The first written account of Dahlem dates to the year 1275. The history of the village is connected to the Dahlem
Demesne (
Domäne Dahlem) first mentioned in 1450. Its estates were sold to the state of
Prussia in 1841 and developed by dividing it into
lots for building
villas and
mansions, similar to the development of the older mansion settlements of
Lichterfelde West and
Grunewald. The Demesne buildings today house a working farm and an
agricultural open-air
museum. In 1920 the village was amalgamated into
Greater Berlin. From 1931 on
Martin Niemöller, a leader of the
Confessing Church, was
pastor of the
United Protestant Sankt-Annen-Kirche until he was arrested by the
Nazis in 1937. During the
Cold War Dahlem belonged to the
American Sector of
West Berlin. From 1945 to 1991 the seat of the
Allied Kommandatura of Berlin was in Dahlem on
Kaiserswerther Straße. Today it serves as the office for the president of the
local university. Until 1994, the headquarters of the
United States Army Berlin command and the
Berlin Brigade were located on
Clayallee street. Parts of the building are still used by the
Embassy of the United States in Berlin. The former library and
Outpost theater across the street today house the
Allied Museum. Because many of Berlin's artistic, cultural, and educational institutions were located in the city's historical center in the former
eastern part of Berlin, West Berlin authorities established many duplicates in Dahlem - above all the
Freie Universität Berlin ("
Free University Berlin") in 1948, which was established by students and scholars as an
antipole to the increasingly communist "
Universität Unter den Linden". The newly founded university should uphold the traditional values of
academic freedom and the educational ideal proposed by
Wilhelm von Humboldt.
Rudi Dutschke, spokesman of the
German student movement in the 1960s, is buried at the
cemetery of the
Sankt-Annen-Kirche. ==Institutions==