Behind thickets of beech trees, overgrown with nettles and beside a blue lake an hour north of Berlin, a villa that once belonged to a Nazi mastermind quietly rots. No one knows what to do with the estate beside the Bogensee lake in Brandenburg. It was built for Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, by his grateful country just before the start of World War II. Too burdensome for the state to continue carrying, prohibitively expensive for most real estate prospectors and tainted by history, Berlin has given up on selling or developing it. Instead, it has offered to give the Nazi mansion away, free.

---

Persons: nettles, Joseph Goebbels, expensively Organizations: Nazi, State of, Communist Party Locations: Berlin, Brandenburg, State of Berlin