The House by the Lake

by Thomas Harding

  As I looked out over the lake that day I finally understood why the house’s inhabitants had all been so fond of it. Despite life’s difficulties, despite all the upheavals, it was, indeed, a soul place.

  Groß Glienicke Lake

  POSTSCRIPT

  In April 2015, we reached an agreement with the local authorities: in return for the city of Potsdam handing over the management of the property to our Alexander Haus charity, we would take responsibility for renovating the house and making it available to the public.

  We can now set about repairs – fixing the roof and the gutters, mending the floors and the walls, repainting the diamonds onto the shutters – restoring the home to its former glory.

  A hundred years after Otto von Wollank’s estate had run into economic trouble after the First World War; after the collapse of Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, communism and reunification; after five families had fallen in love with the land, only to be dispossessed; after twelve years of being abandoned, the house at last has a brighter future.

  Whatever the outcome, The House by the Lake is a story of hope. It demonstrates that while we humans can experience terrible suffering, in time we are indeed able to exercise our capacity for healing. And if we manage that, a century of pain, joy and dramatic change will have had a positive outcome. One thing is clear: a new chapter in the story has just begun. It will be fascinating to see what the next hundred years will bring.

  While it is true that the house has now been officially protected, and cannot be demolished or redeveloped, much still needs to be done. Money must be raised to restore and maintain the house, to transform it into an education centre and exhibition space to remember and celebrate the families who lived there: a place of remembrance, reconciliation, relaxation and joy. To do this we will need help.

  For more information on the house by the lake, please visit

  www.AlexanderHaus.org

  NOTES

  Prologue

  1 ‘the village of Groß Glienicke …’ The name of the village has been spelled various ways over the centuries. It can be found as Groß or Gross, Glienicke as well as Glienicker. According to a note written in 1961 in the Chronik, the village chronicle, ‘Groß Glienicke’ was actually adopted ‘because it sounded more official’.

  Chapter 1

  1 ‘it was known as the “Ribbeck Estate” …’ Indeed, only the year before Otto’s horseback tour of the estate, one of Germany’s most renowned writers, Theodor Fontane, had written a poem about Ribbeck, who lived in a nearby estate, and the pear tree that grew in his garden. This poem, which celebrates the charm and generosity of the landed gentry quickly became popular in Germany, and later, required learning by every German schoolchild. In the poem, once the landlord dies, he asks that a pear seed be buried on his grave, and ‘From the silent dwelling, after three years / The tip of a pear tree seedling appears / And year after year, the seasons go round / Long since a pear tree is shading the mound.’

  2 ‘three hundred or so villagers …’ From his travels through the Brandenburg Mark, or region, Fontane describes visiting Groß Glienicke. He mentions the population of the town as well as his visit to the village church.

  3 ‘Nineteen years earlier …’ Prussian troops were supported by other north German states. The German siege of Paris ended on 28 January 1871 and the Franco-Prussian War finally concluded in May of that year.

  4 ‘Its Friedrich Wilhelm University boasted an impressive list …’ Later the university would be known as Humboldt University. Since 1901, over forty academics associated with the university have won Nobel Prizes, including Max Born, Hermann Fischer, James Franck, Robert Koch, Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein.

  5 ‘On 18 February 1890 …’ The details of the purchase are contained in the files at the Brandenburg land registry, Potsdam. According to the purchase contract, Otto Wollank was living at Yorkstrasse 5 in Berlin at the time, and the money was received by the court on 19 February.

  6 ‘gütig und mitfühlend …’ This characterisation comes from an unpublished manuscript, Chronik der Berliner Wollanks, written in 1978 by Dr Waldemar Wollank.

  Chapter 2

  1 ‘Three days later, on 19 April, Kaiser Wilhelm instructed …’ Kaiser Wilhelm II had taken a particular interest in the modernisation of agriculture. Only the year before Otto’s ennoblement, he had ordered that all farms pasteurise their milk in an attempt to curtail an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. The information on the ennoblement of Otto von Wollank can be found at the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz [I. HA, Rep. 176 Heroldsamt, Nr. 10775]. According to Harald von Kalm, in his book Das preußische Heroldsamt, most ennobled persons in Prussia were military officers, followed by estate owners and civil servants/judges.

