The House by the Lake

by Thomas Harding

  While Elsie felt sad not to have spent more time with Rolf, she was grateful to have been with him for his final years. A few weeks later, after packing up Rolf’s house, Elsie returned home to London, to live by herself once again.

  Perhaps it was this remembering of past times in Berlin with Rolf that had prompted Elsie. Or maybe it was because she had just turned eighty years old herself. Either way, three months after Rolf died, Elsie decided to take her grandchildren to Groß Glienicke.

  Inge Kühne, Elsie Harding and Wolfgang Kühne at the lake house

  In the living room, Elsie and her grandchildren met Inge. Wearing a flowery housecoat, slippers and oversized round glasses, she greeted them in a friendly, if guarded way.

  Inside the house it was dark and gloomy. Neither the standard lamp nor the light dangling from the ceiling was illuminated, while the pot plants and the net curtains hanging from the curtain rail blocked any natural light from entering the room. A threadbare blue carpet covered the living-room floor; the walls were covered with characterless pink paper, and the once-white square-patterned ceiling was yellowed by smoke. A line of knick-knacks and candles stood on the windowsill. Where there had once been a large red table and built-in benches, now stood a plump grey sofa and a similarly coloured love seat. Against the opposite wall stood a television, its screen flickering, the sound almost muted. Around the television stood a large wall cabinet, filled with yet more knick-knacks, ornamental plates and house plants.

  Elsie turned to the fireplace and said, ‘My father collected these tiles and brought them from Belgium.’ Then, pulling out a sepia-colour photograph from her bag, she beckoned Wolfgang over, and told him to ‘Pass auf!’, pay attention! As she passed the photograph of the Delft tiles to Wolfgang, she used the informal du – appropriate for family, friends and young children.

  ‘How nice, thank you,’ Wolfgang said, smiling as he took the photograph, apparently unperturbed by her bossy manner.

  ‘That is where we sat,’ Elsie continued, pointing to the sofa, ‘and over there was a door to my bedroom,’ she said, gesturing to the corner now covered with wallpaper, ‘… and there was my parents’ bedroom … and there was my brothers’ bedroom.’ Then, facing the windows with the pot plants, she added, ‘… and here in front of us was a big veranda.’

  ‘I built the wall later, this one with the windows,’ explained Wolfgang, somewhat apologetically.

  ‘Can you go to the lake?’ asked Elsie.

  ‘Now you can, but when the Wall was here you couldn’t. It ran along there,’ he said, sweeping his finger from left to right between the house and the lake.

  Walking back towards the front door, Wolfgang said, ‘This is where Frau Fuhrmann used to live. Do you know her?’

  ‘No,’ said Elsie, following close behind.

  ‘Frau Fuhrmann lived here with her son. After they left we took down the wall because the kitchen was too small.’

  ‘How clever!’ said Elsie, and then, pointing at the small room by the front door, added, ‘This used to be my grandfather’s room.’

  ‘This is where Roland now lives,’ said Wolfgang, opening the door.

  ‘Ah, hello, Roland!’ called Elsie.

  Wolfgang closed the bedroom door, not wanting to disturb his thirteen-year-old step-grandson, who neither said hello nor ventured out of his room to greet the former inhabitant.

  Back in the kitchen, Wolfgang gestured to a small electric stove in the corner: ‘We’re renovating at the moment – this is where a simple brick oven used to stand.’ He then led the group down to the lake, pointing out and remembering the many changes to the cottage, the pump house and the garden.

  Finally, it was time to say goodbye. Wolfgang invited them to come back in the summer, ‘when it’s nicer’. Shaking hands, they all smiled and said their thanks. Wolfgang and Elsie swapped telephone numbers and then gave each other a warm hug. As they walked back to the van Elsie lamented that where there had once been raspberry bushes and cherry trees, there was now a wasteland of dead grass and rubbish, and then added that her brother, Hanns, would have found the visit very interesting, though he would not have wanted to reclaim the house.

  ‘They have always been thinking’, Elsie said sadly of the Kühnes, ‘should we renovate, or will those people want it back?’

  At the house, Wolfgang and Inge felt relief. They had been surprised by Elsie’s visit, but glad that, unlike the Meisels, she had no intention of throwing them out. For now, at least, it seemed as if the house was theirs.

