The House by the Lake

by Thomas Harding

  In conclusion, Schneider wrote, Ignition Key ‘is dishonest and closed towards our Organ’. The one saving grace, he noted, was that the informant had never revealed his secret work to others. A few days later, Wolfgang’s Stasi contract was terminated.

  At the end of March 1961, a late-winter storm rolled into the village. For more than a week, snow fell on the lake house. With school cancelled, the Kühne children dressed warmly and, using whatever they could find – tin trays, plastic bags, rubbish-bin lids – like Lothar before them, they slid down the snowy slope below the terrace, stopping well before the flimsy wire fence that ran along the shoreline.

  After months of sub-freezing weather, the lake was still frozen and Wolfgang helped the children onto its slippery expanse. It wasn’t too hard to scramble over the fence, and there really wasn’t any risk from the border guards who paid the children no attention. There they joined the villagers, some of whom skated as others sailed by on home-made ice boats, most simply walked, enjoying the monochrome tranquillity.

  It had been a good three years for the Kühnes. They had a third child, and a happy if crowded life at the house. Wolfgang was working for the military and had managed to get safely in and then out of the Stasi. And while the three-year contract for his truck-driving job would soon come to an end, he could easily find another job, if not in the village, then in Potsdam.

  21

  FUHRMANN AND KÜHNE

  1961

  ON SUNDAY 13 August 1961, Wolfgang Kühne was woken by the noise of construction. Oddly, the racket seemed to be coming from the lakefront.

  From his bedroom Wolfgang could hear the whine and thud of heavy machinery, along with a chorus of pickaxes chipping away against rock and sand, and every so often the house shook.

  Wolfgang rose, opened the front door, walked round to the back of the house and was amazed by what he saw: between the house and the edge of the lake, less than forty metres from where he stood, scores of soldiers were milling about. By the shore, bulldozers were pushing the flimsy fence into the water. Nearer the house, holes were being dug and filled with concrete; spools of barbed wire were unwound. More soldiers were working to the left and to the right, all the way up and down the shoreline. He was stunned. With no notice of these works, Wolfgang couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

  Back inside, Wolfgang turned on the television to find out what was going on. For the protection of the DDR citizens, the announcer explained, the authorities had decided to build a barrier between East and West. It was now illegal to cross this boundary. The border patrol guards had been given permission to shoot anyone who tried. The next day the DDR newspapers lauded the decision to erect the barrier, with a commentator from the Neues Deutschland writing: ‘Children are now protected from child-stealers; families are protected from the blackmailing snoopers of the human trafficking headquarters; businesses are protected from the head-hunters; people are protected from the monsters.’ Under the headline ‘DEFIANCE OF THE SABRE-RATTLERS’, the Tribüne wrote: ‘Deep satisfaction fills us trade unionists of the DDR at the decision of our government to stop up the West Berlin rat hole.’

  Berlin border fence, Groß Glienicke Lake, 1961

  Since the start of that year, Walter Ulbricht, the DDR leader, had been pushing Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier, for a solution to his country’s mass emigration crisis. Despite the closing of the external border between East and West Germany1, over three and a half million East Germans had emigrated to West Germany between 1949 and 1961, mostly through East Berlin where the border had remained relatively open. This exodus comprised almost 20 per cent of the entire DDR population. Not only did this outflow concern Ulbricht from an ideological standpoint, undermining the people’s pride in the socialist mission, he also knew that the country would not survive if it continued to haemorrhage people to the West. It was simply too easy to cross from East to West Berlin. So on 1 August, after deciding that the British and Americans would not oppose the building of a barrier, the two leaders agreed to a plan. They would build a permanent barrier between West Berlin and East Germany, making it as close to impossible to cross.

  The barrier would have a profound impact on Groß Glienicke. While the border in the village had been closed for some time, it had still been possible – with a short bus ride to Staaken and then an S-Bahn train – to visit West Berlin. Families would now be unable to see each other, and those with jobs in West Berlin would lose them.

