The House by the Lake

by Thomas Harding

  Two weeks after construction had started, the house was fully framed, its interior now taking shape. Nine rooms had been squeezed into the house’s small footprint, including five bedrooms, a living room, a bathroom, a kitchen, along with an annexe for the family’s chauffeur, comprising one room and a toilet.

  With the beams holding the roof now in place, it was time to celebrate the Richtfest, or ‘topping out’ ceremony. Though the house was far from being complete – the other side of the lake was still visible through the robust framework – it was traditional for the builders to gather in front of the house with members of the family to mark this stage of construction. Tables were set out and laden with apple schnapps and beer, cold meats, bread, cheese and cakes.

  At a certain point in the ritual, one of the workers climbed a ladder to the top of the roof and attached a Richtkrone, a large wreath of evergreen leaves and flowers, from which hung colourful ribbons. As was the custom, the master builder raised his glass to the sky, wishing the house and its owners good fortune. Then drinking the remaining schnapps, he threw the glass on the ground, and the group cheered as the glass broke.

  Since the Alexanders never intended to live at the house year-round, Otto Lenz had not included insulation within the walls, ceiling or cellar, and there had been no talk of a proper heating system. Indeed, the word ‘Sommerhaus’ had been written at the top of the sketch submitted to the local planning department. However, the family still needed a minimal heating system, to warm the water for their baths, and for the few chilly weeks in spring and autumn.

  Following Otto Lenz’s design the workmen erected two brick chimneys4, one for the kitchen and one for the living room. They then built a network of firebrick-clad horizontal pipes that would run from an enclosed metal woodstove in the cellar and then under the floors of the house, carrying hot air into the living room and bedrooms. Once the plumbers and electricians had completed their work, the carpenters set about finishing the interior of the building, using wood almost exclusively, in line with the architect’s instructions to use natural, simple materials. As a result, the workmen laid the floors in narrow lengths of pine plank running east to west, the only exception being the concrete bathroom floor. The walls were tongue-and-groove pine, behind which the builders stuck sheets of newspaper, marking the construction date and providing some limited insulation. Most of the ceilings were also covered with tongue-and-groove pine, apart from the large room at the centre of the house and the master bedroom, whose walls and ceiling were clad with more expensive sheets of wood panelling.

  Outside, the cottage was sheathed with darkly stained horizontal wooden planks, overlapped to keep out the rain. Large single-pane windows were inserted into the holes left in the walls, equipped with thick metal handles and fasteners. Two heavy black-painted entrance doors were added on the northern front of the house; one, in the centre, led to the main living quarters, the other, to the left, to the chauffeur’s annexe, and each contained a diamond-shaped window that had been cut in at eye level. The windows had wooden shutters, painted in cobalt blue, emblazoned with a large white diamond, matching the entrance doors’ motif.

  The roof came next. Metal gutters and downspouts were added, their jagged circular ends pointing away from the house to keep the moisture from the foundation. A veranda was built at the rear of the house, sheltered by a plain wooden roof resting on two white columns. From here the family would be able to sit on the edge of the bluff, overlooking the lake.

  At the foot of the slope, the builders constructed a concrete pump house to enable the Alexanders to water the garden. This pump house would also serve as a storage shed – for garden chairs, boat equipment, bicycles – and was roofed with a terrace, where the family could sit out for an evening drink.

  There was still considerable work to be completed on the outside: the landscaping of the garden, the building of a tennis court on the flat land next to the lake, the terracing of the slope below the house, as well as a two-metre-wide stone path which would run from the parking area at the top of the property down to the house. The Alexanders had also called for the construction of various outbuildings – a wooden house for the caretaker to live in, a large greenhouse and a garage. Yet, despite the long list of to-dos, and a little over two months since the start of their labours, the house was now ready for occupancy.

