Stalin Villa

The Potsdam conference was perhaps the most important meeting of the last century, deciding about the fate of Germany and Berlin, as well as the repatriation of its expanded borders to neighboring countries. It was attended by the heads of state of all sides, including President Truman, Churchill, and Stalin. While they were debating about the fate of Germany, they obviously needed to live somewhere. And their houses were convieniently lined up on one street. 

Stalin lived on the north-west side of the recently dubbed Karl-Marx-Straße (renamed from the KaiserStraße), above the houses of Churchill and Truman.

His Vila was built in 1911 by Alfred Grenander for the  Herpich family who ran a fur trading business. The family was forcibly removed from the vila without compensation, and not allowed back in even after the conference and the house was designated a museum by the DDR. 

In 1955, two years after Stalin's death,  his cult of personality was torn down and his crimes revealed. The musuem closed but the building stayed in DDR hands until the completion of German reunification in 1990. The Herpich got the vila back after nearly 80 years, but decided to sell it to a building lobbying firm which owns it to this day. 

The building is open to the public once a year on monument day, and not accessible beyond that. Still you can see a plaque on the wall confirming that Stalin lived here in 1945.