The House by the Lake

by Thomas Harding

  2 ‘Next, a second barbed-wire fence …’ Part of the description of the Wall being built in Groß Glienicke over the course of the 1960s comes from Helga Schütz, who moved into a house two hundred metres down the shore from the lake house on Seepromenade. Describing the fortification of the Wall in the mid-1960s, when the fence was replaced by the concrete wall, Helga recalled, ‘For one moment it looked like a beach, a flattened beach.’ When asked how she felt about the Wall being built between her house and the lake, she said, ‘The Wall was not the problem, the situation was the problem,’ and then added, ‘We didn’t believe it was happening, it was one step and then the next.’

  Chapter 22

  1 ‘The social evening was held at the Nedlitz fire station …’ The descriptions come from Lothar and Sieglinde Fuhrmann, who I met in 2014.

  2 ‘In February 1965 …’ The dates of residence for the house by the lake can be found, for the post-war years, at the city of Potsdam archive.

  3 ‘If the Fuhrmanns were pleased with their new accommodation, the Kühne family members were happier still …’ The description of the Kühnes’ early days at the house come from Irene, who I interviewed at her apartment in Potsdam in the summer of 2014.

  Chapter 23

  1 ‘In a pale yellow coat and matching yellow hat …’ The details of this visit were reported in The Times, 28 May 1965, under the headline BERLIN CROWDS CHEER THE QUEEN.

  2 ‘By now, it was apparent that the villagers could be separated …’ This analysis comes from Sylvia Fiedler, who was born in Groß Glienicke in 1963, lived there until 1982 and later was executive editor for a local newspaper. ‘People adapted to the situation,’ she said. ‘Some people would say “don’t tell me stuff as I will have to share it”.’

  3 ‘On 13 August 1966, dressed in their Thälmann Pioneers …’ According to the Chronik, by 1966 the village was comprised of the following: 1,719 residents of whom 501 were male working-age adults and 628 were female working-age adults, with 215 pensioners, eighty-seven teenagers, and the rest children under fourteen years of age. Of these, 104 worked for the Volkspolizei, 282 worked in Potsdam, ten in Berlin, 110 worked at the Max Reimann factory, fifty-one were farmers, thirty-five in retail, and the rest were spread across various professions (such as taxi drivers, hairdressers and electricians).

  4 ‘According to the editor of the Chronik …’ The Groß Glienicke Chronik was started in 1956 by Johannes Sieben, one of Bernd and Lothar’s schoolteachers. Halfway between a scrapbook and a local newspaper, the Chronik would become the official history of the village for the next forty years. As a party-sanctioned initiative, the Chronik came with its own yellow-covered instruction manual. Considered politically reliable and well respected within the community, Sieben was hand-picked by the local party representatives to edit the Chronik. In one entry, Sieben explained his view of the Chronik: ‘In these books you can see how the socialist development of the people’s education is reflected.’ Elsewhere, in an article for a local newspaper, the Potsdamer Blick, he clarified the purpose of the Chronik: to capture the ‘historic epoch’ in which they then lived, and ‘In the future, knowledge-hungry youth will read this and add to it and learn about the origins of socialism and be thankful for this’. Whenever Sieben attended an event that he considered of historical importance – a speech by a local party chairman, the seven hundredth anniversary of the village, an anniversary of the Chronik itself – he wrote a short report and pasted it into the Chronik. To this he added stories published about the village in the Potsdam newspapers. For example, Sieben’s view of the Wall was: ‘our government took the necessary measures to protect our freedom and secure our borders against West Berlin. Of course these measures are painful to the citizens, to the inhabitants of this rural beautiful landscape. This border protects us from agents and saboteurs and allows us to build our peaceful republic.’ After the fall of the Wall, the Chronik was edited in a more liberal fashion, residents were able to contribute stories, even adding material from before 1989. By 2015 there were forty-seven volumes of the Chronik.

  5 ‘On a few occasions, they were able to hit …’ Bernd was not alone in enjoying this game. The head of the Groß Glienicke border patrol regiment, Major Peter Kaminski, recalled that his children often played it. When the trigger was struck, a signal was sent to the nearest watchtower, causing a flashing red light to illuminate the part of the fence that was hit. Kaminski and the other guards called these ‘disco lights’.

