Einstein Tower

The Einstein Tower stands on the Telegraphenberg hill in Potsdam’s Albert Einstein Science Park. Designed by Erich Mendelsohn and completed in 1924, it was built to house a solar telescope meant to test Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. The tower’s unusual curved form was shaped by Mendelsohn’s sketches, which sought to reflect the abstract ideas of Einstein’s work. Though Einstein never worked there, he supported its creation and later called the design ‘organic’. The building mixes concrete, brick and wood, covered in plaster to unify its striking expressionist shape.

The tower’s main purpose was to detect the red shift in sunlight predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The telescope directs sunlight down a shaft to a basement laboratory where the light is split into spectra for analysis. Early attempts to confirm the red shift were frustrated by solar turbulence, but the facility soon became a centre for broader solar research. Today it studies the Sun’s magnetic fields using advanced spectrographs and polarization analysers. Students train here, and instruments tested in Potsdam are later used at Tenerife’s observatory.

Visitors enter beneath a bronze bust of Einstein, rescued from Nazi destruction and returned after the war. A small bronze brain sculpture, marked ‘3 SEC’, lies in the forecourt, referencing a theory by Ernst Pöppel. Inside, the tower’s two wooden platforms support the optics, while the elongated laboratory wing extends behind an earthen wall. The rotating wooden dome and curved plaster walls make the building a landmark of early 20th-century architecture. From the hilltop site, views stretch across Potsdam’s parkland, linking science, art and history in one striking place.