Bertelsmann history

Just a few decades later, others will have looked on during the events of the 1918 revolution when the Berlin SPD politician Otto Wels was the City Commandant caught between the front lines of the Spartacists and the Council of the People's Deputies.

Interviews with contemporary witnesses form a complementary library of documentation that is undergoing steady expansion. It includes minutes, contracts, records of business transactions, manual deliveries, balance sheets, statistics, strategy papers, office liquidations and much more from the time after 1947 to the present day.

Bomb damage and house-to-house fighting in Berlin ensured the almost total destruction of the building by the end of the war, and it was demolished in 1950.

Bertelsmann's nucleus, however, was a Protestant publishing house dedicated entirely to the program of the East Westphalian Awakening movement. It was inaugurated in 1976, when the Group moved into its newly built headquarters.

After the demolition of the former GDR Ministry of the Exterior in 1995 – no further use of the building was contemplated – discussions began with the aim of finding a new use for the area.

The opportunity to achieve this ambition presented itself in the summer of 1999 when the Berlin Senate announced an architectural competition for the reconstruction of the City Commandant's Headquarters.

Before the groundbreaking ceremony could take place for Bertelsmann Unter den Linden 1 in November 2001, archaeological excavations had to be made into the historical foundations of the City Commandant's Headquarters.

Reconstruction of the façade began in October 2002 and a total of 138,000 bricks and 312 tons of sandstone were used in its completion.