Villa Müller-Schall

The Villa Müller-Schall stands in Bremen-Schwachhausen, a two-storey neo-Renaissance house with a gabled roof and two risalits crowned by stepped gables. Fritz Dunkel designed the house for Johann Friedrich Müller-Schall. The merchant and banker had come home from New York, and the building work ran from 1900 to 1902. It belongs to the protected Kaiser-Friedrich-Platz ensemble and has sat on Bremen's heritage list since 1979.

The street side shows historicism and neoclassicism, while the garden side wears an English country house look. A veranda with a grand staircase fronts the house, and above it runs a crenellated balcony that no door or stair reaches. Inside, Arthur Fitger decorated the entrance hall with a ceiling painting and a frieze of the Easter Walk from Goethe's Faust. Beyond the hall, a fireplace room and a billiard room carry German Renaissance, Empire and Rococo details. A Jugendstil tile frieze waits in the basement.

The house stayed a private residence until 1930, and the National Socialist Sturmabteilung moved in from 1934. In 1945 the wool importer Fuhrmann & Co arrived as a tenant and held the villa as owner until 1991. That year the Bremische Evangelische Church stepped in and converted the building into the forum Kirche. Seminar rooms and a canteen have filled it since 1993, and the canteen sits inside the old air-raid shelter.