  Before entering the house for the first time, the Alexanders gathered by their front door. In one hand, Alfred held a hammer and some nails he had brought from Berlin. In the other was a mezuzah, a metal cylinder which held a tiny scroll containing the ancient Hebrew words: ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’ After saying a short prayer, he tacked the mezuzah onto the right-hand side of the main entrance.

  Then, opening the black-painted wooden door, Alfred invited his children to explore the house. Delighted, Bella, Elsie, Hanns and Paul ran ahead. Immediately upon entering was a corridor, with two doors on each side. On the right they found the maid’s room and kitchen. On the left, the guest room and bathroom. With doors crashing open and shut, and much scurrying of feet, they discovered the room at the end of the corridor, the living room, the largest room in the house and the heart of the building. Its walls were covered with polished wood panelling, edged with mint-green painted strips. The ceiling was salmon-coloured and had been split into small squares by more strips of wood. The overall effect was simple and chic. In the right-hand corner, the carpenters had built an L-shaped bench around a large glossy red wooden table, large enough for the family to eat dinner. In the left-hand corner was an open fireplace framed by an arch of bricks and shielded by a hearth of yet more bricks.

  From the living room, the children found they could enter three other rooms. One door led to the ‘Blue Room’, where the girls would sleep. While Elsie wasn’t happy to be sharing with her sister, she was thrilled with the room. Its ceiling had been painted sky blue, its two built-in cupboards – one for each of the girls – were cobalt blue, while its wood-panelled walls were left bare. Two pull-down beds, covered with cream-coloured quilts, stood equidistant between the windows and the door. Best of all was the view from the double windows of the lake.

  Through a door next to the living-room fireplace, the boys found their bedroom. It was the smallest bedroom in the house, just large enough for a chair, a table and a bunk bed. It was also the darkest room, with two small rectangular windows. The Alexanders clearly did not expect the boys to spend much time inside.

  The final living-room door led to the master bedroom, which was where the parents would sleep. It contained a large chestnut wooden bed which had been installed permanently into a recessed wall at the rear of the room. There were built-in cupboards above and to the side of the bed. Two large windows, matching those of the Blue Room, opened in front of the bed, affording a glorious lake view.

  On the far wall of the living room a set of French windows had been installed, leading out to the rear veranda. From there, wide steps led precipitously down to the as-yet-unseeded lawn, and the lake rippling fifty metres beyond.

  The house contained two additional rooms, but the children could only reach them by running outside and entering through another door to the left of the main entrance. This ‘chauffeur’s annexe’ took up a corner of the square house and was big enough for a bed, a chair and a table on which to lay his clothes. Attached was a small toilet, which was accessed by going outside and entering from yet another door, this time on the eastern side of the house.

  From the outside it appeared compact, yet, on entering, there was an unexpected amount of space. Otto Lenz had somehow built a home that conveyed modesty and that blended into its natural surroundings, but was large enough to take care of the entire Alexander clan, their staff and guests. The effect was magical.

  Rear view of the lake house, photograph by Lotte Jacobi, 1928

  With the Alexander house now complete, Otto Lenz’s crew moved on to the Munk house next door. It was of a similar design, one level, woode
n, with a terrace overlooking the lake, a pump house and garden. It even had the same diamond-shaped motif on the doors and windows.

  The Alexander and Munk houses were the first weekend retreats to be built in Groß Glienicke. Next came a house for Dr Martin Wall, a judge whose chambers were located on Kurfürstendamm near the Alexanders’ apartment in Berlin. Ewald Kunow, a pharmacist from Berlin’s suburbs, built a small wooden cottage on the other side of the Munks’. Then came Otto von Wollank’s own lawyer, Erwin Koch. Over the next few months there would be more homes constructed on land leased to the Wollanks’ other acquaintances.

