The House by the Lake

by Thomas Harding

  At the end of the year, and once again exhausted from his labours, Will joined Eliza and Peter at the lake house. It was extremely cold, the uninsulated walls offering scant protection from the winter chill, but it was romantic. The lake had frozen thick after a month’s frigid temperatures and, wrapping Peter in many layers of clothes, hats and a blanket, they could walk safely across its surface, dusted with sparkling icy crystals, amazed by the quiet beauty of the place. Back at the house, warmed by the fire and hot drinks, they agreed that they should try to buy the property. It would make their occupancy more stable, more official and, given the Alexanders’ precarious situation, they should be able to get a good price. It would be a sound investment.

  So in January 1938, Will Meisel contacted the lawyer, Dr Goldstrom, and asked if the Alexanders would be willing to sell the property. Legally, this was a complex proposition, for while the Alexanders had built and owned the house and the outbuildings – the caretaker’s house, the greenhouse, pump house and garage – the land underneath was still owned by Robert and Ilse von Schultz.

  Believing that the Alexanders would be desperate to unload the property2, the Meisels offered the below-market price of 6,000 reichsmarks, a little under half of its actual worth. Such a purchase would include the leasehold to the land, as well as the buildings and any ownership interest that the Alexanders had in the plot.

  Through their lawyer, the Alexanders rejected the Meisel offer, unwilling to give up on their weekend house for such a paltry sum. The failed bid was noted in a report written by the Berlin tax office: regarding the ‘land leased by the expatriated Jew Alfred John Alexander, Gross-Glienicke, vineyard parcel 3 … the negotiations did not reach a conclusion’.

  As the little house began to change with its new occupants, so too did the village. Photographs from this time show a generation of children growing progressively more militaristic. Boys in shorts and rolled-up sleeves, smiling and with hair that fell beneath the ears, their bodies relaxed and casual, became boys wearing Hitler Youth uniforms, hair cropped short, standing stiff and erect. The same could be said of the girls, whose long hair was cut or tied up in a tight bun, their dresses falling more conservatively below the knees, their smiles now erased.

  By November 1938, though many of the settler houses in Groß Glienicke continued to be owned by Jewish families, very few lived there. Most had found a way to flee Germany, begging and bribing their way out to England, America and Palestine. Those who remained were either exceptionally brave, or in hiding. One who chose to stay was Rudi Ball, the ice-hockey champion and captain of the German team. He had become too famous to persecute, as the only German Jew to compete in the 1936 Winter Olympics, which had been held in southern Germany. He had been controversially dropped from the national squad only to be reinstated after his teammates threatened to strike. Most weekends Rudi stayed at his small house on Uferpromenade 57 in Groß Glienicke.

  The village’s now vacant houses were easy targets for local thugs. On the evening of 9 November 1938, a group of men gathered outside the Badewiese, the lakefront restaurant on Seepromenade that had been built next to the Groß Glienicke public beach the year before. Most of these men had been members of Robert von Schultz’s Stahlhelm brigade. Some wore swastika bands around their arms; others wore SA and SS uniforms. Walking across the road3, they pushed their way through the gate of number 9 and set fire to the house. This was the weekend home of Dr Alfred Wolff-Eisner, a renowned physician and researcher.

  The authorities and citizens of Groß Glienicke were well aware of the assault on the Jewish family’s home4. It could hardly have been in a more prominent position, situated as it was opposite the village’s public beach. Yet nobody, not even the fire brigade, attempted to put out the fire. By the next morning the house had burned to the ground. Luckily, nobody was hurt in the attack as the Wolff-Eisner family were at their home in Berlin.

  The destruction of the Wolff-Eisner house was part of a nationwide pogrom against the Jews, in which over 250 synagogues and seven thousand shops and businesses were attacked across Germany in what became known as Kristallnacht. The following morning, two thousand Jewish men were rounded up in Berlin, and marched to Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp located to the north of the city. In the following weeks, tens of thousands of Jews fled the country, abandoning their businesses and property. From this point forward, it was extremely rare to see a Jewish family in Groß Glienicke.

