The "Russian House" still stands in the heart of Berlin. Critics say it is used to spread propaganda for Putin's Russia. Meanwhile, Germany pays property taxes for the land.
The 'Russian House' on Berlin's Friedrichstrasse is seven floors tall and offers almost 30,000 square meters of spaceImage: Schoening/picture alliance
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The Russian House is centrally located on Friedrichstrasse in the heart of the German capital. As a throwback to a bygone era of friendly German-Russian relations, it is the subject of fierce disagreements and has long been a bone of contention in Berlin. The massive seven-story building covering an area of almost 30,000 square meters was opened in 1984.
At that time, back in the days of the East German state, its role was to celebrate friendship with the Soviet Union through concerts, film screenings, and book readings. It even had its own small bookstore.
Today's administrators still maintain that it is a place to celebrate the friendship between the two countries: "The Russian House is Russia's cultural embassy in the heart of Berlin," according to the Russian Embassy's website.
But quite a few critics say that the events that take place there, which the Russian House estimates attract 200,000 visitors a year, mainly serve as propaganda for Vladimir Putin's Russia.
German-Russian relations through history
Relations between Germany and Russia have been marked by alternate periods of cooperation and war. DW looks back at how two of Europe's major powers got on over the last millennium.
Image: AP
Converting the Kyivan Rus
Both Russia and Ukraine trace their cultural ancestry to the Kyivan Rus period in the early Middle Ages, when a loose federation of Slavic, Baltic and Finnic peoples formed a common identity. Missionaries from the Germanic peoples were eventually replaced by diplomats. This painting, depicting the Baptism of Prince Vladimir — or Volodymyr — in 987, hangs in Kyiv Cathedral.
Russia was under Mongolian rule in the late Middle Ages, but lively trade with the Hanseatic German cities continued. The period began with a victory over Teutonic knights in the so-called Battle on the Ice on a frozen lake in 1242. Sergei Eisenstein turned the battle into a patriotic Russian epic in the run-up to World War II.
Image: Nikolai Marochkin/Tass/dpa/picture-alliance
The 'German' empress of Russia
Born in what is now Szczecin, then in Prussia, Catherine the Great acceded to the Russian throne in 1762, after the overthrow of her husband, also born in Germany. Her reign oversaw the Russian Enlightenment, whose intellectual ideals — freedom, liberty, and reason — she championed. Those ideals did not extend to Poland, however, which she partitioned with Prussia.
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Alliance against Napoleon
Like many of Europe's colonial monarchies, Prussia and Russia found common cause in opposing revolutionary France and the military campaign of Napoleon Bonaparte. The alliance was sealed at the Convention of Tauroggen in 1812 between a Prussian general and a German-born general of the Russian Imperial Army, in which many Prussian soldiers served.
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Conflict among cousins: World War I
In 1913, Kaiser Wilhelm II (right) invited his cousin Czar Nicholas II to Berlin for the wedding of his daughter. A year later, the two countries were at war, and four years later, both men had lost their thrones, with Nicholas executed in 1918. Millions of Russians and Germans were killed in the war, and both countries felt aggrieved by the terms imposed by the Western Allies.
Image: akg-images/picture-alliance
Hitler-Stalin pact: World War II
Represented by foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop (left) and Vyacheslav Molotov, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin (right) signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939. The following month, both countries invaded Poland. Germany tore up the pact in 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union known as Operation Barbarossa. Nearly 14 million Russians and 6.8 million Ukrainians died during the war.
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The kiss of death
East Germany fell under the Soviet Union's influence after the war, an alliance that found its iconic image in the "socialist fraternal kiss" between German Democratic Republic leader Erich Honecker and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in 1979. East Germans grew up learning Russian and until today many have more understanding and sympathy for the Russians and their President Putin than West Germans.
Image: Herbert Berger/imageBROKER/picture alliance
Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik
Chancellor Willy Brandt tried to normalize relations with the communist nations during his tenure from 1969 to 1974, a rapprochement that became known as "Ostpolitik." In 1970, Brandt (center left) signed the Moscow Treaty alongside Russian Premier Alexei Kosygin (center right), which formally recognized East Germany and temporarily abandoned the goal of German reunification in exchange for peace.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Friends at last?