  2 The Kaiser Reich, which had …’ The official name of the empire both in the constitution of 1871 and in the constitution of 1919 was simply Deutsches Reich.’ More commonly, the periods are known as ‘Second Reich’ (1871–1918), ‘Weimar Republic’ (1918–33) and ‘Third Reich’ (1933–45).

  3 ‘More than twenty men had died in the conflict …’ The War Memorial in Groß Glienicke on Dorfstraße lists the names of twenty native-born soldiers who died in the First World War. This list, however, is not complete, nor does it include those injured. The pre-war population of the village was a little under four hundred adults, approximately 120 were men and 280 women.

  4 ‘Born in 1897 …’ According to his marriage certificate found at the Potsdam City Archive, Robert von Schultz’s full name was Carl Robert Christoph von Schultz von Vaschivitz, and his parents were Christoph Theodor Albert von Schultz (from Rügen) and Anna-Sofie von Schultz von Essen (from Berlin). The marriage certificate also said that Schultz was born on Sponholzstrasse 1 in Schöneberg, Berlin.

  Chapter 3

  1 ‘After his mother’s death …’ At this time, it would have been extremely rare for a German or any other doctor to hasten the death of a terminally ill patient. Two months earlier the first ever bill attempting to legalise euthanasia had been introduced into the Oregon legislature, which had caused a storm of protest around the world. The New York Times carried editorials condemning the bill and the British Medical Journal asserted that ‘America is a land of hysterical legislation’. The discussion of medical euthanasia, let alone the practice of medical euthanasia, became widespread in Germany only after the 1920 publication Alfred Hocke’s book, Permitting the Destruction of Life not Worthy of Life. Therefore, Dr Alexander’s decision in 1906 to end his mother’s life not only ran contrary to the prevailing norms, but could have resulted in him receiving harsh punishments, from both his medical board and the country’s justice system.

  2 ‘Acknowledging his efforts during …’ Over 100,000 German Jews, out of a population of 550,000, served during the First World War. In 1916, following anti-Semitic accusations that Jewish soldiers avoided battle, the German Army conducted a Judenzählung, or Jewish census, that found that almost 78 per cent of Jewish soldiers saw front-line duty. In all, 12,000 Jewish soldiers died during the war and over 30,000 were decorated for their service.

  3 ‘the day-to-day construction would be overseen by the master carpenter …’ As part of their training, carpenters would have completed a mandatory Auf der Walz, a year of travelling during which the apprentice learns his trade. These ‘journeymen’ continued their practice from medieval times through to the 1930s when they were stopped by the rise of the Nazis, who felt that the trade guilds posed a threat.

  4 ‘Following Otto Lenz’s design …’ According to Jörg Limberg, a wooden-house specialist from the City of Potsdam’s Monument Preservation Department, the Wochenende exhibition did not include designs by Paul Baumgarten, but he speculates that perhaps Alexander and Munk were ‘inspired by the exhibition’s houses and their special details and gave the order to Baumgarten to design these houses’. It is worth noting that, according to Bettina Munk, her family’s house (and therefore the
Alexanders’) was designed by Baumgarten. It is also worth noting that in an interview, Alfred Alexander’s daughter Bella remembers that the architect who designed her father’s clinic on Achenbachstrasse 15 was employed to design the weekend house in Groß Glienicke.

  Chapter 4

  1 ‘Some, like Einstein …’ In 1929, Alfred’s patient Albert Einstein built a wooden cottage in Caputh, a village four kilometres to the south of Potsdam. Though they might not have acknowledged it, these professionals belonged to the Wandervogel, the so-called wandering bird movement: romantic city dwellers, harking back to a pre-industrial period when life was slower and less stressful.

  2 ‘One visitor was the photographer Lotte Jacobi …’ Born in Prussia, Lotte Jacobi lived for many years in Berlin, but fled to New York in 1933, eventually settling in New Hampshire. Lotte Jacobi was arguably one of the most renowned female photographers of the twentieth century. Of the many photographs that she took of the house and family only eight remain. On each she signed her name ‘Jacobi’. Alfred made postcards using two of the images and handed these out to his friends. On the back of the postcard was printed ‘Haus Dr Alexander’.

  Chapter 5

  1 ‘Somehow both drivers …’ By coincidence, the wife of the driver for Otto von Wollank was the Munks’ family cook in Groß Glienicke.

  2 ‘The Vossische Zeitung …’ The Berliner Lokalanzeiger also covered the crash, though it revealed slightly different details.

