member of Parliament for Melbourne Ports and opened by the President of the Jewish Holocaust Centre.

If readers are planning to attend the Melbourne commemoration, it may be worth reading Mark Roseman’s book The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution (Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 2002) first. Or read the review in The Guardian.