WHICH WAY TO DETLEV-ROHWEDDER-HAUS?
Some buildings are bigger than life. They appear to have grown deep into the site on which they were built, their shadow crushing miniature passers by as they go.
In 1992 the spreading and, indeed, overwhelming building of the former Reichsluftfahrtsministerium (Reich Aviation Ministry) in Wilhelmstraße was re-named Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus – a name it bears until today. But who was this man thus commemorated in Berlin? The answer is, one of the most controversial characters this city encountered.
Detlev Rohwedder was a business executive (mostly steel) from West Germany. In August 1990 he was appointed the head of the Treuhand - a body in charge of re-privatization and privatization of formerly state-owned East-German assets, and the singularly most hated enterprise in the eastern part of re-unified Germany.
Rohwedder, boosted by his professional success re-structuring the West-German steel-makers, Hoesch, considered himself the perfect man for the job. He was, in a way, the epitome of the businessman of his time: ambitious, focused and necessarily convinced of his own infallibility. Not a style easily acceptable to those who happened to disagree. But entrusted with the highly disputable task of dismantling the failed Communist economy of a fallen country, he went at it tooth and pick. Never mind those caught in the maelstrom.
In April 1991 Rohwedder, who worked in Berlin but lived in Düsseldorf at the time, was shot at through the window at his home in Niederkassel. The sniper killed him and wounded his wife. The late-night assassination (the shots were fired shortly before midnight) was carried out by members of the notorious West-German terrorist organization, Red Army Faction (the RAF).
To commemorate Rohwedder, German authorities decided to re-name the old Haus der Ministerien (as the former Luftfahrtministerium was called in the DDR) - now the seat of Federal Ministry for Finance - in Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus.
Still, despite the respect shown to the assassinated politician by the country’s elders, many East Germans had their own bone to pick and their own opinion about Rohwedder and his death. Blaming him - indirectly - for the Treuhand’s remorseless policy of privatization and redundancies in the former GDR, they took to wearing small pins on their coats and jackets.
The text on the pin? “Ich war’s nicht” (It wasn’t me).
The former East-German company manufacturing those badges is said to have made a fortune.
I visited a friend who worked for the Treuhand there, possibly a little later (1993 or 1994?). My chief memory of the building was the remarkable paternoster lifts.
This is such an incredible building. it is almost unbelievable that the Air Ministry building was one of the only buildings NOT to suffer from bomb damage during WWII. Thank you