Around and About Berlin - Cecilienhaus, 10585 Berlin

Posted on February 5, 2010

Cecilienhaus in Berlin- Charlottenburg was built between 1907 and 1909. It’s architects were Walter Spickendorff und Rudolf Walter. It was designed as a social welfare building for the “Vaterländischer Frauenverein Charlottenburg” or “Patriotic Women’s Guild of Charlottenburg”. Named after Princess Cecilie (1886-1954), the German Crown Princess, it was Charlottenburg’s welfare centre with a gynaecological clinic, confinement station, crèche and soup kitchen, as well as being the headquarters of the German Red Cross, including a sanatorium with fifty beds.

The building is listed as being of an Art-Nouveau style, but I personally think it also has elements of the Stahlzeit style, which first began to appear before the first World War.

Click on photo to enlarge!

The building has a severe limestone facade, as well as a pillared balcony on the top floor. Originally, there was a chemist and a porters lodge on either side of the entrance. A large part of the complex of courtyards and back-houses was destroyed in World war Two and only the front building and one courtyard survives. The building is now used commercially and has lost it’s social welfare connections.