Bogensee - Country Residence of the National Socialist Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels / "Wilhelm Pieck" Youth Academy

Built in 1939, the building served as country residence to the National Socialist Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels who initially stayed there without his family and welcomed guests, mostly from the cultural and media sectors. The main building has 30 rooms, which at the time included a large hall, a library, a drawing room as well as a study and a dining room and several bedrooms. A special feature of the building are its luxury lakeside-facing windows which automatically retract. When the Allied air was beginning to be felt in Berlin, the building was also used for the minister's official business. Between 1943 and 1945 the building served as the residence of the Goebbels family. 

After 1945 it was briefly occupied by the Soviet military. From 1946, the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ), the East German youth organisation, used the building as a youth academy. In the 1950s, a new complex was built for the FDJ in the immediate vicinity, which included recreation rooms and dormitories. In the 1950s, the SED called this complex "Rotes Kloster", the red monastery, and it contained an assembly hall with 600 seats, two dining rooms and several dormitories and residential buildings. Over the course of its almost forty-year existence, the academy produced some 15,000 graduates. In retrospect, the atmosphere in the academy has been described as characterised by dogmatism, seclusion and surveillance. In addition to the German FDJ members, around 4,300 young people from all over the world were taught here. 

The properties are still owned by the city of Berlin, which does not yet have any plans for their further use. 

Literature:

• Stefan Berkholz, Goebbels‘ Waldhof am Bogensee. Vom Liebesnetz zur DDR-Propagandastätte, Berlin 2004