The Missing House: Berlin’s Easily Overlooked Memorial Near Hackescher Markt
Just blocks away from Hackescher Markt, you will find yourself passing what appears to be a standard courtyard between two buildings.
However, on closer examination, you discover that you are looking at an empty lot where a building once stood.
Located at Große Hamburger Straße 15/16, The Missing House is one of Berlin’s most interesting memorials—and an easy place to walk past without realizing what you are seeing.
What the names on the walls tell you
Look up at the exposed firewalls on either side of the gap.
Mounted on them are 24 nameplates identifying former residents, along with their occupations and the years they lived here.
The names recall people who occupied the building between 1930 and 1945.
Several were Jewish residents who were dispossessed and deported under the Nazis. Others moved into the flats they had been forced to leave.
Several residents died when the building was hit by Allied bombs on 3 February 1945.
Take a moment to read the occupations and dates as well as the names. These small details help you imagine the everyday lives that once filled this empty space.
The memorial was created by French artist Christian Boltanski in 1990, the year of German reunification, as part of the exhibition project Die Endlichkeit der Freiheit Berlin 1990.
Boltanski’s work frequently explored memory, loss, and the disappearance of individual lives.
Here, the names bring the history of Nazi persecution and wartime destruction back to a specific address and the people who lived there.
Just a short walk from The Missing House, at Große Hamburger Straße 26, the Gestapo turned a Jewish retirement home into a deportation assembly camp in 1942.
Jewish Berliners were detained here while officials organized their deportation and confiscated their remaining assets before taking them to railway stations for transports to destinations including Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.
This gives the names on The Missing House an additional, unsettling context: the machinery of persecution operated on the very same street.
Find The Missing House in my Berlin app
If you are exploring the area around Hackescher Markt, this is a worthwhile stop to build into your walk.
In my free Experience Berlin Tours app, you can find The Missing House in three ways:
- Search for it by name.
- Browse the categories, where it appears under WW2 memorials.
- Find it on the planning map at Große Hamburger Straße 15/16.
It’s also included as a stop on my GPS-led audio tour of the Hackeschermarkt and Spandauer Vorstadt area.
Tap its entry on the planning map to add it to My Trip.
Then explore the surrounding area on the map for nearby places and their accompanying content.