"Gorbi, Gorbi!" was the jubilant headline of Germany's mass-circulation Bild tabloid in June 1989 when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to visit. For Germans he was — and still is — the hero who made the peaceful unification of the country possible.
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Transformation through trade?
German-Russian relations developed throughout the post-Soviet years, with German Chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel hoping that deepening trade ties would bind the countries together and soften Russia's authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin. Schröder initiated the Nord Stream pipeline project, which many believe left Germany dependent on Russian gas.
Image: Yuri Kochetkov/epa/dpa/picture-alliance
The shadows of Nord Stream and Crimea
The Nord Stream gas pipelines were constructed during Angela Merkel's tenure, linking Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea. The project was shut down in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Merkel's government took a leading role in diplomatic efforts following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, a stance that in retrospect was seen as too lenient by many German politicians.
Image: ITAR-TASS/imago images
A tougher stance
Germany's new Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has said that support for Ukraine is one of his top priorities, and has attempted to shore up European help for Ukraine. He has also vowed to make the German army the strongest in Europe, serving as a deterrent to Russian aggression.
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Sale of tank-shaped bars of soap
Berlin media outlets have repeatedly reported on events at the in-house cinema where, for example, a Holocaust film was shown in which Ukrainian citizens were portrayed as Nazis. And if Robin Wagener, a member of the Bundestag for the Green Party, is to be believed, the Russian House even sells soap for children in the shape of a tank. Wagener told DW: "It is time we recognized that this is not mutual cultural exchange, but Russian war propaganda in Germany."
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That's why Wagener thinks it's time to focus on one particularly bizarre detail: the property on Friedrichstrasse belongs to Germany, and yet the building is run by the Russian federal agency "Rossotrudnichestvo." In English, that's the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad, and International Humanitarian Cooperation.
Rossotrudnichestvo, whose primary purpose is to promote the Russian language abroad, currently has 73 similar institutions in 62 countries worldwide, including the one in Berlin.
Since 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the agency has been on the EU sanctions list. At the time, the EU justified this by stating that the agency's goal was to consolidate "a wider public perception of the occupied Ukrainian territories as Russian." The director and deputy director, the statement added, had clearly expressed their support for Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine.
Robin Wagener, Bundestag lawmaker for the Greens, wants the 'Russian House' to be closedImage: dts Nachrichtenagentur/IMAGO
German property tax for Russian state propaganda?
However, as the de facto owner of the property, the German federal government must now pay a whopping €70,000 ($81,193) in property taxes. This stems from a long-standing agreement between Germany and Russia, which recognized each other's cultural work. Wagener wants to ensure that this sum is cut from the upcoming budget negotiations.
Wagener first had the idea a year ago, but in the chaotic turmoil of the coalition government between the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Green Party, and the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), no budget was agreed upon, which is only now being finalized. Wagener's reasoning for the possible cut: The house has long lost sight of its original purpose, namely to promote mutual cultural exchange: "Russia keeps escalating. And that's making the situation worse. The basis for this mutual cultural agreement was to promote the exchange of culture and science."
Wagener approached the new federal government on this matter. The response was somewhat awkward: "With regard to the house located on the property, which is owned by the Russian Federation, the Federal Republic of Germany pays the property tax for the Russian Federation on the basis of its legal obligation under the bilateral German-Russian agreement on property issues relating to cultural institutes of 2013." It made reference, in other words, to an agreement that was reached before the Russian occupation of Crimea.
Symbols of frienship remain on display in Berlin's Russia House Image: Dmyrto Katkov/DW
German government fears closure of Goethe Institute
Whether this will lead to the freezing of funds is anything but certain. The German Foreign Office has repeatedly stated that the employees of the institute have diplomatic status in Germany. It is an open secret that the German government is shying away from open conflict over the Russian House because it fears that the Russian government could respond by closing the Goethe Institute in Moscow.
Green politician Wagener nevertheless vows to continue campaigning for its closure: "I believe that this Russian cultural center has no future as a cultural mediator. If one wants to seriously engage with Russian culture, which I would very much welcome, then there are already civil society venues run by people who are themselves persecuted in Russia and live here in Germany because they can no longer freely express their culture in Russia."
For the time being, however, the Russian House plans to continue hosting events at its located on one of the most famous streets in the German capital, right in the heart of Berlin.
This article was originally written in German.
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