I.G.-Farben-Haus

I.G.-Farben-Haus rises in Frankfurt as a modernist building on Goethe University’s Westend Campus. Hans Poelzig designed its six square wings with spare lines and distinctive paternoster elevators. Construction ran from 1928 to 1930, creating Europe’s largest office building at the time. The I.G. Farben conglomerate first used the complex as its headquarters.

During the Second World War, offices administered industrial production including dyes and pharmaceuticals. After 1945, the building housed the Supreme Allied Command and later the High Commissioner for Germany. The Frankfurt Documents were signed here, linking these rooms with the creation of a West German state. During the Cold War, the US Army’s V Corps and the CIA also worked from this address.

The building entered state ownership in 1995 and joined Goethe University after restoration in 2001. Its history reaches from chemical industry and wartime administration to the Marshall Plan and university life. Dwight D. Eisenhower once kept an office inside, while the paternoster elevators preserve a striking detail of Poelzig’s design.