Sorgenfrei

For decades, the tradition has been cultivated of enjoying the summer holiday here with the family. Generations later, the painter Josef Block captured the former inhabitants in the medium of photography. These portraits, original blueprints, as well as photographs of the villa and the surrounding park, presumably from Block's hand, give us a vivid picture of a bourgeois family life that was closely linked to the history of Berlin. The most important construction phases of the property are illustrated by a three-stage model in the middle of the room. It shows the Mendelssohn estate from the middle of the 19th century and the representative, three-storey new building in the style of the Neo-Renaissance, which Otto Georg Oppenheim and his wife Margarete, née Mendelssohn, had built from 1881 by the architect Christian Heidecke. When the head of the family died in 1909, it was over with the summer resort in Charlottenburg: tenement barracks had grown in height around the villa without worries, so that the heirs decided to sell the property. The city of Charlottenburg acquired the villa in 1911, demolished parts of it for a new school building in the immediate vicinity, and instead of the former private garden, created a municipal park, today's Schustehruspark.

Tue to Fr 10-17

Sat, Sun and holidays 11-17