Haus Schwarzenberg & Otto Weidt's Workshop for the Blind
Why is it significant?
Walk into the courtyard of Rosenthaler Straße 39 and feel the city change texture. Next door, the Hackesche Höfe are scrubbed and polished; in here the walls are layered with posters, stencils and sprayed faces, iron creatures cling to the stairwells, and the plaster looks as if nobody has touched…
Key Facts
| Place | Haus Schwarzenberg & Otto Weidt's Workshop for the Blind |
|---|---|
| Address | Rosenthaler Straße 39, 10178 Berlin, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.52430, 13.40220 |
| Part of Walk | Golden Dome, Missing House: Jewish Berlin & the Scheunenviertel |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk into the courtyard of Rosenthaler Straße 39 and feel the city change texture. Next door, the Hackesche Höfe are scrubbed and polished; in here the walls are layered with posters, stencils and sprayed faces, iron creatures cling to the stairwells, and the plaster looks as if nobody has touched it since 1945. This is Haus Schwarzenberg, kept raw on purpose by an artists' association since the 1990s.
The Hackesche Höfe next door, built in 1906 and 1907, are eight interlinked courtyards, the first one clad in glazed Art Nouveau tiles by August Endell, and they are lovely. But the story you came for is in this scruffy side wing. During the war, these rooms held the brush and broom workshop of a man named Otto Weidt.
Weidt was a small manufacturer, almost blind himself, and he employed blind and deaf Jewish workers. Because the Wehrmacht needed brushes, he could declare their work important to the war effort. He bribed officials, falsified papers, and more than once marched into the Gestapo to argue his workers back out of custody. In a back room, behind a wardrobe, a whole family hid for months.
His secretary was a young woman called Inge Deutschkron, who survived in hiding and later wrote about him. Weidt even travelled east, close to Auschwitz, to help a young woman he cared for, Alice Licht, and she survived the war. But he could not save everyone, and many of his workers were deported and murdered. In 1971 Yad Vashem recognised him as Righteous Among the Nations. His workshop is now a small museum, and the same building houses the Anne Frank Zentrum.
Before you leave, look closely at the walls: the art here changes every few weeks, layer upon layer, so no two visitors ever see quite the same courtyard. Then head back out, walk north along Rosenthaler Straße and turn left into Sophienstraße, one of the prettiest little streets in Mitte, towards a baroque church tower.