  Despite the loss of several key workers, Edition Meisel continued to grow. Will had, for the first time in a while, cash to invest, and began to make enquiries about Jewish-owned businesses now appropriated by the state.

  On 23 November 1938, two weeks after Kristallnacht, Will wrote a letter to Hans Hinkel, the leader of the Reich Chamber of Culture, expressing his interest in purchasing businesses that had been aryanised.

  I have been a publisher for 12 years and am on the advisory board of the music publishing section of the Reich Chamber of Music. Furthermore, my employees have the professional expertise to guarantee that I will fulfil all tasks demanded of a music and stage publisher covering serious music and stage literature to entertainment. I am therefore interested in all the publishing companies being considered at present, but above all Edition Peters in Leipzig and Universal Edition in Vienna. Where applicable I am willing to participate financially, within the limits of my resources. If you see a possibility of engaging me or my publishing company, please notify me accordingly.

  While he was waiting to hear back from Hinkel, Will wrote to Dr Goldstrom, again expressing his desire to acquire the lake house. And again, Dr Goldstrom said that the Alexanders were unwilling to sell the property for the price offered. Frustrated, Will told his wife that they had once more been rejected.

  In the spring of 1939, the family’s mood lifted when Eliza announced that she was pregnant. As the weather grew warmer, the Meisels spent almost every weekend at the house, focused more on family fun than questions of property. By the time it was warm enough to swim in the lake, a bump was noticeable underneath Eliza’s swimsuit.

  That summer, the house’s ownership position dramatically changed. On 24 July 1939, the names of Alfred, Henny, Hanns and Paul Alexander appeared in the Reichsgesetzblatt, as part of the Ausbürgerungslisten, lists of those (mostly Jews) whose German naturalisation had been revoked. Word of this filtered back to the Alexander family in London. They were now officially stateless.

  Less public, and unknown to the Alexanders, was a letter which the Gestapo had sent on 22 March to the Berlin tax office5. The letter contained an itemised list of the Alexanders’ assets that were to be seized, including:

  The rented plot of land in Groß Glienicke Weinberg parcel 13 [sic], with:

  I. A weekend house, dimensions approx. 12m × 10m, with open veranda, seven rooms living and bedrooms with furniture

  II. Small caretaker’s house 3.5 × 5m, 2 rooms and kitchen

  III. Greenhouse, 5 × 10m

  IV. Potting shed 4 × 10m

  V. Garage 3 × 9m

  Quietly, almost without notice, the Gestapo had taken ownership6. The Alexanders had lost the lake house.

  A few months after the government’s seizure of the Alexanders’ property, Ilse and Robert von Schultz received their own disturbing news from the Berlin tax office.

  For years now, they had struggled to manage the financial affairs of the Groß Glienicke Estate. Despite selling vast tracts of land to the airfield in Gatow, and to developers who were building weekend residences on the lake’s eastern side, they had been unable to make ends meet. After numerous attempts to collect what was due, the tax authority wrote to Robert and Ilse, declaring that they were in default and that their Groß Glienicke property had been confiscated by the government in lieu of unpaid taxes.

  Over the following months, the estate was carved up between various government departments. The land to the north of the schloss, for instance, was requisitioned by the German Army, who decided it would become ho
me to the nation’s 67th Tank Regiment. Soon, a team of labourers began constructing a series of two-storey grey-stoned barracks. Next to the barracks a dozen Panzerhallen, or tank hangars, were built, and around the facility a tall perimeter fence was erected. With the airfield to the east, the training grounds on the Döberitzer Heath to the west, and now the tank regiment to the north, Groß Glienicke was all but surrounded by military encampments.

  On 1 September 1939, the lightweight tanks of the 67th Groß Glienicke Tank Regiment fired up their engines at the Czechoslovakian border, and, along with other German forces, rolled into south-western Poland. Pushing rapidly past the city of Krakow and on through the vast Swietokrzyski Forest, they overcame stiff but inadequate resistance, and quickly reached the foot of the Lysa Góra mountain, six hundred kilometres east of Berlin.

