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Initiative Haus Marlene Poelzig
A masterpiece. Marlene Poelzig's house.
Tannenbergallee 28, 14055 Berlin-Westend
INITIATIVE HAUS MARLENE POELZIG
The initial aim of the initiative House Marlene Poelzig initially was to preserve the unique building and unique monument of the history of emancipation in architecture and to revive it as a place of coexistence, reflection and discussion among architects. Since its demolition, the initiative has set itself the particular goal of raising awareness of the life and work of the artist and architect Marlene Poelzig, promoting equality in the construction industry as well as fostering transformations in the preservation of historical monuments and the culture of conversion.
THE ORIGINAL VISION: ARTIST RESIDENCY PROGRAM
Women have been working in the architectural profession for more than 100 years. Today, women even make up the majority of students studying architecture. Nevertheless, to this day only few women can be found in leading positions. Against this background, the initiative envisioned an interdisciplinary artist residency at the House Marlene Poelzig that would have been committed to Marlene Poelzig’s spirit. As an artist residence for “women masters of the building industry”, House Marlene Poelzig was to become a place for creative encounters, where scholarship recipients would live and work together every year. The residence was to keep the memory of the architect Marlene Poelzig alive and at the same time promotes the equality of women in the building industry and Baukultur – making the scholarship program unique in Germany and worldwide.
MARLENE POELZIG
Marlene Poelzig (1894-1985) was a German sculptor and architect. With her husband, the well-known architect Hans Poelzig, she had a close and artistically very fruitful partnership until his death in 1936. In 1920/21 they founded the joint Poelzig construction studio, which she continued to run alone for a while after his death but had to close in 1937.
Unlike many other women, she was able to build and was involved, among other things, in Berlin's Haus des Rundfunks (House of Broadcast), in the designs for the Berlin exhibition grounds and in Hans Poelzig's single-family home for the Weissenhof estate in Stuttgart from 1927. She designed the architect couple's studio and home in Berlin-Westend on her own. Although her contribution to her husband’s major projects, among which theater buildings for Max Reinhardt and silent films under the direction of Paul Wegener stand out, is undisputed, she has not been properly inscribed in the historical narrative like he was.
THE BUILDING
The House Marlene Poelzig in Berlin-Westend was built in 1930 based on a design by Marlene Poelzig. It served as a residential and studio house for the family with their three children and, thanks to its room concept specially tailored to the needs of the Poelzig family, offered the sculptor and architect the opportunity to practice professional life, artistic activity, family life and bringing up children in a completely new way to unite the ambience. In 1937 Marlene Poelzig sold her house, left Berlin and lived in her home town of Hamburg for the last part of her life. The garden of the House Marlene Poelzig is assumed to have been designed by the garden architect Herta Hammerbacher in 1931.
In 1990 the Berlin State Monuments Office decided against a monument protection for the house because it had supposedly been redesigned too heavily in 1954. In 2020, a petition was started to save the house from the threat of demolition and to get it included in Berlin’s list of monuments. Building on this, the House Marlene Poelzig initiative was founded in 2020. After a change of ownership, the new owner deliberately allowed the building to fall into disrepair. Despite broad protests and increased media attention, the owner of the property had the house demolished in 2021 to realize high-end new housing on the site.
ACTIVISM AND PUBLICATIONS
Starting in the summer of 2021, the initiative launched an open dialogue on Marlene Poelzig's work to engage the general public via various media formats. At the Women in Architecture Berlin festival, a demonstration was held in recognition of Marlene Poelzig’s work and for the preservation of the house, and an artistic intervention in memory of Marlene was unveiled.
In autumn / winter 2021, the role of women in the building industry and Baukultur were addressed as part of the discussion series “Mother of all Arts.”
Moreover, against the backdrop of the demolition in 2021 of the architecturally and historically valuable house, the initiative Haus Marlene Poelzig developed a position paper and manifesto, "Substance Society: A Manifesto for Our Building Stock" (available in German and English). With this document, the initiative advocates for transformations in historic preservation, monument protection, and the culture of conversion, as well as for a fundamental rethinking of how we deal with existing buildings: with monuments, but also with "everyday buildings" and "building fabric particularly worthy of preservation"—all of which are "places with substance." The initiative calls for these transformations to be implemented on a broad societal basis.
The manifesto is included in the initiative’s book "Haus Marlene Poelzig, Berlin – Demolition and New Beginnings", published in German in 2025, awarded the Architectural Book Award 2025 by the German Architecture Museum and the Frankfurt Book Fair and reprinted in 2026. The book traces a walk through the Haus Marlene Poelzig, during which not only the building itself comes to life once more, but also the various themes that have emerged in the debate surrounding it are explored. Each room "entered" during the walk is dedicated to a specific theme: authorship, equality and feminism, care work and architecture, archival practice, historic preservation and conservation, and protest culture. Accompanying texts and photographic sequences bring the content together and illuminate Marlene Poelzig's complete oeuvre. It is available here and in bookstores.
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© Initiative Haus Marlene Poelzig, 2026