Villa ten Hompel, Munster

The Villa ten Hompel is a memorial site for offenses committed by the police and government administration during the National Socialist period in the city of Münster. It was named after its builder, the industrial merchant Rudolf ten Hompel from Münster, and was constructed around 1924. At the end of the 1990s the municipality of Münster bought the Villa in order to set up a memorial site dedicated to the research concerning the attitudes of police and public administration and the ways in which they carried out their work. Lord Mayor Berthold Tillmann inaugurated the first exhibition on the 13th of December 1999 in the presence of the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Wolfgang Clement, and the President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Paul Spiegel. Apart from the permanent exhibition “Im Auftrag” (“On Behalf Of”), the Villa presents exhibitions that deal with subjects such as National Socialist war crimes and police or administrative history. Besides the exhibitions, there is a library and archive specialized in these topics. The Villa works closely with the local university, with schools and with the police.