  The Polish invasion triggered the existing mutual defence agreements between Poland, France and Britain, obliging France and Britain to declare war on Germany on 3 September. They were soon followed by other members of the British Commonwealth: Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Canada. Within weeks, the Soviet Union had invaded eastern Poland. The Second World War had begun.

  The incursion into Poland was accepted by most of the German population as a defensive measure. Guided by the Nazi Party, the press had for years demanded that its leaders stand up to the international bullies, as they saw it, who had not only imposed financial hardships on Germany but had seized its land. This near-universal support for military intervention was echoed in Groß Glienicke. The few dissenting voices – the Jews, the communists, the politically critical – had long been silenced by Hitler’s terror tactics.

  At the start of the Second World War, there were a little over seven hundred people living in the village. Since 1935, eighteen-year-old boys had been routinely conscripted into the military, with the result that the village lost around ten sons each year. With the conflict’s start, all reservists were called up, including the children of Professor Munk, the Meisels’ next-door neighbour. Local volunteers also signed up for service. The best-known former resident to enlist was Robert von Schultz, the village’s now dispossessed landlord.

  Most of those too young, too old, or physically unable to fight remained in the village, working in the fields and the woods as they had always done. Some of these villagers were employed at the Gatow airfield, where a noticeable increase in activity could be discerned. Given that the runway was orientated so that the aircraft flew directly over their houses, the villagers couldn’t help but notice that more planes were taking off and landing at the airfield.

  To prepare for the war, an air-raid siren was installed at the Drei Linden. It was considered central to the village and therefore in earshot of most people. The villagers dug trenches, built bunkers and practised air-raid drills in readiness for possible aerial attacks. Although there would be no enemy raids until August 1940, the Luftwaffe put a number of anti-aircraft guns to the north and west of the village, positioning them so that they could shoot down any planes hoping to bomb the airfield. Teenage boys were trained to be Flakhelfer, or gun assistants. Hearing the siren sound, they would run to their posts, help operate the gun, and seek potential targets flying across the night sky.

  Other than this, the start of the war had little impact on village life. School classes continued unchecked, shop shelves were adequately stocked and church services were well attended. The outbreak of war didn’t seem to affect the Berlin settlers either. Even while the nation readied for war, lawyers, artists and film stars continued to arrive in their chauffeured cars to spend the weekend at their cottages. That is, until the weather became too cold, and their houses were closed up for the winter.

  On 18 January 1940, Eliza gave birth to a son, whom they called Thomas. Now that they had two children, the Meisels felt an urgent need to resolve their interest in the lake house. They were accustomed to owning things – houses, music rights, businesses – and the fact that they were tenants made them feel uncomfortable. The house didn’t feel like it was theirs; if they owned the property, they could decorate it the way they liked, and throw away any furniture they found ugly or unnecessary. Either they would find a way to purchase the property, they decided, or they should look for somewhere else.

  On 17 February, four weeks after the birth of his son, Will travelled to the tax office at 33–34 Luisenstrasse in the Berlin suburb of Moabit. There he met a bureaucrat recorded only as ‘J.A.’7, who confirmed that the state had seized the Glienicke property from the ‘Jew Alfred John Alexander’ and that8, under the terms of the Law for the Revocation of Citizenship, it was now owned by the Third Reich. If Will was interested, they would indeed be willing to sell him the lake house.

  ‘J.A.’ then suggested a price of 3,030 reichsmarks – less than 25 per cent of its true worth – a sum which included the buildings, the leasehold arrangement with Schultz, along with the furnishings and furniture that the Alexanders had left behind. A week later, Will and Eliza Meisel wrote to the tax official agreeing to this proposal. Beneath their signatures they added the words Heil Hitler.

  Though the land beneath continued to be owned by the Third Reich, the lake house itself was now owned by Will and Eliza Meisel.

  11

  MEISEL

  1942

  EARLY IN THE morning of 20 January 19421, a line of black saloon cars pulled up at a white-stoned building located on the edge of Wannsee Lake, just three kilometres south of the lake house in Groß Glienicke.