  3 ‘On 1 October …’ The source for the meeting at Koch’s office comes from Landesarchiv Berlin (File: A rep 349/1214/a).

  4 ‘the three children appeared satisfied …’ This would not be true of Horst von Wollank’s heirs. Following his death in 1932, his wife, and later his children, would challenge the will all the way to the highest German court, eventually losing in the 1950s. Horst’s cause of death was registered as influenza by the Wollank family historian. A slightly different story comes from his son, Helmut von Wollank. According to Helmut, Horst died because he refused to go to hospital when he suffered an inflammation of his diaphragm. Helmut also confirmed that his father never served in the First World War, despite being of eligible age. Though there are no records to confirm this, it is logical, given his early death, to deduce that he was excused service because of ill health.

  5 ‘An article published in the Der Stahlhelm newsletter …’ A little later, this same newsletter published a cartoon about Ullstein, the company that published Berlin’s main newspapers and which was owned by a Jewish family, mocking it for cowardice during the First World War.

  6 ‘we tell our aims with an honest …’ Quoted from Anti-Semitism in the German Military Community and the Jewish Response, 1914–1938, by Brian E. Crim, taken from Der Stahlhelm issue 23 May 1926. Later, the Stahlhelm would be criticised by the Nazi Party for not being sufficiently anti-Semitic, even allowing some Jews to be members of this veterans’ organisation, despite the fact that their constitution explicitly forbade Jewish membership.

  7 ‘Labourers who lived close to the estate …’ This description comes from Erich Kurz in a statement submitted on 1 July 1967 to the village Chronik. It was later denied by Robert von Schultz’s daughter, Katharina von Kitzing, in a statement made on 24 September 1990 (also to the Chronik), in which she wrote: ‘According to the previous statement there were “Prunkgelage” at the schloss, these I would have noticed as I was a daughter in the house. Of course there were feasts but they were family affairs mostly … In conclusion it was not the parties that caused the mismanagement of the estate it was the poor profit from agriculture from 1934. Also the German Wehrmacht took away some of the land for the training company for troops in Dallgow-Döberitz. In the end they had to sell it to the tax department, apart from the little lake and the park where my grandfather and grandmother are buried.’

  Chapter 6

  1 ‘Many of the country’s leading newspapers …’ In Elsie’s home town, the Berliner Zeitung and Vossische Zeitung were both published by the Jewish-owned Ullstein company, the latter being edited by Hans Zehrer who was married to a Jew. Meanwhile, the Berliner Abendpost was edited by Manfred George and the Berliner Tageblatt was edited by Theodor Wolff, both of whom were Jewish. Many of those writing for magazines and anti-Nazi publications such as Die Weltbühne were also Jewish.

  2 ‘Finally, in a carefully choreographed moment …’ In an interview with Hildegard Munk, recorded by her son, Klaus, and her grandson, Matthias, on 3 August 1984, a few days after the Enabling Act was passed a party was held at the Kroll Opera House to celebrate the inauguration of Franz von Papen as vice chancellor. Attending this lavish gala were the Alexanders’ neighbours from Glienicke, Professor Fritz Munk and his wife Hildegard, who had been invited by Papen. Seeing a slight man standing alone on the other side of the large hall, the professor approached: it was Adolf Hitler. According to the story told by Hildegard, ten years earlier, in 1923, as Fritz was on his way to Brazil for a conference, someone in the military had asked him to carry a stack of pamphlets to Rio. These flyers described how ‘in Munich there is a young labour leader who wants to combine socialist and patriotic ideals.’ Now, a decade later, the topic of Brazil came up in conversation and Fritz reminded the chancellor about the pamphlets. Laughing, Hitler said, ‘I realised later that 60 million Germans were more important than 60,000 German Brazilians.’ Hildegard also recalled that it was after the Papen gala that, like many others, they learned about the killings and the persecution and that, in 1934, she and Fritz realised their interest in Hitler had been mistaken: ‘we suddenly saw Hitler for who he was, and we were afraid,’ she said. Later, Fritz Munk was told by a party member ‘be careful, you are on the black list’.

  3 ‘A few weeks later, on 4 June 1933, the family gathered …’ Indeed, according to their son Peter Sussmann, Bella and Harold has been so anxious that Bella receive a British passport as soon as possible that they participated in a civil ceremony at Hampstead Town Hall in London a few weeks before the formal wedding service in Berlin.