  Although there looked to be no major changes at the lake house for the time being, the village was undergoing its own dramatic changes. In early 1994, given that the Soviet forces were now withdrawing from Berlin, and the British no longer wished to incur the financial burden of running Gatow, the new German federal government announced that they would be regaining control of the airfield.

  For almost fifty years the airfield had been occupied by Soviet and then British forces. During that time, Gatow had been visited by prime ministers, politicians, and even Princess Diana. The end to the British rule at Gatow was marked on 27 May 19943, with a final royal visit by Prince Charles. The day was commemorated by a series of carefully orchestrated ceremonies and speeches, culminating with a ‘Farewell Britain’ parade to the beat of a big bass drum. According to The Times, the event marked ‘the beginning of a long farewell to the city … part of the grand retreat of Western and Russian armies from united Germany.’ Three weeks later, on 18 June, the handover formalities were complete, and Gatow was officially ceded back to German control. For a short while, the airfield remained open to air traffic, but without the need for another regional airfield, it was closed. Over the next few years, the NVA barracks adjacent to Gatow were knocked down – including the old Panzerhalle4, which had been a squat for an art collective since the fall of the Wall – and the area was redeveloped as a housing estate.

  The villagers welcomed the airfield’s closure, and with it the noise and flashing lights of night-time flights. But it soon became apparent that the redevelopment would not benefit them. The new houses were priced out of their reach, and too few in number to accommodate the growing number of locals who had been displaced in any case.

  Many of the Easterners felt they had become victims of history. After the collapse of the DDR, they had been expected to adapt to the culture and economic realities of the West. Almost none of what they had been familiar with had survived into the 1990s. There was no more party or Stasi, no more processions or Pioneers, no more guaranteed state employment or housing. Very few visible aspects of Eastern culture remained: the traffic lights’ green arrow, prompting vehicles to turn right; the Sandmännchen, a character from a DDR children’s television programme; and the Ampelmännchen, the cutely hatted man that flashed green on pedestrian crossings, who survived only after a Berlin-wide vote.

  This cultural war expressed itself in Groß Glienicke as a debate over street names. Many of the newcomers wanted to change Kurt-Fischer-Straße – named after the head of the Volkspolizei – and Wilhelm-Pieck-Straße, named after the DDR’s first president. The newcomers, with the support of some of the ‘old’ Groß Glienicke residents, won this battle, with the streets renamed as Am Gutstor and Sacrower Allee respectively.

  A battle was also waged over the monument to Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the Communist Party during the Weimar Republic. Many argued that this too should be removed, but others, led by the radio journalist Winfried Sträter, said that it should be preserved as a reminder of the village’s history. In the end, Sträter’s proposal won. The tension between those in the village who had been born in the East and those born in the West remained.

  30

  KÜHNE

  1999

  Lake house, 1990s

  BY 1999, HAVING lived at the lake house for forty years – by far the longest of any inhabitant – Wolfgang had left his mark upon the property.

  It was not just his clothes in the cupboard, his
shoes by the front door, or his empty bottles in the cellar. From the walled-in French windows to the wallpapered kitchen, from the chimneys teetering above the roofline to the lopsided Wintergarten that still guarded the front facade, from the half-collapsed chicken shed to the overgrown vegetable patch, evidence of his work could be seen everywhere.

  Early on the morning of 25 March 1999, Wolfgang told Inge that he was going to collect some eggs. From the kitchen window, Inge watched as he walked across the yard to the chicken enclosure. Closing the metal gate behind him, she saw him stoop and then collapse. Rushing out, she found her husband short of breath and unable to speak. She half-dragged, half-carried him back inside, and called the doctor. For some reason she did not call the emergency services. More than six hours later the doctor arrived to examine Wolfgang, who was still unable to speak, and said that he might have suffered a stroke, but they would not know until they conducted tests. Shortly afterwards, Wolfgang was transported to the Bergmann Hospital in Potsdam, the same building in which Bernd had awoken from his coma.

  Inge phoned the family. ‘Your father isn’t well,’ she told Bernd. ‘He was picked up by the ambulance. They’re not sure about the diagnosis.’ Bernd drove over to see his father. Wolfgang was now conscious, and could smile, but still could not speak. The doctors confirmed that he had indeed suffered a stroke. A week later, on 2 April, Bernd returned to the hospital to be told by a nurse that his father had died. Wolfgang was sixty-five years old.

