Economics, Art & Politics

Harnack House was not just a meeting place for scientists but also an important venue for cultivating networks with politicians and industrialists as the club for Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG) members. The house’s guestbook impressively documents this networking activity with the state’s elites. As the topic has never been systematically researched, only a fragmentary insight can be provided into the role played by Harnack House as a meeting point for politicians and society.

The Presidents of the KWG regularly invited a group of select guests to attend banquets in the Mozart Room. In January 1933, Max Planck’s guests included Chancellor of the Reich Kurt von Schleicher, journalist Theodor Wolff, democratic member of the Reichstag Julius Moses and Max Planck’s son Erwin Planck who was Undersecretary of State at the Chancellery of the Reich. Eminent figures, including the industrialists Carl Friedrich von Siemens and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, sat on the Executive Committee and Senate of the KWG and also met at Harnack House for meetings of both bodies.

In Verwaltungsrat und Senat der KWG saßen namhafte Personen, die sich bei Sitzungen beider Gremien auch im Harnack-Haus trafen, darunter die Industriellen Carl Friedrich von Siemens und Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.

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Henny Porten

In 1935, the international film world descends on Harnack House for a convention. Little wonder, as Berlin, with its UFA studios in nearby Potsdam, is one of the most important locations worldwide in the booming entertainment industry. Henny Porten is also among the stars. However, her star is already on the wane, as her husband and producer is considered "half-Jewish" under Nazi criteria. A forced divorce is out of the question for the film star and she prefers to relinquish the major parts that she previously played alongside stage idols like Emil Jannings and Gustaf Gründgens. more

Emil Jannings

1929 – 1945 History Kaiser Wilhelm Society Politics and Society

Lust and vice – there is no room for boring theory in the roles performed by Emil Jannings. As the eccentric professor Unrat, he plays the German academic who falls under the spell of eroticism in the film "The Blue Angel" as a caricature of himself. This film also sees Jannings take the step from silent movie to talking film. The topic he presents in 1939 at the invitation of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society at Harnack House could hardly be more contrasting: He talks about his film (Robert Koch – The Fighter against Death), which fully reflects the self-glorifying agenda of the Third Reich. more

Gustaf Gründgens

1929 – 1945 History Kaiser Wilhelm Society National Socialism Politics and Society

Whether playing a snob, the devil or the King of Prussia alongside Henny Porten – Gründgens, the much-celebrated star of the stage, is the charismatic intellectual of German theatre. Gustaf Gründgens is regarded as a fascinating but equally dubious face of German art. Despite being homosexual, he enjoys a meteoric stage career in the Third Reich and the patronage of those in power. However, he also uses his position as the Nazis’ star performer to help persecuted colleagues. more

Artists were also invited as guests as Harnack House sought to establish itself as a place of culture, of which science was a part. Wilhelm Furtwängler, chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, sat on Harnack House’s Board in the early years, and illustrious actors like Gustaf Gründgens and Emil Jannings were invited to the KWG lecture series as speakers. The International Film Congress convened at Harnack House in 1935 for an event that was also attended by the famous actress Henny Porten.

After Hitler came to power, the KWG endeavoured to forge strong links with the leadership of the Third Reich. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler visited the building for an event to mark the opening of the Reich Film Archive. Armaments Minister Albert Speer met the Dahlem nuclear researchers in 1942 for a working meeting on the technical feasibility of making a nuclear bomb. Armaments advisors, such as Ferdinand Porsche, were also in attendance. Leading figures in the Third Reich regime also met in smaller groups at the invitation of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, whom the KWG had appointed to its Senate in 1933 owing to his good contacts. He himself invited Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler to Harnack House for dinners.

However, regular guests also included ambassadors dispatched to Berlin, above all those from the USA. US ambassador William Dodd frequently visited Harnack House, even during the Nazi regime.