The Building of the Yugoslavian Legation in Berlin was constructed from 1938 to 1940 for the diplomatic representation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the German Empire (see legation). The building designed by Werner March is located at Rauchstraße 17–18 in the embassy district of the Tiergarten district and is a listed building.

There were two historical buildings on the site. Villa Kabrun was built in 1865–1867 by the architects Ende & Böckmann on behalf of the manufacturer and manor owner August Kabrun (1807–1877) and his wife Flora Luise Henriette Nicolovius (1811–1879), a grandniece of Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Kabrun's grandson, Ulrich Graf Brockdorff-Rantzau, became the first Foreign Minister of the Weimar Republic. Kabrun's daughters, Cäcilie von Brockdorff and her sister Cornelia von Stralendorff, sold the villa to the merchant Martin Levy, who lived there until 1911. The later banker Arthur Salomonsohn, who was related to Martin Levy through his mother Ernestine Levy, also lived there as a child. The heirs, including the professor of economics Hermann Levy, transferred the property in 1925 to the chemist and industrialist Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who had the Villa Mendelssohn Bartholdy built on it.

In 1938, the Mendelssohn Bartholdy family, which was persecuted as Jewish, was expropriated by the Reich authorities through expropriation and had to emigrate. A new building for the Royal Yugoslavian Legation was erected on the site because Albert Speer's plans for a World Capital Germania at the old seat of the legation included the total demolition in favor of the new headquarters of the High Command of the Army (OKH) at the old headquarters. The Yugoslavian legation moved into the building in October 1940, but only used it for six months. With the Wehrmacht attack on Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Yugoslav state was destroyed and there was no longer any need for a diplomatic mission. After an interim use by Alfred Rosenberg as Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Werner March began converting it into a guest house of the Großdeutsches Reich in 1942. After the end of the Second World War in 1945, the People's Republic of Yugoslavia used the building as the seat of its military mission. In 1953, the Allied Commandant's Office established the Supreme Restitution Court for Berlin (ORG). The ORG was the court of last resort for lawsuits for restitution of assets to racially and politically persecuted persons. The Mendelssohn Bartholdy family also filed an action for Restitution of their assets, including the property of the ORG, which thus had to decide on the rightful owner of the house they had used themselves, and upheld the action. The ORG existed until the end of the Four Power Status through Reunification in 1990. Since 1999, the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) has been using the building.

History and situation

Location The building of the Yugoslavian Legation is located at the western end of Rauchstraße on a slightly trapezoidal corner plot, which is bordered to the north by Rauchstrasse, to the west by Drakestrasse and to the south by Corneliusstrasse. Corneliusstraße is named after the historical painter Peter von Cornelius, Rauchstraße after the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch and Drakestraße after his pupil Friedrich Drake.Drakestraße. In: Straßennamenlexikon des Luisenstädtischen Bildungsvereins The latter created the statue of Victoria on the Siegessäule not far from the property.

The villa district in Tiergarten and the Villa Kabrun (1865–1924) The area of today's embassy district lies outside the former Berlin customs and excise wall and was only incorporated into Berlin in 1861. From 1884, the new district bore the name Tiergarten.Overview of the new division of the city of Berlin into districts and boroughs. Grunert, Berlin 1884. The property on the north side of the Landwehrgraben (from the opening of the canal in 1850, today's Landwehrkanal) between today's Klingelhöferstraße and Lichtensteinallee was named Albrechtshof after the landowner, a widow Albrecht, from 1835. The northern riverside road along the Landwehr Canal was accordingly called Albrechtshof-Ufer from 1849, before it was given the name Corneliusstraße in 1867, which is still in use today.Albrechtshof-Ufer. In: Straßennamenlexikon des Luisenstädtischen Bildungsvereins

Villa Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1925–1933) In 1925/26 the 46-year-old Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy d. J. took over the corner property at Rauchstraße 17 from Levy's heirs, Hermann Levy and his sister Julie Reissert, in Erbpacht.Rauchstraße 17. In: Berliner Adreßbuch, 1927, part 4, p. 823, "E Dr. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, P." (E for owner). He was the son of the chemist and Agfa founder Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the grandson of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.Thomas Lackmann: Das Glück der Mendelssohns. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2005. Like his father, Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy d. J. had a doctorate in chemistry and was director of Agfa for many years. In 1925, Agfa was merged into I.G. Farben. Together with Camerawerk München and a factory for photographic paper in Leverkusen (both formerly Bayer AG), Agfa formed Division III (Photochemistry) of I. G. Farben, which had its headquarters in Berlin SO 36 (Kreuzberg) and was headed by Mendelssohn Bartholdy as I. G. Farben director.Arthur Prinz, Avraham Barkai: Juden im deutschen Wirtschaftsleben. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1984, p. 90. The Berlin address book of 1926 lists building sites at Rauchstraße 17–18.Rauchstraße. In: Berliner Adreßbuch, 1926, Part 4, p. 813. The section of Drakestraße between Corneliusstraße and Rauchstraße (the western boundary of the site of the later legation) did not yet have a house number, but there was also a building site there in 1926.Drakestraße. In: Berliner Adreßbuch, 1926, Part 4, p. 214. In 1927, Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy d. J. and his wife Johanna, a British citizen, moved into the newly built Villa Mendelssohn Bartholdy.Neil Rosenstein: The Unbroken Chain, 2nd edition. Computer Center for Jewish Genealogy, New York 1990, p. 210. The couple was still childless at this time. Under the address, next to "Dr. P. Mendelssohn Bartholdy" as the owner and head of the household, only a porter named Zander was registered – as another head of the household and thus possibly living there with his family.

