Villa Baltic, Neoclassical villa in Kühlungsborn, Germany
Villa Baltic is a two-storey pale yellow neoclassical building at Ostseeallee 44, built 1910–1912 by architect Alfred Krause in Neo-Baroque style. A curved central section with four smooth columns carries a balustraded balcony, and the frieze reads "BALTIC" and "BAR"; a sculpted relief fills the semicircular pediment above. Arched windows with white frames line both floors, and graffiti covers the lower walls.
Architect Alfred Krause built the villa between 1910 and 1912 in Neo-Baroque style for Berlin lawyer and notary Wilhelm Hausmann and his wife Margarete, at a cost of 2.5 million gold marks. Margarete Hausmann bequeathed it with its park to the Berlin college for the science of Judaism, and on 28 June 1931 Rabbi Leo Baeck opened it as the Hausmann Foundation Arendsee, a holiday and meeting house for Jewish academics. Dispossessed in 1935 and handed to the Goebbels Foundation in 1938, it served as a Soviet hospital in 1945 and later as an FDGB holiday home in the GDR.
Margarete Hausmann donated the villa and its park to the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, and on 28 June 1931 Rabbi Leo Baeck opened it as the Hausmann-Stiftung Arendsee, a holiday and meeting place for Jewish academics, their families and widows. Dr Herta Marcuse ran the house, which counted 104 guests in its first year. The frieze still reads "BALTIC" and "BAR".
The villa stands at Ostseeallee 44, with the Kühlungsborn-West glacial erratic just northeast of it in front of the building. The house itself has stood empty since the Wende and is fenced off, so it can only be viewed from outside; the adjoining seawater pool was demolished in 2017. The town is examining a purchase to use the villa as a public events venue.
The villa's park was donated by Margarete Hausmann to the Berlin Academy for the Science of Judaism, and from 28 June 1931 Rabbi Leo Baeck opened it as a holiday and meeting home for Jewish academics; 104 guests came in the first year. A boulder, the Findling Kühlungsborn-West, stands northeast of the house.
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