Qualla: Federal Ministry of Defence (Germany)

Federal Ministry of Defence (Germany): Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leonce49=Hans Weingartz, CC BY-SA 3.0. On a forested hill called the Hardthöhe, above the Bonn district of Lengsdorf, sits one of the most consequential workplaces in postwar Europe — and the one its architects most wanted to be unremarkable. The Federal Ministry of Defence moved here in 1960 from the cramped Ermekeil barracks downtown, and ever since, this fence-lined cluster of low office blocks has set the policy that shapes the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces who together with their civilian colleagues number around 260,953 active personnel. The buildings are bureaucratic, the lawns trim, the access strictly controlled. From the air it could be a corporate campus. That is part of the design.

Image: Leonce49=Hans Weingartz | CC BY-SA 3.0

Federal Ministry of Defence (Germany): Amt Blank, in Secret

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bundeswehr-Fotos Wir.Dienen.Deutschland., CC BY 2.0. Germany was not supposed to have a Ministry of War again. In 1945 the institution had been disbanded, the Wehrmacht dissolved, and the country occupied. Then the Korean War broke out in 1950 and the United States began pressing Konrad Adenauer for a West German contribution to We...

Image: Bundeswehr-Fotos Wir.Dienen.Deutschland. | CC BY 2.0

Federal Ministry of Defence (Germany): Moving Up the Hill

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eckhard Henkel, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. The first home of the new ministry was the Ermekeil barracks, an old garrison building down in the city. By the late 1950s it was bursting. The decision was made to build a fresh complex on the Hardthöhe, the wooded hill on Bonn's western outskirts. The Hardthöhe blocks went up a...

Image: Eckhard Henkel | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Federal Ministry of Defence (Germany): Bendlerblock, the Other Address

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Avi1111 dr. avishai teicher, CC BY-SA 4.0. After reunification the ministry acquired a second seat in Berlin: the Bendlerblock, on the Landwehrkanal in Tiergarten. The name has gravity. It was here that the Ministry of the Reichswehr sat from 1919, here that the Wehrmacht ran the war from 1935 to 1945, and here, on the ni...

Image: Avi1111 dr. avishai teicher | CC BY-SA 4.0

Federal Ministry of Defence (Germany): What the Hill Decides

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daniel Biskup, CC BY-SA 3.0. Article 65a of the Grundgesetz makes the Defence Minister the Commander-in-Chief of the Bundeswehr in peacetime; in a declared state of defence, command passes to the Chancellor. Since the 1990s the Hardthöhe has authored a steady widening of what the German military does. The Bu...

Image: Daniel Biskup | CC BY-SA 3.0