Berlin will cede the villa built for Nazi propaganda leader Joseph Goebbels. But the new owner will have to bear significant maintenance costs.
Villa Bugensee, named after the nearby lake, is located four miles north of Berlin. The property was used by Goebbels as a kind of refuge from everyday life in the capital.
Goebbels, who was among Adolf Hitler's most trusted men, built the villa in 1939. He lived there until the days before the end of the war in 1945, when he committed suicide with his wife in a bunker in Berlin. The house has not been used since 2000, and is now in poor condition. The cost of any renovation of the building is estimated at millions of euros.
It is owned by the state of Berlin, which has tried unsuccessfully for years to transfer ownership to the German state or the state of Brandenburg, where the villa is located. Berlin will not bear the costs of maintenance and guarding, and has now repeated the offer.
– I will give it to anyone who wants to take over the place, as a gift from the state of Berlin, Berlin Finance Minister Stefan Evers said before the state council on Thursday, according to the German News Agency (DPA).
– If we fail again, as we did in previous decades, Berlin will have no other choice but to carry out the demolition we have already prepared, says Evers.
The Minister did not say whether the state would also consider any private sector stakeholders.
After World War II, Goebbels' Villa was briefly used as a military hospital, before being used by a youth association.
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