  6 ‘In the evenings, after supper, they often watched television …’ The Western television reception in Groß Glienicke was strong, as it was in large parts of the DDR. Those areas where it was weak were known as Tal der Ahnungslosen, or ‘Valley of the Clueless’. The two main areas of poor signal were in the far north-east next to the Baltic Sea and the far south-east, near Dresden.

  7 ‘The first exchange took place …’ There would be two other exchanges at Glienicke Bridge. In 1985, twenty-three American agents who had been held across Eastern Europe were exchanged for one Polish and three Soviet agents. Finally, in 1986, the dissident Anatoly Sharansky and three Western agents were swapped for the sleeper agent Karl Koecher and four other Eastern agents.

  Chapter 24

  1 ‘Irene spent the afternoon shopping …’ The description of shops in the village comes from my talks with various residents, including Burkhard Radtke, Günther Wittich, Irene and Bernd Kühne, as well as articles archived in the Chronik.

  2 ‘As part of the celebrations, the local schoolchildren …’ This poem is featured in an article archived in Volume 3 of the Chronik, page 50.

  3 ‘At the age of fourteen, Bernd … was inducted into the party’s senior youth movement, the Freie Deutsche Jugend …’ The FDJ was formed on 7 March 1946 as the party’s youth league. By 1989, 2.3 million were members of the FDJ, close to 90 per cent of the DDR’s fourteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds.

  4 ‘These two agreements … on 17 May 1972 …’ It was around this time that Elsie Harding took her daughter Vivien to see the lake house. It was then impossible, however, to visit, given its location within East Germany’s border security zone, so they drove to the West Berlin side of the Groß Glienicke Lake to look at the house. Vivien later recalled that her mother held a pair of binoculars to her eyes and pointed to her old house just visible above the Berlin Wall on the other side of the lake. ‘That is Glienicke, that is the house,’ she said. ‘You can see how close the house was to the lake, you can see how beautiful the surroundings are.’ Frustrated by not being able to visit and inspired by her mother’s stories, Vivien said that she felt a mixture of powerful emotions. Her mother, by contrast, appeared cool and businesslike. While she was willing to show the house – it was a physical object, a fact of history – she was not willing to express feelings.

  5 ‘Not long after … Wolfgang began drinking heavily again …’ These memories were shared by Irene Kühne when I met her with her son Bernd at her Potsdam apartment in the summer of 2014.

  6 ‘His moods became dark and bitter …’ The Fuhrmanns do not remember any abuse or violence taking place between the Kühnes while they were at the house between 1958 and 1965. ‘It was a wooden house,’ Lothar said, ‘we would have heard such a thing.’ If Irene’s memories are correct, then Wolfgang’s abuse likely started after the Fuhrmanns left in 1965.

  7 ‘Eventually, Wolfgang used …’ The word ‘connections’ was commonly used within the DDR as a euphemism for contact with powerful, secret or criminal individuals. Such individuals might work freelance on the black market or might be operating officially through the army, the Stasi or other government service.

  Chapter 25

  1 ‘Before competitions, Bernd drank a special vegetable soup that had been carefully prepared by his coaches …’ Anabolic steroids were widely distributed to athletes in the DDR, including children. They were often taken orally, in the form of a pill, and the recipients were typically unaware of what they were taking. Though particularly prevalent i
n sports such as swimming, track and field athletes were also given such drugs. Later many of those winning medals were stripped of the honours once news of the doping surfaced. According to the Institute of Biochemistry, at the German Sport University in Cologne, the synthetic anabolic steroid has numerous side effects, including increased risk of a heart attack, liver damage, masculinisation of women (deepening of voice, hair growth and infertility), and in men, erectile dysfunction and prostate disease. Some have estimated that as many as 10,000 DDR athletes were doped.

  2 ‘One spring evening in 1977 …’ Around this time, on 28 January 1977, a child who attended the Groß Glienicke school, located next to the Wall, was struck by a stray bullet. According to the Stasi report, the shot came from a nearby rifle range. The injured child was taken to hospital and later recovered. See Stasi Archive in Berlin (File: MfS ZAIG 23717).