  Otto and Dorothea soon began advertising the land in magazines and newspapers. Deals were struck with strangers, all of them city folk seeking refuge from their busy urban lives. Then, inspired by his success with the old vineyard, Otto instructed his agents to sell an entire section of the estate to developers, this time along the lake’s eastern shore. Known as Wochenende West – from a Berliner’s perspective it was considered to be located in the west – the parcel was soon subdivided, and the lots advertised in flyers circulated in the nation’s capital.

  Observing the Wollanks’ success in selling land, a few local farmers placed their own properties on the market. Before long, new homes were springing up along the southern shore of the Groß Glienicke Lake. Now it was not only weekend houses that were being built, but full-time residences, two storeys high, constructed from brick and covered with stucco, and complete with central heating to furnish year-round living. Such homes were closer to villas and mansions than weekend cottages.

  For the residents of Groß Glienicke, these newcomers – doctors and lawyers, film stars and bank directors, actors and composers – were Ortsfremde, or outsiders. They seemed foreign, with their big cars and expensive suits, their quick-talking and Berlin accents. They were unused to women and men swimming together at the village’s public beach, clothed in skimpy shorts and bathing suits.

  Groß Glienicke was now split into three sections: the Groß Glienicke Estate, where the Wollanks lived with their workers; the village itself, with its family-run shops, small stone houses, school and church; and now, the quickly growing settlers’ community, with fancy houses, chauffeurs and weekend parties.

  In time, the villagers grew accustomed to their new neighbours, with many of the locals finding work as builders and labourers, and later as gardeners, cleaners, cooks, nannies and security guards. Slowly the worlds of the city and the country began to merge.

  4

  ALEXANDER

  1928

  AT FIFTEEN YEARS old, Elsie Alexander had developed a strong personality. Quick-witted and confident in her beliefs, she was never afraid of voicing an opinion. Yet she was also charming, her sharp tongue softened by a smile. With cornflower blue eyes, an oval face, and long brown hair braided into two plaits that fell below her waist, many thought her attractive. Yet she considered herself to be plain-looking, even ugly.

  While on the surface friends, Elsie and her elder sister, Bella, could not have been more different. Where Elsie was blunt and assertive, Bella was diplomatic and cautious. Where Elsie was ambitious, dreaming of becoming a doctor like her father, Bella spoke of marrying some nice, rich businessman, of becoming a homemaker like her mother. From an early age there had been competition between the girls – for their parents’ attention, for the best gifts, for the most handsome boyfriend. Elsie later recalled that Bella was the more beautiful of the pair and would therefore arrive late to a party, so everyone would see her, while she, Elsie, would go straight to the corner, so that she could avoid attention.

  Life at the weekend house was a simple affair, made up of sleeping, eating and spending time by the lake. The family rarely left the property, and when they did, it was usually to shop for food. While the sisters read magazines, wrote letters or chatted with friends they had invited along, their twelve-year-old brothers, spent as much time as they could outside: roughhousing on the terrace, climbing trees and honing their football skills on the front lawn.

  If they had been observant Jews, the Alexanders would have remained in the city to attend Friday-evening and Saturday-morning services at their local synagogue on Fasanenstrasse. Instead, they called themselves ‘Three-Days-a-Year Jews’, attending synagogue on the two days of Rosh Hashanah and the one day of Yom Kippur. As a result, the Alexanders typically drove out to the house on Friday evening and remained till Monday morning.

  In early summer, if the temperature was high and the pollution in the city unbearable, the family lived full-time at the house. On schooldays, the four Alexander children woke at six to swim in the lake. Careful not to disturb their parents, they padded through the living room and onto the veranda, down the rough wooden steps, and across the dew-slicked lawn to the end of the jetty, where they shucked off their robes and dived into the water. Afterwards, as they were drying, they watched swans gliding through the reeds or a flock of geese flying in a V-formation overhead. The children loved this time of day.

  Once they were dressed, the chauffeur drove them to school in western Berlin, a short forty-minute journey away. His instructions were to park a distance from the school’s entrance, for the children were anxious not to be teased about their wealth.

