Palace of the Reich President
[1] On April 2, 1757, a few weeks before his death in the Battle of Prague, he sold the palace, including its furnishings, for 50,000 thalers to Stephan Peter Oliver, Count of Wallis [de].
Until 1811, Osten-Sacken's widow Christiane Charlotte Sophie [de], born Baroness von Dieskau, was owner of the palace.
[2] From 1816 the court book printer Georg Andreas Reimer [de] used the representative rooms for his family, his publishing house and a literary salon, while the wings also worked like a factory.
The banker Eduard von der Heydt acted as an intermediary for the transaction, which was kept top secret for a long time.
The building, now located in East Berlin, and again called Palais Schwerin was considered to be "largely preserved" after the war and was intended to be rebuilt.
Particularly damaging was the dismantling of the iron roof structure, when the four baroque sandstone sculptures, including balustrade and the cartouche of the middle avant-corps, were toppled and destroyed.
When a panel of experts examined the palace in 1951, it registered a degree of destruction of 48%, largely due to neglect during the post-war period, and stated: "Only the interior design is really to be considered lost."
The monument protection authority protested this decision in vain, citing the Cultural Association of the GDR and well-known scientists: "Blowing up this last baroque palais in the Wilhelmstrasse would be unconscionable for posterity.
In addition, there were some outbuildings such as a garage for the President's vehicle fleet, a rear building and various small garden houses, greenhouses and a chicken coop.
On the forecourt at the front of the palace was a so-called “courtyard” covered with gravel, on which the Reich President received foreign ambassadors and heads of state as well as other distinguished guests.
In later years it was common for a twenty-member honorary formation of the Reichswehr to take a stand on the courtyard whenever the President entered or left his office.
In the courtyard there was a fountain decorated with allegorical figures, behind which a wide glass staircase led to the entrance to the palace.
In addition to the office of the President in the left wing of the building (“Chancellery”) and the representative rooms for official occasions (receptions, banquets, dance evenings, etc.)
Other people who not only worked in the palace, but also had their own apartments there, were the house inspector (chief of domestic staff) Wilhelm Tappe, Hindenburg's personal servant Oskar Putz (called "Karl" um) To avoid confusion with the son of the same name of the head of state) and the presidential chauffeur Otto Demant and the chauffeur of the president's office Kurt Nehls.
The Reich President's staff usually consisted of fifteen middle and senior officials, ten female typists and eight clerks.
Among the members of the staff of the Reich President, whose most important collaborators were Ebert and Hindenburg in the same way, are to be emphasized: The Ministerialrat Heinrich Doehle, who dealt with domestic affairs, and the Legationsrat Oswald von Hoyningen-Huene, who was assigned to the President of the Reich as representative of the Federal Foreign Office, as well as High Government Councilor Wilhelm Geilenberg, [8] who ran the cash register.