  3 ‘Having mounted his black two-stroke Simson …’ Simson was a German company which produced popular guns, bicycles, motorcycles and cars. During the period of National Socialism, the company was seized from its Jewish owners, the Simsons. The Simson became one of the best-selling mopeds during the DDR period. The bikes were produced in Suhl until 2002.

  4 ‘Finally, Bernd had had enough …’ The date that the couple moved into the Drei Linden is noted in Bernd’s Stasi file. According to the file, Gaby officially moved into the apartment on 27 May 1981, a few months before their marriage, but in practice, she lived with Bernd from the start.

  5 ‘As such, it was located within the Grenzgebiet …’ The request to move to the border security zone was noted in Bernd’s Stasi file, stating that ‘There are no restrictions for him to move to the border zone’. A note in Bernd’s file on Gaby added that ‘There are no contrary indications from her work history’.

  6 ‘On his last day in the army, on 28 October 1983 …’ Bernd’s Stasi file records his army record as follows: ‘Army – 2 STK – Soldier – 4.5.1982–28.10.1983’. See Stasi Archive, Berlin (File: MfS BV PDM, Abt XIX, ZMA 3218).

  7 ‘particularly a certain kind of Lada …’ The Lada car that Bernd was referring to was probably the Lada 2107, the luxury model that was frequently driven by members of the Stasi.

  Chapter 26

  1 ‘They also co-founded the Groß Glienicke Carnival Club …’ According to the editor of the Chronik, the Carnival took place on 5 March 1987 and Bernd ‘took it very seriously, and that is why the event was so successful’.

  2 ‘He had heard of people trying to escape …’ There were other escape attempts in the village, some of which were known to Bernd and some not. Detailed reports were compiled by the Stasi of each known attempt. Here are two examples. On 23 June 1971, an unnamed typesetter, who was married and had two children, drove towards the Wall in the forest just north of the village. Dropping his motorbike, he walked towards ‘B Tower’, reaching the Wall at 20.38. He was immediately shot at, with fifty-four rounds fired. He was not hurt. At 21.20 he was arrested and later imprisoned. According to the file, the attempt was prompted by ‘his family breaking apart, and unhappiness at his workplace’. Another escape attempt took place on 3 August 1987, this time ten kilometres north of the village, at 02.15. Three people between twenty and twenty-four years old climbed over the Wall using a ladder. Seven shots were fired by border guards but nobody was injured. A letter was later found at one of the successful escapees’ homes. It read: ‘A bird in a cage cannot be happy.’ These files can be found at the Stasi Archive in Berlin (Files: MfS HAII 4647 and MfS HAI 14441).

  3 ‘The most famous local escape incident …’ Details of this case can be found in the Stasi Archive in Berlin, including a trove of newspaper articles, as well as a copy of the Stasi preliminary report (Files: MfS HAIX 5529 and MfS ZKG 1477).

  4 ‘The Stasi’s initial report …’ This report can be found at the Stasi Archive [Files: MfS HAIX 5529 and MfS ZKG 1477].

  5 ‘Ulrich Steinhauer’s death …’ For years, the case wound its way through the West German court system, with Bunge’s sentence, much to the dismay of East Germany, gradually reduced from murder to manslaughter, as the courts tried to balance his right for freedom with Steinhauer’s right to life. Complicating matters, Bunge’s testimony was deemed questionable when a forensic team found that Steinhauer had been shot in the back. But there were also problems with the DDR evidence, given that the border patrol had removed the body soon after the shooting, only to return it later that day, to allow West German television cameras to film it. Moreover, the border patrol could not remember where they had first discovered the two guards’ weapons.

  6 ‘Yet it was another escape …’ Details of this event come from Bernd Kühne, as well as General Hans Dieter Behrendt, who was in charge of the Glienicke Bridge at the time of escape, and who I interviewed in the summer of 2014.

  Chapter 27

  1 ‘With each day, the pressure mounted …’ According to Hans Dieter Behrendt, ‘The situation in DDR was shit! And we all knew it. We knew Honecker was weak, something had to happen, everyone knew that things could not continue as they were, all the institutions – Stasi, military, government, regiment, police – were all fighting each other.’

