The house of the Bonhoeffer family

The house at Marienburger Allee 43 was built in 1935 in Berlin’s Westend neighborhood. It was built as a retirement home for Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer. The couple had eight children who had all moved out of their parents’ house in Berlin-Grunewald by this time. Walter had already died in the First World War in 1918. Dietrich alone was still single and was given a room in the attic. Dietrich Bonhoeffer used the house as a place to live and work whenever he was in Berlin. His grandmother Julie Bonhoeffer also spent the last years of her life in this house.

The Bonhoeffer house was a regular venue for family gatherings and intellectual discussions as well as civic culture–this includes also conspiracy meetings and discussions during the Nazi era.

Home of student pastor Eberhard Bethge

After Karl Bonhoeffer’s death in 1948 and that of his wife Paula in 1951, the regional church acquired the house with Swedish aid. In moved the student pastor of the church–then Eberhard Bethge. Bethge, a close friend, student and biographer of Bonhoeffer continued to make Bonhoeffer’s spiritual legacy accessible and internationally known.

Student residence

Later, between mid-1950s and 1980s, the house served as a hall of residence for students from various disciplines. Up to 13 students at the nearby Charlottenburg University (TU) were accommodated here.

Memorial and Place of Encounter

Since the early 1980s, there has been a growing awareness that the Bonhoeffer House should not only be preserved, but also further developed as a place of learning and remembrance. The first concepts for institutional use were developed. In 1987, the house was opened to the public with its artistic exhibition of picture collages.

In 2017, the ongoing work was transferred to the legal structure of an association (Erinnerungs- und Begegnungsstaette Bonhoeffer-Haus e.V.) whose work is recognized as non-profit. Today, the house is an open place of encounter with social relevance, supported by a civil society commitment and a church educational mission.

Architectural history and listed building

The house was designed by Joerg Schleicher at the same time as the neighboring house at Marienburger Allee 42–the home of Dietrich’s eldest sister Ursula and her family with Ruediger Schleicher.

The conservative Stuttgart building school, represented by Paul Bonatz and Paul Schmitthenner since the 1920s, served as a model for bourgeois residential construction in the Third Reich. The two-storey, light-colored plastered cube features traditional elements such as lattice windows, folding shutters and a hipped roof. While the floor plan follows a classic pattern with a group of three rooms on the garden side the façade on the street side has a creative appeal thanks to staggered axes and an interplay of symmetries and asymmetries. The front door is off-center and the group of windows on the upper floor is slightly shifted; the garden side has only three axes.

In 1996, the Bonhoeffer House was listed as a historical monument. The listed status not only protects the structural substance, but also underlines the historical significance of the site.