The House by the Lake

by Thomas Harding

  One year, worried that the foxes still living in the cellar might be carrying rabies, Volker Grunert called a local hunter to take care of the ‘problem’. The hunter was unsuccessful: the foxes fled and the hunter was himself arrested after a neighbour called the police saying that they had heard an illegal firearm being used in the village.

  Later that night, the foxes returned to their den in the cellar. For the time being they would continue as the custodians of the lake house.

  As the house fell into dereliction, the village around it grew prettier by the day. Inspired by the rise of the Green movement, the governments of Berlin and Potsdam now agreed to clean up the lake with federal support. Starting in 1994, local volunteers and government workers began clearing the lake of refuse – oil drums, asbestos tiles, lead piping, barbed wire – which the DDR authorities had dumped into the water. The West German Army deployed frogmen who defused and removed the mines that still littered the shallow lake bed. Next, the Spandau district of Berlin – whose boundary stretched to the eastern side of the lake – paid millions of euros to remove thousands of tons of algae from the lake’s surface, before pumping oxygen into the waters through long plastic pipes. Soon after that native fish species were reintroduced, carp and pike among them, establishing a healthy population within a couple of years. The results were miraculous, with the Groß Glienicke Lake eventually declared one of the cleanest lakes in Europe.

  This environmental push was mirrored in other local projects. The massive military training grounds at Döberitzer Heath, some 3,400 acres of marsh, shrubland and forest, which had housed the Olympic Village in the 1930s and later the Soviet Army, was purchased by an environmental documentary-maker, cleared of ordnance, and converted into a park. In 2008, European bison were released, the first to roam the woods around Groß Glienicke for over a hundred years, as were a herd of Przewalski’s horses, which in 1969 had been declared extinct in the wild.

  To many, it appeared as if balance was returning to the area.

  By 2012, the village population had grown to more than four thousand people, with over half of that number hailing from the former West Germany.

  At the start of the twentieth century, Groß Glienicke was largely split into two distinct groups: the independent farmers and those who lived and worked on the estate. Then, in the 1920s, a third group was added: the affluent weekenders from Berlin. By the 1960s, the villagers could be divided according to their political affiliations. Half-a-century later, the groups were harder to discern. East Germans mixed with West Berliners, a new generation emerged unaware of their country’s complex history.

  Much like its residents, the village’s housing stock had also diversified. Many of the modest wooden homes and stone buildings from the 1930s were still standing, often next to ugly concrete tower blocks built during the DDR period. And now alongside these, were giant architectural marvels made of steel and glass, rising up along the lake’s edge.

  Groß Glienicke had become an attractive destination once again. Thousands of day-trippers travelled down from Berlin, eager to get away from the city and to have access to the cleaned-up lake. The lakeside trail created from the former border patrol path became heavily used, often congested by dog walkers, cyclists, runners and families pushing buggies during the summer months.

  It was around this time that a few of the original lakeside homeowners became agitated2. They pointed out that when their families had purchased the properties, in the 1920s and 1930s, their land had run all the way down to the lake shore. Some had their homes seized by the Nazis. Others had lost property when the DDR government had built the Wall through their gardens. For many, seeing the public walk across land they considered their own was yet another dispossession.

  Some landowners erected ‘Private’ and ‘No Trespassing’ signs where the trail cut through their gardens. These were largely ignored by walkers and cyclists, who wandered off the path to picnic, some even borrowing homeowners’ boats for afternoon paddles on the lake. In response, several disgruntled residents took to building fences along their property’s edge, effectively splitting their land in two: the land above the old border patrol path, and the land below between the path and the lake’s edge. A few took more aggressive action3, digging up the border path and building barricades made out of chunks of asphalt, dirt and fencing sections from the old Wall. One such barrier was constructed by the lake house. So when bikers and hikers approached this part of the trail, they were forced down to the lake’s sandy shore, before rejoining the path on the other side.