  4 ‘on the history of the village, the Wollanks’ lawyer …’ Erwin Koch wrote a history of the village in October 1935. His lengthy report was included in the Groß Glienicke Chronik. In this he wrote: ‘Compared with 1838 there is 75% less land in the village being used for farming. The land lost was used either by settlers or for training camps for military. They mostly gave the unproductive land away.’ Later he wrote, that the ‘settlers had a strong impact on the village’. One result was that the ‘village has more income and a bigger budget, but having sold land the farmers’ income is less.’

  5 ‘After swapping pleasantries, Professor Munk spoke frankly …’ This memory comes from Fritz Munk’s son, Peter, who I interviewed in July 2014 sitting in the garden of the Munk weekend house in Groß Glienicke. Peter qualified this as follows: ‘I don’t know anything else about the rest of the conversation; however, I know, from later conversations, that this was an important situation for both men. But as I said, I was twelve years old at the time.’

  Chapter 7

  1 ‘finally stood trial at the end of August …’ The file on Robert von Schultz’s time in the SA and his subsequent trial can be found in the Bundesarchiv Berlin (File: VBS/4001006331).

  2 ‘On 2 November 1935, Adolf Hitler attended …’ The Luftwaffe Museum that is now located at the Gatow airfield contains a useful permanent exhibition about the airfield’s history from the 1930s to the present day.

  Chapter 8

  1 ‘To memorialise the day in crisp 16mm …’ In 2013, I was listening to an interview with Bella conducted by her nephew John Alexander, and came upon a passage in which she referred to film that her father had taken in Berlin. After sending an email to my family members asking if they knew anything about this, I received an email from Bella’s son Peter Sussmann, letting me know that ‘there might be some old canisters in the attic’. A few weeks later the canisters’ contents were transferred from 16mm to digital format. The results were extraordinary:
three separate films shot in the early 1930s of the family’s time at Groß Glienicke, the quality near perfect, showing the Alexanders enjoying life before the terror of the Third Reich.

  2 ‘In the afternoons, she kept an eye on her grandfather …’ Lucien’s obituary was published in the Berliner Börsenberichte newspaper: ‘Lucien Picard, 80, well-loved banker and Swiss Counsal to Frankfurt, died, Basel, Switzerland, 22 December, 1935. Born, 25 October, 1855, in Hegenheim, in the Alsace, to Sophia Dreyfuss, the daughter of the founder of the Swiss Dreyfuss Bank. By the time he retired in 1922, as the managing director of Commerz & Diskont Bank, Berlin, and partner in Lazard Speyer-Ellisen, Frankfurt, he was the “Doyen of German banking”.’

  3 ‘In due course, Elsie invited Erich …’ As it happened, Erich’s father was a freemason in the same lodge as Adolf Abraham, a Jewish dentist who, with his wife Anna, purchased a plot in Groß Glienicke at Seepromenade 41, about a kilometre south of the Alexanders’ house. Intending to live in it full-time when they retired, the house the Abrahams built was more substantial than that of the Alexanders’. Stunning in design, its garden landscaped by famous landscape architects Karl Förster and Hermann Mattern, it was featured in architectural magazines. With the rise of the Nazi Party, pressure increased on the Abrahams. In 1936, their only son Hans fled to England with his family. On 3 March 1939, Adolf Abraham died of a heart condition, and in September 1940, after she had been forced to dispose of her Berlin properties under the Nazi regime, Anna sold the house in Groß Glienicke to Friedrich Wintermantel, a family contact. On 4 March 1943, Anna was picked up from her apartment at Georg-Wilhelm-Straße 12 in Berlin and deported, first to Theresienstadt, and then, on 18 May 1944, to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. Hans Abraham died in 1950 and his widow moved to New York where she died in 2004. After the war, the house was first occupied by locals and Soviet officers and then used as a doctor’s surgery. Later, the writer Helga Schütz lived at the house with the film director Egon Günther. In the 1990s, Hans Abraham’s widow made a restitution claim, but finally agreed with the heirs of Fritz Wintermantel that they should retain the house. The house and its garden are again lived in by descendants of Fritz Wintermantel, have been beautifully restored, and have been listed as a Denkmal, or a historic monument. In April 2015, a ‘Stolperstein’, or memorial plate, was laid at Georg-Wilhelm-Straße 12, Berlin, in memory of Anna Abraham.