It is not so easy to tell which building in the villa district of Bad Godesberg used to be an embassy.

"Pay attention to the front yard," advises Michael Wenzel.

If there is a flagpole there, it used to be almost always the residence of an ambassador or a chancellery.

"Lebanon once had its embassy here," says Wenzel, pointing to a renovated Art Nouveau villa on Rheinallee where a lawyer lives and works.

Nothing is reminiscent of the diplomatic past of the house - just on the flagpole in the front yard.

Pure burger

Political correspondent in North Rhine-Westphalia.

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When Bonn became the provisional seat of government of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, many countries bought houses in the villa district that emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Message after message soon followed.

Since German politics itself always spoke of the “temporary Bonn”, the vast majority of the around 180 nations that were once represented on the Rhine decided not to build new buildings.

The sale of the embassy building was all the more uncomplicated after the capital city resolution of June 20, 1991, with a few exceptions.

Like Lebanon, Pakistan had its embassy on Rheinallee from 1952 to 1999.

In 2000, Pakistan sold to a private community of heirs.

For a few years, a company for graphic information systems had its headquarters in the villa, which was built on the model of Italian Renaissance palaces, since last year the "Academy of International Affairs" of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Gradually the gates closed

"A good 80 percent of the embassy properties have been in private hands for many years," says Wenzel, who is not only a councilor for the Greens and deputy district mayor of Bad Godesberg, but also a proven expert on the subject.

Wenzel has written several books on Bonn's diplomatic past.

Since 2007 he has also been offering embassy tours together with the Bad Godesberg City Marketing Association.

For a while, Wenzel was also able to take his guests inside quite remarkable buildings.

In Rigal Castle in Godesberg's spa gardens, for example, which is surrounded by sky-reaching sequoias and where roaring stone lions with glazed bricks in the imperial colors of gold and yellow are a reminder that the People's Republic of China had its embassy there until 1999.

Other tour highlights were the former Russian embassy (now the consulate), whose spacious reception building on the Viktorshöhe is a mixture of a little courage to be modern and a lot of commitment to real-socialist bourgeoisie, or the ornate Syrian embassy opposite the Rheinaue, a new architectural dream Arabian Nights.

But gradually the gates of the former embassies closed again.

Wenzel sighs.

"The Increasingly Complicated World Situation!"

There were once far more than 10,000 diplomats in Bonn – and above all in neighboring Bad Godesberg, which was independent until 1969.

"Multiculturalism was a reality here for decades before the rest of the republic heard the term for the first time."

Business people, hoteliers and craftsmen who had been left with bills had joined forces to form the "Interest Group for Victims of Corps Diplomatique".