Anger has flared at how Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels ‘love nest’ villa has been given away in Germany following years of debate over future of decaying relic
The decision to hand over the decaying luxury villa of one of Hitler’s most notorious friends and allies for free has sparked outrage in Germany. The property belonged to Joseph Goebbels and he used it to secretly meet his lovers.
It was dubbed “Goebbels’ Love Nest”. Hitler’s evil propaganda minister owned the sprawling estate 25 miles north of Berlin.
But the now the Berlin authorities have decided to give the villa away. The decision, comes after decades of dithering over what to do with the decaying Nazi relic — and German taxpayers are being told Berlin will still cover the upkeep costs even after giving it away
Officials admit the estate costs roughly £240,000 a year just to maintain, with any full renovation likely to run into the hundreds of millions. Critics called the move “a moral disgrace” and “historical whitewashing”. Historian Stephan Malinowski told Der Tagesspiegel the site had become “a monument to indecision and amnesia”.
Birgit Möhring, Managing Director of Berliner Real Estate Management said: “We have really been presented with some good ideas. But when it came to how they could be financed, no one was able to convince us.”
Birgit Möhring, Managing Director of Berliner Real Estate Management said: “We have really been presented with some good ideas. But when it came to how they could be financed, no one was able to convince us.”
“We operate with funds from Berlin’s taxpayers. Given the backlog of renovation projects in Berlin, that really cannot be justified.” German historian Hans-Christian Lange spearheaded the campaign for the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, and will soon publish a thriller about places of desecration during this time.
He said: “German politics, which has forgotten its history, is now creating a whole network of obscene sites that desecrate The Holocaust. The Goebbels villa is the most recent example of all this, and I suspect it will be sold on to Nazi nostalgia enthusiasts who will then turn it into a sacred memorial and pilgrimage site.”
“But sadly this is not an isolated case. In 2024, the German government sold former concentration camp sites to people in the far-right milieu, who are now even building luxury bunkers there for the wealthy. In this way, the German political elite is paving the way for a completely different Germany. Just like back in the 1930s.”
But Katrin Guse, Green Party district council candidate said the property should just be demolished. She said: “World views created by dictators and set in stone are not worth preserving.” Goebbels had the luxury villa built in 1939 on a wooded site overlooking the Bogensee lake near the town of Wandlitz, north of Berlin.
The estate grew into a 30-room villa with 40 service quarters, a private cinema and 60 telephones. Beneath it lies a bunker built in 1944, as Allied bombs rained on Berlin. Goebbels used the villa and an earlier house on the site to entertain Nazi leaders, artists and actors – and as a love-nest for secret affairs.
After the war, the 42-acre site was used briefly as a hospital, then taken over by the youth wing of the East German Communist party, which constructed a training centre, including several large accommodation blocks.
After German reunification in 1990, ownership of the site returned to the state of Berlin. However, the city found no use for it. The site has since become an attraction for day trippers who can pick their way through the overgrown grounds and peer through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the villa.