  In 2012, after years of filing paperwork and dreaming of building a large home on the site of their childhood Weekend-Haus, the Meisels finally received the verdict of their claim: they would receive neither possession, nor a single euro in compensation. The state would not compensate anyone who had acquired land during the 1945–49 Soviet land reform, nor would they reward anyone who had purchased property that had been aryanised.

  Later that year, the city of Potsdam planning department met to discuss development proposals for the village of Groß Glienicke. Of the many ideas circulated only one gained traction: the Bebauungsplan (Pre-Plan) Number 22. The proposal was simple: to knock down the lake house and develop the 200 × 30 metre plot on which it stood for the construction of affordable homes for low-income residents. With little discussion, the Bebauungsplan was approved. It was only a matter of time before the house by the lake would be knocked down.

  In the summer of 2012, a group of developers walked onto the property. Trees to be felled were striped with paint. The parcel’s dimensions were measured and noted on clipboards. The number of houses that might fit on the lot was calculated. And then the developers left, closing the metal gate behind them.

  The foxes would have to find a new home.

  33

  CITY OF POTSDAM

  2014

  ON 5 APRIL 2014, fourteen members of my family travelled from London to Groß Glienicke.

  At ten o’clock in the morning, we set to work. Removing the plywood that covered the windows, running power from the Munks’ house to illuminate the interior, and loading hastily constructed tables with light refreshments. Before long the locals arrived. Carrying forks and rakes, shovels and gloves, loppers and shears, and pushing wheelbarrows and bicycles, they joined in. Soon there were over sixty of us helping to clear the house and its garden. Villagers and historians, politicians and lawyers, accountants and journalists, all eager to conserve the property’s precious history.

  This then was the idea, to demonstrate the property’s value through action, rather than word. If it was important enough for all of us to turn up, from both sides of the North Sea and a multitude of backgrounds and interests, overcoming searing memories and bitter heartache, then surely the house had worth?

  A giant twenty-metre-long skip had been deposited in the garden and soon it was filling up with refuse. Without orchestration, people laboured together. My uncle and cousin wrestled an old washing machine out from the kitchen. A neighbour dragged out old carpets, ably assisted by my cousin’s eight-year-old daughter. My father and the village mayor lifted a wheelbarrow filled with bottles and old clothes up and into the container. Kneeling on the ground, with an apron wrapped around her waist, my aunt cleaned a pile of old flower-patterned crockery with the assistance of one of the villagers. As people walked by, they stopped to admire the kitchenware. The designs were DDR classics, they said, and should not be thrown away.

  Meanwhile, another team quietly sawed, hacked and cut away at the overgrown garden, whose branches and leaves had grown so close to the lake house’s exterior walls. As these amateur archaeologists proceeded, they unearthed treasures: the metal gate next to which Wolfgang had greeted Elsie back in 1993; the flagstones at the front of the house, where Lothar and Sieglinde had broken their wedding plates in 1963; the patio of white stones to the rear of the house, where Elsie’s grandfather, Lucien Picard, had taken his afternoon naps in the 1930s. Discoveries were als
o made inside: in a hole in the living-room floor I found a photograph of Roland, Marcel and their friend Matthias, all wearing what looked like paper Burger King crowns. Others uncovered a newspaper from 1927 stuffed behind a wall in the small bedroom, and then the living-room door boarded up by Wolfgang Kühne, through which Will Meisel had once walked to play the piano in the Blue Room.

  By lunchtime, all the rubbish had been removed from the house, its floors swept clean and its windows prised open. For the first time since 2000, it was possible to stand in the living room unencumbered by the fumes of old clothes or dust from decaying furniture.

  Now empty the house was suddenly full of potential. A bed could go here, a chest of drawers there. In the corner of the living room, perhaps, a sofa and some shelves, in front of which might stand a coffee table and a television. Maybe a small fridge in the kitchen, along with an electric stove and a washing machine. The walls could be painted this colour or maybe stripped and varnished, as they had been back in the 1920s.

  Only now was it possible to generate a feel for the place, its dimensions, its layout; the way that the various rooms worked together. The home seemed much larger on the inside than appeared to be the case from the outside. More than this, jolted into life by the collective effort, and belief, of more than sixty people, the house suddenly felt alive again.

