IG-Farbenhaus

Frankfurt am Main


The monumental seven-storey IG-Farbenhaus was erected in 1931 as the headquarters of IG-Farben (pronounced ‘ee geh far-behn’), the mammoth German chemicals conglomerate whose constituent companies included Agfa, BASF, Bayer and Hoechst. After Hitler took power, Jewish scientists and executives were fired, and the company’s products soon became central to the Nazi war effort.

Inside, on the 1st to 5th floors at cross wing Q4, you can check out an informative historical exhibit (in English and German) with photographs and illustrations.

From 1941 to 1944, staff based in this building carried out the work of coordinating the production of the company’s most notorious product, Zyklon-B, the cyanide-based killing agent used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

After the war, IG-Farbenhaus served briefly as the headquarters of General Dwight D Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, and later as the headquarters of US occupation forces (‘the Pentagon in Europe’) and as a CIA bureau.

In 1995, with the Cold War over, US forces handed the building back to Germany’s federal government. After refurbishment, it became the focal point of the new Westend campus of Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität – and a bastion of the spirit of free inquiry and humanism that Nazism tried to extinguish.

Seven of its nine floors are served by two paternoster lifts, whose open cabins keep cycling around like rosary beads. Signs warn that these historic elevators are not safe for children, pets and people wearing backpacks or skates.

About 50m from the southwest corner of the building (to the left as you approach the main entrance) stands the Wollheim Memorial.

Under the trees in front of IG-Farbenhaus, panels show photographs of German Jews, later sent to Buna/Monowitz, enjoying life in the years before the Holocaust.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Frankfurt am Main attractions

1. Wollheim Memorial

0.09 MILES

This memorial is housed in a little pavilion marked ‘107984’ – the prisoner number of Norbert Wollheim, a forced labourer at the IG Farben’s corporate…

2. Westend Synagogue

0.37 MILES

Frankfurt's largest synagogue was built between 1908 and 1910 by Lichtenstein-born architect Franz Roeckle (1879–1953), who trained in Stuttgart before…

3. PalmenGarten

0.43 MILES

Established in 1871, Frankfurt's botanical PalmenGarten (palm garden) is filled with tropical hothouses, rose gardens, a bamboo grove and rock garden…

4. Alte Oper

0.69 MILES

Inaugurated in 1880, the Italian Renaissance-style Alte Oper anchors the western end of the Zeil-Fressgass pedestrian zone. Burnt out in 1944, it narrowly…

5. Eschenheimer Turm

0.8 MILES

A local landmark, this 47m-high, early-15th-century tower was a city gate that formed part of Frankfurt's medieval fortifications, and is one of the city…

6. Frankfurt Stock Exchange

0.82 MILES

The famous old Börse, built in 1843, is an impressively colonnaded neoclassical structure. The porch is decorated with allegorical statues of the five…

7. Bulle und Bär Statue

0.83 MILES

In the square out the front of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, a sculpture entitled Bulle und Bär depicts a showdown between a bull and a bear in which the…

8. Senckenberg Museum

0.86 MILES

Life-size dinosaur mock-ups guard the front of Frankfurt’s natural history museum. Inside the early 1900s neo-baroque building, exhibits cover…