The lakeside villa that now houses the American Academy in Berlin was once the home of distinguished banker Hans Arnhold, his wife Ludmilla, and their family. Their home had served in the 1920s as an important salon for many Berlin artists, musicians, intellectuals, and members of the beau monde. The history of the estate mirrors Berlin’s own tumultuous experience during the twentieth century.

Forced to emigrate in the 1930s, the Arnhold family moved to New York City, where Hans Arnhold re-founded his banking partnership, Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder.

The villa in Berlin was then appropriated by Walther Funk, the Third Reich’s Minister of Economics and later the Reichsbank’s president.

In 1953 the city of Berlin used the Arnhold estate to house refugees from the east. After the Arnhold family regained legal ownership of the property, the house was sold to the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1958.

From the 1960s until after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the residence was used by the US Army as a recreation center, and for decades it was a lively meeting point for political officials and Americans living in Berlin.

When Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke proposed the idea of an American Academy in Berlin, he went to see Stephen and Anna-Maria Kellen about the home in which Mrs. Kellen (a daughter of Hans Arnhold) had grown up.  

It was through a generous founding gift from Anna-Maria and Stephen M. Kellen and the family of Hans and Ludmilla Arnhold that the estate could be beautifully renovated. The Academy opened its doors in September 1998.

The Hans Arnhold Center continues the tradition of intellectual and cultural discourse begun by Hans Arnhold and his wife Ludmilla.