  After the locals had left, my father and I took a walk along the lakefront. The border patrol path was busy with cyclists, runners and dog walkers. I asked my father what he thought about the morning’s activities. ‘As you know, I had my doubts,’ he said. ‘I came here to support you. But I have to tell you I think it’s extraordinary. The people I’ve met. Their excitement about saving the house.’ He stopped, I turned round to look at him, and then he added, ‘You can count me in.’

  Clean-up Day, April 2014

  That evening, over a hundred people gathered in the large room that served as Groß Glienicke’s community centre. This building had once been the elementary school, where Bernd and his friends had thrown sticks over the Wall hoping to trigger the alarm wires. There were a number of villagers present, along with members of my family and a handful of local politicians. I had been invited to talk about the house and what we were attempting. I felt nervous, unsure of the response, eager to strike the right tone.

  Beside me stood Winfried Sträter, the village’s deputy mayor, who was giving a presentation on the fate of the Jews in the village. From the loudspeakers we heard the voice of Adolf Hitler and then that of Heinrich Himmler, both declaring that the Jews must be exterminated for the greater good of Germany.

  Once the recordings ended, the deputy mayor explained that these facts would have been suppressed in Groß Glienicke during the DDR years. The authorities maintained that West Germany alone was responsible for the horrors of the Third Reich. After all, how could the DDR, built on a staunch anti-fascist foundation, be home to Nazis? I was impressed that he should play these audio files to this gathering, made up as it was of former DDR citizens and Jewish refugees. I was also shocked that, seventy years after the war’s end, I considered such a move to be bold.

  Then it was my turn. As my words were translated by one of my village friends, I ran through a slide show: pictures of my family’s time during the 1930s, sketches of the house and floor plans. At one point, when a photograph appeared of a young lady dressed in white – white trousers, a white blouse and white shoes – someone from the crowd called out, ‘Who’s that?’ Before I had a chance to answer, my father stood up.

  ‘That’s my mother, Elsie,’ he said in German.

  Nobody spoke for a moment, and then somebody asked, ‘You speak German?’

  ‘Of course,’ said my father, then adding, demurely, ‘though not very well.’ Various people called out that he spoke beautifully. They encouraged him to continue.

  And I realised that something had changed, something real. A warmth had crept into the crowd, a togetherness. There was no longer a sense of us and them: of villagers and city folk, of Germans and English, of persecutors and victims. For the first time, the people in the room seemed to recognise that we were all families of Germany.

  In the days following the Clean-up Day, numerous articles appeared not only in the Potsdam and Berlin newspapers, but also in national papers, such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Through emails and telephone calls, the locals told me that the politicians had been overwhelmed by the Clean-up Day, the fact that so many family members had flown in from England, and that such a large number of the villagers had taken part. More than this, they were taken by the story of the house itself, seeing it as a rare opportunity for commemoration, as well as reconciliation.

  On 7 May 2014, the city of Potsdam legislature met to discuss what they were now calling the ‘Alexander Haus’. After a positive discussion they voted unanimously to support the following resolution:

  7.23 Alexander Haus

  The city assembly of the State Capital Potsdam recognises the efforts to preserve the Alexander Haus on Groß Glienicke Lake and to revive it as a place of commemoration of the German-Jewish history, the reconciliation and meetings. The State Capital Potsdam will support the aim to make the Alexander Haus open to the public as a place of commemoration on the shores of Groß Glienicke Lake.

  Realising that someone would have to assume responsibility for the property, if and when it was saved, a group formed of members of my family and representatives from the village set up a charity, registered in Germany for just such a purpose, called ‘Alexander Haus’. Shortly afterwards we received a warm letter from the mayor of Potsdam, in which he added his support to the project.

  Yet we still lacked the Denkmal, or monument status, for the house. Without that, it would be impossible to guarantee the protection of the house in the long term and next to impossible to raise the funds necessary to restore it.