  Though no member of the Communist Party, Wolfgang did believe in socialism and thought that the East German experiment, with its promise of greater distribution of wealth, had more to offer him than the capitalism of West Germany. After all, didn’t the Kühnes have this wonderful house beside the lake? Never a Nazi Party member and always a stern critic of all they had done, especially to the Jews, Wolfgang had been disturbed to read in the press how many former Nazis were employed by the West German government. Despite the inconvenience of the barrier and the added security hassles, Wolfgang believed that ‘the government’s politics were good’. If the border was there to protect them, then so be it.

  Irene Kühne was less accepting, disagreeing with the border fence in principle. Why should the government stop her travelling to West Berlin or indeed West Germany? While she was grateful for all that the DDR had done for them, Irene had family in Dortmund whom she would now not be able to visit.

  Little Bernd Kühne didn’t really understand the fuss. It was a hot day and, ignoring the building work and the guards, he crawled under the fence and made his way to the shore and then into the lake. To her horror, Irene spotted him struggling in the water, but was unable to reach him because of the fence. In the end, a guard helped the small boy out. As he handed Bernd back across the barrier, he urged Irene to keep better control of her children.

  In the early weeks and months of the Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier, as it was known in the East, or the Berlin Wall, as it was called in the West, it was still possible for enterprising East Berliners to cross the border zone and make it to West Berlin. They brought ladders, jumped out of windows from buildings next to the Wall and hid in the boots of cars. As the DDR government spent increasing funds to seal the crossing, these attempts became more difficult.

  From their back door, the Kühne family watched as the Wall was gradually fortified. Additional space was cleared between the new border fence at the lake’s edge and the house. Everything was then removed: the few remaining willows and black alders on the shore, the apple and cherry trees on the terraces, the terraces themselves, the fences that Dr Alexander had built down the edge of the property to the lake, the pump house, the steps down to the shore, even the tennis court.

  Next, a second barbed-wire fence was added2, topped with razor wire thirty metres from the lake’s edge, and only ten metres from the back of the house. Between the two barriers developed a no-man’s-land that would become known as the ‘death strip’ or the ‘killing zone’. In the middle of the death strip, a three-metre-wide concrete path was built. This the border patrol police patrolled every hour, in a green cabriolet.

  Over the next few years, the Wall was enhanced still further. Trigger wires were laid to alert the patrol guards whenever someone tried to escape. Fifteen-metre-high concrete towers were erected at intervals along the Wall, giving the guards a view up and down the border as well as across the lake towards West Berlin. Every few hundred metres, a tall post was erected from which hung giant Krieg lights that shone all day and all night. Mines and large metal spikes littered the lake shore. Next, the barbed-wire fence by the lake was replaced by an outer wall, which was made up of precast three-metre-high concrete sections, on top of which was laid a long metal concrete tube. Then the wire fence near the house was replaced by a concrete inner wall which was 2.5 metres high. It was now impossible to see the lake from the garden.

  Berlin Wall layout

  Finally, a metal wire was strung along the inside of the inner wall, to which German shepherds
were tethered by a lead that enabled them to run up and down the death strip, searching for possible escapees. Early each morning the Kühnes and the Fuhrmanns heard the rumble of a truck as it drove up the border patrol path, stopped in front of each kennel, and ladled out food for the hungry animals. As with many of their neighbours, they grew fond of these dogs, throwing them scraps from dinners and summer barbecues. Yet, wise to the possible canine corruption, the border patrol guards rotated the dogs’ sentry posts to ensure that they did not become too familiar with the nearby inhabitants.

  With the Wall now in place, the villagers were not only cut off from West Berlin, they also had to live with the physical presence of a giant concrete structure just a few metres from their homes. Another immediate consequence was the creation of the Grenzgebiet, the border security zone. This ran parallel to the Wall at distances varying from ten to fifty metres. Only those with permission were allowed to enter the zone, and access to non-residents was limited to special circumstances. Applications to enter could take many weeks to be processed.

