German Resistance Memorial Center 1911 to 1933
The Bendler Block from 1911 to 1933
Between 1911 and 1914, a spacious new building complex was erected for the Reich Navy Office in Berlin's Tiergarten district. The main building was at Konigin-Augusta-Strasse 38-42 (renamed Tirpitzufer after 1933, and today called Reichpietschufer) overlooking the Landwehr Canal. The east wing was at Bendlerstrasse 14 (today called Stauffenbergstrasse). With the expansion of the fleet, the Reich Navy Office had outgrown its former offices on Leipziger Platz.
The new building provided office space for some nine hundred people. The state secretary of the Reich Navy Office (until 1916 Grand Admiral Tirpitz) had his official residence with twenty-four rooms in the main building. The Navy Cabinet, the Kaiser's personal staff for naval affairs, occupied the east wing. Until 1918, the head of the Cabinet, Admiral von Müller, had an official residence on the second floor.
After the defeat of 1918, which resulted in loss of the high seas fleet and limitation of the army to 100,000 men, the Bendler Block housed the high command of the newly established Reichswehr together with the scaled-down navy command.
Defense minister Gustav Noske, a Social Democrat, moved into the former residence of the grand admiral. At the same time, General Walter Reinhardt took up residence on Bendlerstrasse as Chief of Army High Command.
During the Kapp Putsch of 1920, the head of the Truppenamt in the defense ministry, General Hans von Seeckt, rejected Noske's orders to defend the republic, telling him in his office on the Landwehrkanal, "The army does not fire on the army." The government was temporarily forced to abandon Berlin to rebel forces and flee to Stuttgart. General von Seeckt resided at Bendlerstrasse 14 as Chief of Army High Command until 1926, when he was succeeded by General Kurt Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord.