Expropriation and emigration (1933–1938) As a prominent member of the Mendelssohn family of Jewish descent, Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy was persecuted by the National Socialists as a so-called "money Jew". His widely ramified family could be considered a prime example of successful assimilation. Most branches of the family had converted to the Protestant faith by the middle of the 19th century at the latest, were successful, acquired wealth and a high social position. Paul's eldest brother Otto was ennobled in 1907.Lackmann: Das Glück der Mendelssohns. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 416.

In October 1937, Mendelssohn Bartholdy's property was encumbered with a security mortgage in the amount of 60,000 RM from "Reich Flight Tax for the German Reich".Grundbuch des Potsdamer Torbezirks. Volume 25, sheet no. 729, third section, no. 34, entry dated October 21, 1937. The contract was dated October 1, 1937. In: Amtsgericht Tempelhof-Kreuzberg, Berlin. The Reich Flight Tax amounted to 25% of the taxable assets and was due upon abandonment of the domestic residence.Decree of the Reich Flight Tax in the Reichsgesetzblatt 1931, repeatedly extended until 1951. The family was forced to sell the villa and property in 1938 on the basis of the Reichsgesetz über die Neugestaltung Deutscher Städte.Reichsgesetz über die Neugestaltung Deutscher Städte of October 4, 1937. In: Reichsgesetzblatt – Teil I. 1937, p. 1054-1055

Building history and architecture

Germania and the embassy district As part of the Development Plan of the National Socialist chief architect Albert Speer as General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital (GBI) for the construction of the world capital Germania The area known today as the Embassy Quarter at the southern Tiergarten was declared a diplomatic quarter. Twelve embassy buildings were to be erected in order to create space in the Government Quarter near the Brandenburg Gate for the implementation of Speer's plans, which were to exceed all previously known urban planning standards. For the realization of his plans, residential buildings in Berlin were demolished in 1938–1939, the tenants to be relocated were given replacement apartments, which became available at Speer's instigation through the eviction and deportation of Jews.Susanne Willems: Der entsiedelte Jude. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 2002. In order to make room for the "Royal Yugoslavian Legation", three plots of land were expropriated and merged: Rauchstraße 17 and 18 and Drakestraße 4.

Before the move, the Yugoslavian legation was located together with the legation chancellery at Regentenstraße 17, renamed Großadmiral-Prinz-Heinrich-Straße 17 in 1935,Behördenverzeichnis, Abt. 122. In: Berliner Adreßbuch, 1940, Part 3, p. 12. of today's Hitzigallee,Großadmiral-Prinz-Heinrich-Straße. In: Straßennamenlexikon des Luisenstädtischen Bildungsvereins at the south-eastern corner with SigismundstraßeHitzigallee today ends at Sigismundstraße. At the time of planning in 1938, it ran further north to Tiergartenstraße and Sigismundstraße entered from the east between numbers 15 and 17. In 1982, this northern section of the street was converted into building land about 800 m west of Potsdamer Platzes. This meant that the legation was in the way of the plan for the "North-South Axis", which envisaged a new building for the Army High Command on the western side of the planned 120 m wide boulevard at the intersection with the southern edge of the Tiergarten. (OKH) was planned. The planned two-winged OKH building had a length of about 360 m in the north-south direction and a width of about 280 m in the east-west direction in the last version of the general building inspection from 1942, but was never built.Reichhardt, Schäche: Von Berlin nach Germania. Fig. 19, p. 27 on the OKH and on the street width p. 60. Today, the former site of the Yugoslav Legation is occupied by residential buildings erected before the move as part of the Internationale Bauausstellung 1987.

Planning and construction history Werner March, the architect of the legation building, is best known for designing the Berlin Olympiastadion and other buildings within the Reichssportfeld built for the Olympic Summer Games, for whose overall planning he was also responsible. March designed the building in 1938 with an angular ground plan in an austere and closed architectural style, which, however, in comparison to the neoclassicist embassy buildings in the surrounding area (for example the Spanish or Italian Embassy). The building was completed in the years 1938–1940 under the construction management of Willy Kreuer, who was employed in the March office.Thomas Schmidt: Werner March, Architekt des Olympia-Stadions: 1894–1976. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1992, pp. 90–94. Construction was originally scheduled to take 8 months, but on 31 August 1939, on the eve of World War II, the GBI canceled all implementation work on the redesign of Berlin.Susanne Willems: Der entsiedelte Jude. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 2002, p. 158, footnote 452. After the Victory over France in the summer of 1940, limited construction work was resumed. On October 7, 1940, the Yugoslavian legation moved into the building, and on November 29, 1940, the official handover and inauguration took place, at which the Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was represented by a state secretary.

Architecture – exterior design