Atlantis House

[1] The building was the second designed by Bernhardt Hoetger (1929–31) for Böttcherstrasse[2] on the basis of ideas from Ludwig Roselius, the prosperous coffee entrepreneur, and Herman Wirth, the Nazi ethnographer specializing in German ancestral heritage.

The visible framework was accompanied by one of Hoetger's monumental carved wooden features above the entrance representing the Tree of Life (Lebensbaum).

Hanging on the cross was the strange figure of the "Altlantis saviour", combining the image of the crucified Christ with the pagan Odin.

In 1954, the feature was temporarily replaced by Max Säume and Günther Hafemann with a facade displaying an abstract representation of celestial bodies but this was subsequently hidden by a closed, concentrically ornamented brick wall completed by Ewald Mataré in 1965.

The interior was completely renovated but the old staircase and the Himmelssaal with its mosaic ceiling of blue and white glass were maintained as interesting examples of German architecture in the interwar period.