  Out from the vehicles stepped some of the highest ranked members of the Nazi Party, the SS and the civil service. Among them were RSHA chief Reinhard Heydrich (one of Heinrich Himmler’s deputies), Adolf Eichmann (head of evacuation and Jewish affairs for the RSHA) and Heinrich Müller (the head of the Gestapo).

  The purpose of the meeting in Wannsee was to inform and coordinate the various government ministries regarding the so-called Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Over the course of the day, matters of racial purity were debated, along with methods of selection and transportation. The size of each country’s Jewish population was circulated, and long discussions were held about who would be considered Jewish, such as the children of mixed marriages, converts and their descendants. With the selection policy established, the remaining question was one of logistics: how to transport the Jews to the camps and which Jews should be sent. Although some 250,000 Jews had already fled Germany during the previous decade, a little over 200,000 remained – along with the millions of Jews who lived in the countries that had been recently occupied, such as Poland, Holland, France and Denmark, as well as those who lived in nations that might be invaded soon, such as England, Ireland and Spain.

  It was at this meeting, and shrouded in the highest secrecy, that a blueprint was agreed for the extermination of European Jewry. The decisions made at the Wannsee Conference were soon put into action, and could be seen not only in the streets of Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg, but also in those of Amsterdam, Paris and Budapest. Across Europe, Jews were seized from their houses and places of work, and then transported on mysterious trains to the ‘East’.

  In Groß Glienicke, word filtered through that former Jewish residents had been deported to Theresienstadt2, including Alfred Wolff-Eisner and Anna Abraham. Similarly, Will Meisel discovered that two of his former composers – Willy Rosen and Harry Waldau – had been picked up at their Berlin homes and hadn’t been seen since. Upon hearing about the worsening persecution of the remaining German Jewish population, a very small number of non-Jewish music publishers and composers – fearful for their own lives or those of their loved ones – now left the country3. The vast majority, including Will Meisel, chose to stay.

  Will’s company, Edition Meisel, had changed considerably over the previous few years. The majority of his staff had either been conscripted into the army or been let go, because the company could no longer afford their services. From the high point in the 1930s, when they had employed twelve people, they were now dow
n to just three: the manager Paul Fago, the creative director Hanns Hartmann and Will himself.

  Despite the loss in personnel, they were still able to sell the company’s back catalogue of music. At this time, the radio broadcasters had an appetite for Schlager Musik, or popular music, which had blossomed in the 1930s and was something Edition Meisel excelled at. Light in tone and typically upbeat, the music reminded listeners of life’s sentimental moments. Occasionally, Will agreed to compose a military march, with such titles as ‘Wir sind Kameraden’, but mostly he stuck to publishing non-political songs. Driving the company’s success was Hanns Hartmann, who travelled the country, promoting the music to radio stations, music halls and bandleaders.

  Like most of their friends, Will and Eliza Meisel read the Berlin newspapers to follow the war’s progress. Yet, fully aware that such news was severely restricted by the Ministry of Propaganda and its leader Joseph Goebbels, they also listened to the BBC. For while the government had announced that it was illegal to listen to enemy radio stations – and that such a crime could be punishable by death – it was fairly simple to avoid being caught. Safest of all was to listen at the lake house, where they were spending an increasing amount of time, away from Berlin and prying eyes.

  From the BBC they learned that the scale of the hostilities had widened and that the momentum had shifted. In June 1941, reneging on the pre-war pact, Hitler’s forces had invaded Russia. A few months later, in December, the USA had entered the war, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Then, in a series of long-range sorties, RAF planes dropped bombs on German cities at an increasing distance from Britain. Though the first British air attack on Berlin had taken place on 25 August 1940, a large-scale assault was only launched on 7 November 1941, when Bomber Command sent more than 160 bombers to drop ordnance on the German capital. Since the raid was at the very limits of these planes’ range, the assault was ineffective, with most of the bombs missing their targets and more than twenty planes being shot down.