  In Groß Glienicke, this border security zone started in the north of the village, running along the Potsdamer Chaussee, and then down the Dorfstraße to the south. Along these roads metal signs were posted at hundred-metre intervals on which were written in English, German, French and Russian: ‘Attention here is the border, do not pass without permission.’ Each sign was held up by a pole striped with red and white paint, like those of old barbershops, to ensure that nobody missed the warning. All the lakefront homes, including the Meisels’, were considered to be within this zone. From this point forward, to return home, the Fuhrmanns and the Kühnes would have to show their passes to the soldiers who were standing guard at the Potsdamer Tor.

  Two things now became clear. First, and this was good news as far as the two families were concerned, the Meisels would never be coming back. They were now official tenants, rather than caretakers. As a result, the remnants of Will and Eliza’s life were removed: the piano was hauled to the garage, the sheet music was thrown away, and any clothes left in the cupboards were divided up between the families, the rest handed to the community council.

  The second was sadder, at least as far as the Kühne and Fuhrmann children were concerned. For although they lived in the lake house, it was now impossible to swim in the lake.

  22

  FUHRMANN AND KÜHNE

  1962

  SITTING ALONE AT the table, twenty-four-year old Lothar Fuhrmann worried that he was going to spend the night alone. His friends were all out on the dance floor, each with a partner, and each apparently having more fun than him.

  The social evening was held at the Nedlitz fire station1, a twenty-minute bus ride from Groß Glienicke. Lothar was tall and well built, and he’d made an effort to look presentable, with his dark pleated trousers, a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and his hair slicked back. He looked good, he thought, which made his lack of dance partner all the more galling.

  It was then that a young woman walked over to him. Dressed in a knee-length skirt and blouse and carrying two beers in her hand, she handed over a bottle and asked if he wanted to dance. Taking a quick swig, Lothar said yes, stood up and followed her onto the floor. Her name was Sieglinde Bartel.

  Over the next few weeks they went out several times. One of their favourite spots was the village’s Badewiese bar and dance hall where Will Meisel had played his music back in the 1940s. Now the property was state-owned and the four arched windows overlooking the lake had been blocked up in an effort to prevent people from climbing through and attempting an escape. Lining up with the others when the doors opened at six, Lothar and Sieglinde paid their ten marks before entering the building. Inside, the heating was turned up, and while Western music was prohibited, the small band – a guitarist, an accordionist and a saxophonist – stood on a raised stage to the rear of the hall and played with enough rhythm and energy for the youngsters to have a good time.

  As one of the few dance halls in the area, the Badewiese attracted locals as well as soldiers from the NVA barracks to the north of the village and Soviet troops. This sometimes caused problems, for there were often more single men than single women, and when fights broke out, it was not uncommon for a Soviet military policeman to brandish his weapon. When that happened, the Badewiese would empty, then, after a brief pause shivering outside in the cold, the youngsters would return to the dance floor.

  A few months after they started dating, Lothar and Sieglinde decided to marry. Despite their engagement, Sieglinde lacked a pass to enter the border security zone that ran along the Wall, and was forbidden from spending nights at her fiancé’s house. Breaking such rules risked arrest and even jail. Nevertheless, on 2 April 1963, Lothar and Sieglinde invited all their friends for a wedding-eve party at the lake house. That evening, over twenty people managed to evade the border patrol officers standing guard at the Potsdamer Tor.

  Some brought cake and wine, others cold meats and cheese. Everyone brought an old china plate, for this was a traditional Polterabend party, which takes place the night before a wedding. To avoid being heard by the patrol guards, who every hour walked along the border patrol path less than thirty metres from the back door, the revellers held the party inside. They squeezed into the Blue Room – which appeared more spacious without the piano and piano stool – and, sitting cross-legged on the floor, on the couch, or on one of the chairs brought in from the kitchen, toasted the young happy couple.

