Former Goebbels Property For Sale In Berlin

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BERLIN — A posh island property on a Berlin lake where Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, lived for almost a decade and held lavish parties with Nazi bigwigs is up for sale at auction.

Bids are now being taken for the 70,000-square foot (6,440-square meter) plot on Schwanenwerder island, an exclusive area in western Berlin where Goebbels and his family lived from 1936 to 1943.

There is no minimum bid for the property, which has 272 feet (83 meters) of waterfront around the corner from Berlin's popular Wannsee lake beach, and is dotted with tall oaks, pines and other trees.

"The market will decide what it sells for," Irina Daehne, a spokeswoman for the real estate agency selling the property for the city, said Wednesday.

Berlin reserves the right, however, to decide not to sell if the bids are too low – or to reject the top bidder if it turns out they are somehow interested in glorifying the Goebbels past.

"We want to avoid a Nazi use or anything related," Daehne said. "We can say no and we will say no; nobody wants the right-wing scene there."

Schwanenwerder island was first developed at the end of the 19th century, and quickly became home for some of Berlin's wealthiest families – many of them Jewish.

Shortly after the Nazis came to power in March 1933, the local chapter of the brown-shirted SA stormtroopers raised a swastika flag atop a water tower on the island to intimidate the Jewish residents.