Palais Marschall

The Palais Marschall stood on Wilhelmstraße in Berlin’s Friedrichstadt quarter. Built from 1737 for Minister Samuel von Marschall, it occupied a plot over 400 metres deep that stretched from the old Husarenstraße to the customs wall near today’s Ebertstraße. Philipp Gerlach, who also shaped Pariser Platz, Leipziger Platz and Mehringplatz, designed the palace. In 1761 it passed to Prince August Ferdinand of Prussia, younger brother of Frederick the Great, before moving through several owners including the porcelain merchant Gotzkowsky and the Finckenstein and Voß families. The palace gained lasting fame as the Vossisches Palais after 1800, when Otto von Voß inherited it. Bettina and Achim von Arnim spent their honeymoon in the garden house in 1811. The last resident, jurist Carl Otto Friedrich von Voß, died in 1864, sparking years of inheritance disputes among the Voß and Finckenstein lines. In 1871 the bankers’ consortium sold the site, and Otto von Bismarck, neighbour at number 77, tried to buy it for state use but could not meet the price. The 1872 demolition cleared the way for the Voßstraße, a private road laid from Wilhelmstraße to the old city wall. The street was named in 1874 after General Ferdinand von Voß-Buch. The long, narrow site now bears modern buildings, yet the Voßstraße still carries the memory of the once-grand palace and its famous owners.