  2 ‘the kommandant tried to call the central office …’ Peter Kaminski suspects that this break in communication was caused by some senior members of the Stasi who wanted to stop the revolution from taking place. Hans Dieter Behrendt vehemently denies this, saying that the Stasi never stopped communications.

  3 ‘Calling the border guards in Staaken …’ According to Hans Dieter Behrendt, the kommandant of the border regiment in Groß Glienicke gave permission for pedestrians to cross the border but not cars. He disagrees with Major Kaminski on this. He says that in charge that day was a border guard called Horst Wieting, who called passport central control in Berlin for advice when the cars turned up, and said that he ‘didn’t know what to do’. Their response was simple: ‘Open the border.’

  4 ‘Hans Dieter Behrendt, the officer in charge of the Glienicke Bridge …’ In the days after the fall of the Wall, Behrendt visited a newly opened border crossing and found East and West German guards sitting together drinking coffee. When they saw a senior officer arrive, the guards jumped up and apologised. ‘We are so sorry,’ they said. Behrendt told them to relax. ‘Don’t worry, drink, eat.’ Later he told his boss, who reprimanded him about the lack of discipline, but Behrendt replied: ‘You can’t tell me what to do any more.’

  Chapter 28

  1 ‘Long-term Groß Glienicke residents now found strangers …’ The West German press was bursting with articles proffering advice on how to regain land in the East. One headline on 9 February 1990 read: TENS OF THOUSANDS WHO HAVE LOST EVERYTHING IN DDR ASK THE QUESTION ‘HOW CAN I GET MY CONFISCATED PROPERTY BACK?’ Another in the Berliner Zeitung read: THE WEST REAL ESTATE AGENTS ARE ALREADY WAITING FOR STARTING ORDERS! Another: HALF OF THE ALEX [ALEXANDERPLATZ] WITH THE MAST BELONGS TO US! Such articles advised their readers that ‘West German companies can buy land in DDR’ and ‘West Germans can inherit plots of land from children, parents, siblings’.

  2 ‘His efforts were recognised in November 1962, when the German government …’ His former creative director, Hanns Hartmann, received this same award on 30 January 1959.

  3 ‘In an interview with the Telegraf …’ In this same interview, in which he was asked about his current efforts, Will Meisel said, ‘I still have ideas for musicals but nobody is interested any more.’ Turning to Eliza, the journalist asked about her career, pointing out that when she was a young starlet she had appeared in the film Paganini and had received more fan mail than the heart-throb Iván Petrovitch, and in another film, Petersburg Nights, a critic had described her as ‘blindingly beautiful’. ‘I am here now fully for my husband,’ said Eliza demurely. ‘That is what he likes because he always wants to be centre of the family.’ Meisel added that he had given his wife a box set of her recorded songs for her birthday, and then, somewhat mournfully, that he had ‘mixed feeling
s’ about the past, because it reminded him that time was ‘volatile’ and ‘transient’.

  4 ‘He was taken to Müllheim Hospital …’ Will Meisel was buried in the Wilmersdorf cemetery, in West Berlin, and a memorial service was held in Neukölln, in the south-east of the city. Once his will was read, it became clear that the business, including his songs from the 1930s and 1940s, would remain in the family, and would be owned equally by Peter and Thomas Meisel. In September 1967, close to what would have been his seventieth birthday, an exhibition of Meisel’s work, including photographs, films and songs, was held at the Wilmersdorf town hall.

  5 ‘Yet their father’s death did not dampen his sons’ drive …’ On 22 January 1977, Billboard – the top-selling American music weekly – included a thirty-one-page promotional feature celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of Edition Meisel. This included a short biography of Will Meisel, a history of his company, and interviews with his sons. This Billboard special also featured over fifty adverts bearing congratulations and good wishes from music publishers and studios around the world, including EMI, CBS and Warner (WEA). Many of the personal messages came from Jewish music executives – such as industry legends Don Kirshner and Morris ‘Mo’ Levy. One of these adverts was paid for by Aaron Schroeder, a Jewish publisher who had written seventeen of Elvis’s songs, including five that went to number one. In his full-page spread, Schroeder wrote: ‘Dear Peter and Trudi, Meisel-tov!’