Villa Truman ( German: Truman-Villa , formerly Villa Müller-Grote - Villa Müller-Grote ) is a historic building in the Potsdam district of Babelsberg on Karl-Marx-Strasse, 2.
The building was named after Truman’s Villa after the Potsdam Conference of 1945: from July 15, 1945, US President G. Truman lived in the building for 17 days, as well as US Secretary of State J. F. Byrnes and US Presidential Advisor on Defense W. D. Leigh . The white facade of the building led to another nickname - “Small White House ”. In this building, President Truman ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki .
History
The building, designed by architects Karl von Grosheim and Heinrich Josef Kaiser, was erected in 1891 in the residential village of Neubabelsberg as a summer residence for Karl Müller-Grote , the owner of the Grote book publishing house, and the publisher of Theodor Fontane's works. The house became a meeting place for many famous personalities. Edwin Redslob , the imperial curator of art values during the Weimar Republic , regularly became a co-founder of Der Tagesspiegel in 1945.
Soon after the signing of the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945, the building was confiscated by the Soviet command. On the eve of the Potsdam Conference, it was converted to accommodate high-ranking guests. Then, until April 1946, Marshal G.K. Zhukov, the commander in chief of the Soviet occupation forces and the commander in chief of the Soviet occupation zone in Germany , lived in Truman’s villa. In subsequent years, the building housed the SED party school, in 1961-1974, the secondary polytechnical school worked in it, and then - a furniture warehouse.
In 1998, the Truman Villa was acquired by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation under its headquarters, in 1999-2001 the building was reconstructed. Before the start of construction work, the building received significant damage as a result of arson. In 2000, a modern office building was added to the villa, designed by architect Diethelm Hoffmann . The Naumann Foundation entered the refurbished complex in 2001.
Literature
- Paul Sigel, Silke Dähmlow, Frank Seehausen, Lucas Elmenhorst: Architekturführer Potsdam . Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-496-01325-7 .