  Nevertheless, we hired an architect who produced a thorough report detailing the architectural history and context of the house, and listing its original features, as well as those that had either been altered or required replacement. To his surprise, he wrote, the house was in better structural condition than anticipated. Together with this report, we included newspaper articles that described the overwhelming community and family support as demonstrated by the Clean-up Day, along with letters of endorsement from the city of Potsdam, and submitted the package to the State of Brandenburg authorities.

  And then we waited.

  EPILOGUE

  A few months later, on 27 August 2014, I returned to Berlin once more, and to the house. Dressed in a navy-blue suit and white shirt, I stood on the newly revealed front patio, anxiously waiting for the event to begin.

  Gathered around me were local residents, politicians and representatives of the Groß Glienicker Kreis. We were joined by members of the Potsdam and Berlin media. Today was officially a press conference, but to me it meant something far more. After introductions had been made, I walked over to the front door, carrying a hammer and two nails. Next to me was the representative from Potsdam’s historic preservation department. With our bald heads, stubbled chins, dark suits and stocky bodies, we looked absurdly similar, brothers even.

  As the preservationist held a thin white metal tile against the wooden siding, I hammered in the nails. On the tile was a blue shield and the word ‘Denkmal’, the official sign that the state of Brandenburg had entered the house onto its list of protected buildings. The house had been saved.

  Denkmal ceremony, August 2014

  I had, by this point, spent months in the village, interviewing scores of people and reading the testimonies of many more. I had studied old architectural drawings and planning files. I had broken into the house and investigated its darkest corners, searching for clues to its past. And with village residents and members of my family, I had helped clean the house from years of neglect and decay. I knew these walls so well now – but perhaps not well enough.

  Soon after the house received monument status
, I was speaking to a neighbour and confessed that I had not yet been out on the water. He was shocked – surprised. Laughing, he offered me the use of his boat – ‘You’ll have to row,’ he said, ‘but it’s worth the effort.’

  The next morning, my wife and I stood on the shore. It was a sunny, calm and beautiful day. Large puffy white clouds floated across the wide-open sky, casting perfect reflections on the lake below. Untying the rope that had been wrapped around a tree, we launched the boat. As we pulled out I could see the lake house – dark, decrepit, overshadowed by trees. Tidier perhaps, but still a ruin.

  It was, however, becoming easier to imagine what it had once been. The white wooden jetty jutting into the lake. The sandy beach. The children playing in the water. Growing in the shallows was a small forest of reeds, just as there would have been in my grandmother’s day. A white-beaked mother duck shepherded her three baby ducklings away from us as we headed into deeper waters. There were no motorboats on the lake, no sailing boats, or jet skis. The water was crystal-clear. A pair of young boys were paddling their dinghy towards one of the small islands at the lake’s centre. A family stood on the public beach preparing for a swim. Two scuba divers dolphined under our boat, propelling giant air bubbles towards the water’s surface.

  After a twenty-minute paddle, my wife and I pulled up at Ludwig’s Restaurant, the very same place that Bernd had ‘escaped’ to more than twenty-five years earlier. There I drank a beer, my wife sipped a coffee, and we shared a plate of cold meats and pickles.

  I thought again about the first trip I had made to the house, in 1993. On the aeroplane, my grandmother had given me the black J woven onto a yellow silk background. At the time, I thought she was imparting an important message: This is my history, and this is your history. Do not forget. But as I had pieced together the story of the house, I’d discovered that Elsie had left Germany before Jews were forced to wear such yellow badges – that she had never worn this piece of cloth. My first reaction was shock that she had lied to me. Then came laughter at her brazen attempt to manipulate me. Now, finally, I understood that there was a difference between truth, and what is true. My grandmother may not have worn the piece of cloth, but she had been persecuted. Her family had been uprooted, nearly destroyed. Her husband’s family had lost so many. My grandparents had been forced to start again, to build new lives for themselves – in England. And yet Elsie still felt a connection to Germany. The house was important to her, she was saying, and it was important to us – as much a part of our history as it was hers.