Question: What if a palace could offer not just shelter but also a beautiful view? That´s Bellevue.
Bellevue Palace in Berlin offers a scenic prospect. The name “Bellevue” itself is French. It means “beautiful view”. The palace got its name because of its location. The view reached the tower of Charlottenburg Palace. This was before the Stadtbahn viaduct was built.
Architect Michael Philipp Boumann designed Bellevue. Construction finished in 1786. It became a residence for Prince Augustus Ferdinand of Prussia. He was the youngest brother of King Frederick II.
Bellevue was the first Neoclassical building in Germany. Corinthian pilasters mark it. Wings stand on either side. They are called “Ladies’ wing” and “River Spree wing.” Carl Gotthard Langhans designed a ballroom. It’s on the upper floor and is the only room that kept its original decoration. Langhans also designed the Brandenburg Gate. A park of about 20 hectares surrounds the palace.
King Frederick William IV of Prussia inherited Bellevue in 1843. In 1865, it became the residence of Princess Alexandrine. She was his niece. She moved in after marrying Duke William of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The royal and imperial princes of the Hohenzollern dynasty used it. They stayed there until the German Revolution of 1918–19. Kaiser Wilhelm II used Bellevue as a guest house. It also served as a private school for his seven children.
Prussia acquired Bellevue in 1928. It became a museum of ethnography in the 1930s. The Nazi government renovated it in 1938. They intended it as a guest house. Otto Meissner, head of the Office of the President of Germany, occupied it from 1939. Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov stayed there in November 1940.
World War II damaged Bellevue severely. Strategic bombing and the Battle of Berlin in 1945 caused this. Refurbishment took place in the 1950s. President Theodor Heuss inaugurated it in 1959. It became the West German president’s secondary residence. His primary residence was Hammerschmidt Villa in Bonn.
Architect Otto Meitinger redesigned the interior in 1986–87. This happened under President Richard von Weizsäcker. The rooms then matched the external historical appearance. The sequence of rooms was restored. It followed plans from before the destruction. Weizsäcker furnished the palace. He used Empire style furniture from Wilhelmshöhe Palace in Kassel. He also initiated exchanges of paintings with German museums. This allowed him to present guests with German art. Two rooms remain in the style of post-war modernism.
After German reunification in 1994, Weizsäcker made Bellevue his primary residence.
In 1998, a modern oval office building appeared. It stands in a section of the park. It houses the Bundespräsidialamt or “Office of the Federal President.”
Roman Herzog lived at Bellevue as president from 1994 to 1999. He remains the only president to have done so. The palace was reconstructed again in 2004 and 2005. President Horst Köhler used Charlottenburg Palace. He needed a place for representative purposes. Bellevue became the president’s primary official seat again in January 2006. However, it no longer includes living quarters. The federal president now lives in a government-owned villa in Dahlem. It had been the Berlin lodging of the West-German chancellors since 1962.
Citizens buried statues in the grounds of Bellevue in 1945. The statues were from the Großer Tiergarten. This protected them from destruction. They were recovered in 1993.
The presidential standard flies at Bellevue. This often happens even when the president is not in Berlin. It lowers only when the president takes up official residence elsewhere. This happens during state visits. The standard then flies over the temporary residence abroad. It also flies over the second residence at Villa Hammerschmidt. Bellevue remains the official residence during vacations. The standard continues to fly.