Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus

The Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus (Detlev Rohwedder House) is a building in Berlin that at the time of its construction was the largest office building in Europe. It was constructed between February 1935 and August 1936 to house the German Ministry of Aviation (Reichsluftfahrtministerium, or RLM), headed by Hermann Goering, a prominent Nazi.

During the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) it was known as the Haus der Ministerien ("House of Ministries"). In 1992 it was named the Detlev Rohwedder Building, in honour of Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, the assassinated head of the Treuhand, which had its headquarters there 1991-95. Still, the building is more commonly known as the Air Ministry Building. Since 1999, the building is the seat of the German Finance Ministry.

The building was not designed by Ernst Sagebiel (1892–1970), who rebuilt Tempelhof Airport on a similarly gigantic scale. One writer has described it as "in the typical style of National Socialist intimidation architecture." It ran for more than 250 m along Wilhelmstraße, partly on the site of the former Prussian War Ministry dating from 1819, and covered the full length of the block between Prinz-Albrecht-Straße and Leipziger Straße, even running along Leipziger Straße itself to join onto the Prussian House of Lords, today housing the Bundesrat. It comprised a reinforced concrete skeleton with an exterior facing of limestone and travertine (a form of marble). With its seven storeys and total floor area of 112,000 sq m, 2,800 rooms, 7 km (4 mi) of corridors, over 4,000 windows, 17 stairways, and with the stone coming from no fewer than 50 quarries, the vast building served the growing bureaucracy of the Luftwaffe, plus Germany's civil aviation authority which was also located there. Yet it took only 18 months to build, the army of labourers working double shifts and Sundays. The first 1,000 rooms were handed over in October 1935 after just eight months' construction. When finally completed, 4,000 bureaucrats and their secretaries were employed within its walls.

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