Villa Lemm, Heritage villa in Gatow, Berlin, Germany.
Villa Lemm is a two-storey cottage-style villa with white rendered walls and a steep brown tiled roof, built 1907–1908 to plans by Max Werner for shoe-polish manufacturer Otto Lemm. Two gabled dormers with white shutters face the street, and a rounded bay with white-framed windows rises above a stone base. A white picket fence and a low wall with pillars run along Ruhlebener Straße, with the gated entrance to the right.
Otto Lemm, director of the Charlottenburg chemical factory Urban & Lemm, commissioned the villa in 1907–1908 from architect Max Werner; the Spandau firm Paul Florian built it. After Lemm's death in 1920, his widow Clara sold it in 1928 to the physician János Plesch. Banker Hans Seligmann, a nephew of Plesch's wife, bought it in 1933 but had to cede it to the Spandau district in 1939. From 1945 to 1990 it served as the residence of the British Sector commander.
The villa's name comes from Otto Lemm, the shoe-polish manufacturer who had it built. His widow Clara sold it in 1928 to the physician János Plesch, who used it as a weekend home and filled it with guests: Max Liebermann, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Reinhardt, Marlene Dietrich and Arturo Toscanini are named among his visitors, and Plesch played music in the garden pavilions with Albert Einstein.
Villa Lemm is privately owned and not open to the public, so the grounds and interiors cannot be visited. The estate lies on the western bank of the Havel in Gatow; the street sign at the entrance reads Ruhlebener Str. The building is a listed monument, and its garden front, veranda and bay windows can be seen from the street.
The villa's grounds once held a bowling alley, a tennis court and a palm house laid out from 1912 to 1913 by garden architects C. W. Köhler and Carl Kempkes of the Späth nursery, in a neo-Renaissance style with sculptures. Albert Einstein played music with owner János Plesch in the garden pavilions.
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