Berlin's 'Parrot Settlement' Poised for UNESCO World Heritage Status

The Zehlendorf Parrot Settlement is likely to be declared a World Heritage site. Not everyone is cheering. For 100 years, there have been repeated conflicts here.

24 July 2026 | 2:30 PM

Surrounded by greenery: the Parrot Settlement in Zehlendorf. Photo: Hans Scherhaufer/epd/imago

By Ute Scheub

Not far from the northern border of the Zehlendorf Forest Settlement stands a box that looks like a composting toilet. Christian Küttner, chairman of the neighborhood cooperative "climate-friendly quarter" (kliQ), helped build it. It contains a heat pump connected to a geothermal probe.

In the coming days, the probe will test whether the temperature differences in the ground are sufficient to operate a decentralized fossil-free geothermal network here – a pioneering project in an old building. This was preceded by a conflict between heritage conservation and climate protection, which dampened enthusiasm in the settlement over its likely inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage List on Monday – more on that shortly.

But conflicts have accompanied the settlement since its construction began exactly 100 years ago. Starting in 1926, Bruno Taut, Hugo Häring, and Otto Rudolf Salvisberg wanted to create an affordable alternative "in light, air, and sun" for working-class families who at that time had to live in inhumane tenement barracks.

But wealthy Zehlendorf residents feared that "communist rabble" would move in, and their mayor refused the building permit. The official reason: the flat roofs did not fit the area. The then Berlin building councilor Martin Wagner (SPD), a friend of Taut, risked arrest when he ordered construction to begin anyway.

The colorful design of the settlement was a sensation at the time and still is. Crowds of Berliners flocked to Zehlendorf on weekends to marvel at the intricately designed facades. The nickname "Parrot Settlement" originated back then.

Berlin Settlements as UNESCO World Heritage

At the current session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in Busan, South Korea, the decision-making process on new entries to the list of cultural and natural heritage sites began on Friday. From Germany, the Zehlendorf Forest Settlement ("Parrot Settlement") is in the running. This is not an independent entry, but an extension of the World Heritage site "Berlin Modernism Housing Estates," recognized since 2008, which also includes the Horseshoe Estate in Neukölln and the White Estate in Reinickendorf.

The "Parrot Settlement" is the largest of all Berlin Modernism housing estates in terms of area. In the middle of the forest settlement is also the shopping street at the Onkel Toms Hütte subway station – the revolutionary concept of connecting a shopping center directly to a train station was unique worldwide at the time. According to the official program agenda, the decision-making process is to be completed by Monday morning German time at the latest.

Friendly Compulsion to Meet

None of the 1,100 apartment units in the rental buildings and none of the 800 private row houses were without green spaces and gardens. Taut, then chief architect of the non-profit housing company Gehag, deliberately built the settlement so that people had to meet. He thus created a spirit of neighborliness that persists to this day.

But many conservatives did not like this. In the curious "Zehlendorf Roof War" of 1928, the southern end of the Parrot Settlement was encircled by the pitched roofs of a "test settlement" of the bourgeois housing company Gagfah. Taut later wrote about this culture war: "What happened then in the quiet forest suburb of Zehlendorf was like a precursor to what all of Germany experienced in 1933." And indeed, among the predominantly left-leaning residents, there was particularly strong resistance from 1933 onwards, and also particularly many arrests. Taut himself had to emigrate and died in Istanbul in 1938.

What then happened to his community-oriented Gehag from 1998 onwards would likely have made the architect spin in his grave. For he was against private ownership of land: "The land ownership of non-workers is unjustified because the land, like water, like..."