Carefree

The history of Villa Oppenheim and its residents

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  Wilhelm Hensel: Alexander Mendelssohn mit seiner Familie, 1832 – Wilhelm Hensel: Alexander Mendelssohn mit seiner Familie, 1832 © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Mendelssohn-Archiv

• Ständige Ausstellung "Sorgenfrei. Die Geschichte der Villa Oppenheim und ihrer Bewohner" – Ständige Ausstellung "Sorgenfrei. Die Geschichte der Villa Oppenheim und ihrer Bewohner". Foto: Ringo Paulusch

• Ständige Ausstellung "Sorgenfrei. Die Geschichte der Villa Oppenheim und ihrer Bewohner" – Ständige Ausstellung "Sorgenfrei. Die Geschichte der Villa Oppenheim und ihrer Bewohner". Foto: Ringo Paulusch

The foyer of the Villa Oppenheim is dedicated to the building history of the house and the people who once lived here. It was members of the renowned German-Jewish Mendelssohn family, and from 1881 onwards the Oppenheims, who were related to the Mendelssohn family by marriage, who spent carefree summer months in the rural estate. For decades, the tradition of enjoying summer holidays here with the family was cultivated.

Generations later, the painter Josef Block captured the former residents in the medium of photography. These portraits, original building plans and photographs of the villa and the surrounding park, which presumably also come from Block's hand, provide us with a vivid picture of an upper middle-class family life that was closely linked to the history of Berlin.

A three-stage model in the middle of the room illustrates the most important construction phases of the estate. It shows the Mendelssohn estate from the mid-19th century and the representative, three-storey new building in the neo-Renaissance style, which Otto Georg Oppenheim and his wife Margarete, née Mendelssohn, had built by the architect Christian Heidecke from 1881 onwards. When the head of the family died in 1909, the summer retreat in Charlottenburg was over: tenement buildings had grown up around the Villa Sorgenfrei, so that the heirs decided to sell the property. The city of Charlottenburg acquired the villa in 1911, had parts of it demolished for a new school building right next door and laid out a municipal green space, today's Schustehruspark, in place of the former private garden.

Runtime: from December 2014

Takes place here:

• Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in der Villa Oppenheim