  If it was a weekend, or the summer holidays, the children slept until eight. When they were woken, by the morning light or by one of their father’s cockerels, they made their own breakfast, as their cook and maids remained at the Berlin apartment, and their mother liked to sleep in. The simple country food was stored in the kitchen pantry: heavy dark bread from the village, soft cheese from the local farm, and cherry compote made with cherries from the garden.

  When not at school, the children were expected to take care of themselves. A favourite pastime was the cherry game, in which the four children raced over to the orchard that grew on the flat ground between the Potsdamer Tor and the house, competing to see who could stuff the most cherries into their mouth. Bella usually won. On one occasion, she managed to hold thirty-four cherries in her mouth, so many that her cheeks felt sore for days afterwards.

  The twins would set off to explore the woods or go on bike rides once their sisters tired of them. They roamed freely along the shore or in the forest behind the schloss. It was the perfect place for two troublesome boys, for there were few neighbours to disturb and little chance that complaints would be made.

  With their brothers gone, the girls often played tennis. Dressed in whites – white blouses, long white trousers, white socks and shoes – the girls spent hours on the court. Neither struck the ball very hard. Their serves were soft and their ground strokes fell short. This was partly due to a lack of skill, but also because whoever hit a ball into the lake had to retrieve it. Nevertheless, the games were fiercely competitive and the girls well matched.

  Alfred, meanwhile, busied himself in the vegetable garden. He had dug, raked and tilled a long stretch of soft soil – the earth here was mostly clay and sand – into which he planted row upon row of seeds: lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans. Next to these beds he cultivated a long asparagus patch. Here, among his asparagus and runner beans, his buckets and hoes, and wearing lederhosen and a loose shirt, Alfred whiled away his mornings, digging the dirt and watering his vegetables. Not content with just a vegetable garden, Alfred also built himself an enormous greenhouse which he named his ‘orangerie’, a reference to the ornate construction dominating the royal palace gardens of Sanssouci, Potsdam, a few kilometres to the south. With a concrete foundation, fireplace, chimney, retractable windows and stretching twelve metres in length, this greenhouse was wider than the Weekend-Haus itself.

  Alfred Alexander

  Henny Alexander

  Henny usually woke late, in time to prepare lunch, calling the family in by ringing a bell that dangled from the porch ceiling. If the weather was good they ate outside, on a long table covered with a white cloth that stood on the terrace overlooking the lake. Far from the decorum of Berlin, the boys were shir
tless and shoeless. These lunches were generally simple affairs of cold meats and cheeses, salads from the garden, boiled eggs and pickled herring.

  After lunch, Henny liked to head into the local villages in search of items to decorate the cottage. Uncomfortable with the stuffy formality that she had to suffer in the city, Henny wanted the interior to be cosy and unpretentious. For the living room she acquired a rocking chair and two simple high-backed wooden chairs. On the wall she hung a rack upon which stood eight pewter plates. A brass clock was attached to the wall in the corner next to the fireplace, regulated by two tubular weights that hung from its base. A carpet covered most of the floor, patterned in a series of ever-decreasing squares. A guest book lay open on a stand, ready for visitors. The house’s wooden interior was left unpainted.

  In pride of place were the old Delft tiles that Alfred had collected while on a tour of Holland and Belgium and which Henny had installed above the living-room fireplace. In all there were thirty blue-and-white tiles, set in five rows of six, featuring old romantic scenes from the Low Countries – a child on a rocking horse, a man watering his plants, a windmill on a hill overlooking a lake, a carpenter making a casket, a woman in a large hat walking in her garden – echoing the pastoral idyll to which the Alexanders aspired.

  With Henny occupied by domestic chores, and Alfred asleep in a chair under a lime tree, the children would typically spend the afternoon in the lake. Having changed into their bathing suits in a red-and-white-striped tent by the shore, they ran down the jetty, shouting and yelping, and jumped into the lake’s cool water.