  Late into the evening, and now merry from all the schnapps and beer, Lothar and Sieglinde led the group outside. There, in a moment of frivolity and carelessness, and with a cry of ‘viel Glück!’, or good luck, they threw their chinaware to the ground, the shards scattering noisily on the grey flagstones by the front door. The crash of the plates resounded in the silent night air and, realising that someone was sure to investigate – nobody wanted to be found without the correct paperwork – the friends quickly said their goodbyes, and hurried off into the night.

  The next day the bride woke early and set about clearing up the mess. Around noon, they dressed. Sieglinde wore a lilac-coloured skirt and matching jacket, streaked with silver beading. Her hair was plaited and tied up in a crown decorated with small wild flowers. Lothar wore a formal dark suit, with a white shirt and black shoes.

  They had ordered a taxi to take them to the village community hall on Seepromenade, but by 1 p.m., the allotted time for the service to begin, the taxi had not turned up. With Sieglinde increasingly anxious, Lothar asked Wolfgang Kühne for a lift. A few minutes later the couple were on their way in their neighbour’s ancient DKV F7, spluttering and backfiring so loudly that Sieglinde commented there was no need for any tin cans to trail behind.

  Finally arriving at the community hall they found the main doors locked. Being careful not to trip in her high heels, the bride opened the cellar door and the pair snuck in through the back entrance. An hour later, now officially married in front of a civil magistrate, the newly-weds were on their way – the taxi having turned up by now – to Sieglinde’s parents’ house for a reception.

  A few days later, Sieglinde informed the Gemeinde, the local parish council, that she had moved into the lake house at Am Park 2. Shortly afterwards, she revealed to a shocked Lothar, and then to his mother, that she was pregnant. It soon transpired that she was not the only one.

  On 29 August, Irene Kühne gave birth to a baby girl she named Marita. Two months later, Sieglinde and Lothar Fuhrmann’s son Dietmar was born. A year later, Sieglinde became pregnant again, and when a daughter named Sabine was born, on 26 January 1965, everyone realised that it was time for the Fuhrmanns to find a new place to live. There were simply too many people crammed into a small space.

  In February 19652, with the help of the Gemeinde, Ella Fuhrmann and her family moved to Rehsprung 23 in Groß Glienicke, on the south side of the village, some four blocks from the lake. Lothar was sorry to leave his childhood home, yet he was relieved to have more space, awa
y from the prying eyes of the neighbours, away from the Krieg lights that shone all night, and away from the scary-looking border guards.

  The house had given the Fuhrmanns many happy years. Now it was time to move on.

  If the Fuhrmanns were pleased with their new accommodation, the Kühne family members were happier still3. For now they had the house all to themselves. Irene quickly set about commandeering the rest of it. Each child was allotted their own room, with Bernd given the Blue Room on the south-west corner of the house.

  Irene claimed the Fuhrmanns’ kitchen for her own, and asked Wolfgang to tear down the wall that separated it from the maid’s bedroom where Lothar had slept. With a long pine table and six chairs, the family could now sit comfortably during mealtimes. Irene could also use the cellar, which was accessed through a trapdoor next to the kitchen pantry, and there, on metal shelves arranged in neat rows, she stored potatoes in brown paper bags, as well as jars of pickled cucumbers and onions, and compotes that she made from the garden’s copious cherry and pear harvest.

  Best of all, the family now had a bathroom, with running hot water. It had been seven years since they had moved into the house, and at last they had an indoor toilet. Wolfgang added a chimney to the Blue Room to make it more comfortable in the winter, and extended the bathroom. Finally, since they no longer needed them, he removed the small kitchen and toilet in what had been the chauffeur’s annexe, and knocked a door into Ella’s old bedroom. Bernd, now six years old, began running circuits around the house’s interior: from the bed in his Blue Room to the kitchen to the spare bedroom, where his sister slept, to the chauffeur’s annexe, where his brother now slept, on to the living room and into the master bedroom, back to the living room and then returning to his bedroom. When the clamour of banging doors and footsteps drove his mother mad, she would shout for him to play outdoors.