  Six days later, on a mild and drizzly Thursday morning, Wolfgang was buried in the small cemetery next to the Groß Glienicke church. It was a secular service, attended by Inge, Wolfgang’s four children and a handful of friends from the village. In all, fewer than twenty people were present. The coffin was lowered slowly into the ground, and then, starting with Inge, each mourner took a small shovel and dropped earth onto the coffin.

  Soon afterwards, Inge Kühne decided to move out:1 she would be unable to look after the lake house by herself. The house was still without central heating and it was unlikely that she would be able to fire up all the stoves needed to keep the place warm. The exterior siding needed a coat of varnish, some of the tiles were missing from the roof, the trees – now growing dangerously close the house – needed to be pruned. So in May 1999, Inge told Roland she would soon be moving into an old people’s home in Potsdam.

  A few weeks later, Inge set about emptying the house of most of its contents. She sold the beehives and the garden equipment. She took with her the bed from the master bedroom, the grey love seat from the living room, as well as a few personal belongings, and squeezed them into her new accommodation. With the exception of the kitchen furniture, the rest was either sold or given away.

  Shortly after his father’s funeral, Bernd himself was rushed to hospital. His one remaining kidney had collapsed. When he asked his doctor what might have caused the problem, he was told it was probably the ‘vitamin pills’ he had taken as a boy. Since the Wall had come down, there had been numerous documentaries on television investigating the doping of young athletes in the DDR, and he concluded that the pills had been steroids or worse.

  A month later, when Bernd finally returned to the village, he discovered that the house was almost empty. He was furious. His father had promised to pass substantial savings on to his children; his stepmother had offered him the pick of his father’s best suits. It was the last time he visited the house in which he had grown up. He never spoke to his stepmother again.

  Bernd contacted his lawyer to find out if he could lodge a claim on the lake house. After all, his family had lived at the property since 1958, far longer than any other occupant. There had been no news from the Meisels since Peter’s visit in 1991. It would be a shame to see the house go to ruin.

  It didn’t take long for the lawyer to respond: since they had only ever been tenants, the Kühnes would be unable to establish an ownership interest. As to who actually owned the property, the lawyer had no idea. Presumably, the local government would resolve the matter soon.

  As Inge was leaving the lake house for the last time, she handed the front-door keys to her grandson. ‘It’s yours to enjoy,’ she told him.

  Roland – known as Sammy in the village – was by now nineteen and working as an apprentice carpenter in Potsdam. When he realised that the house was his, he invited a friend, Marcel Adam, to join him. Two years younger than Roland and a foot shorter, Marcel was also an apprentice carpenter, albeit at a different firm. They had known each other for over a decade, having both attended the village school.

  With his grandmother now gone, Roland and his friend organised their new pad. Roland dragged his mattress into his grandparents’ room, along with an old television set and a wooden chair. Meanwhile, Marcel had use of a suite of three rooms: the spare bedroom which had been Roland’s, the chauffeur’s annexe that had once served as the Kühnes’ kitchen, and the small bedroom next to it. Lugging a bed from his parents’ apartment, along with some personal belongings, Marcel made the space his own. The kitchen remained as it was, including the table, chairs, washing machine and cooker. The Blue Room where Bernd had slept was left empty.

  Having transformed the living room into a games room, with two monitors set up back to back, two consoles and two chairs, the boys spent hours immersed in games such as Command and Conquer. The built-in bookshelves installed by Wolfgang in the 1970s remained in place, but Inge’s knick-knacks and house plants were replaced by unwashed plates, empty beer bottles and magazines.

  Rarely cooking for themselves, the boys ate döner, wrapped in folded paper plates, purchased at the kebab shop that had opened in a corner of the old Drei Linden building. They had grand ambitions for the house. While they played video games, they discussed the improvements they would make: painting the bedrooms and patching up the crumbling chimneys, hanging new lights and bringing in some modern furniture, filling in the holes in the bathroom floor – at one point a rat stole the pants Marcel had left lying by the bathtub. They also planned the parties they would host and debated which music they would play. Most of all, they discussed girls. Who in the village they fancied. What it would take to get girls to move in with them.

  Marcel, Matthias and Roland

  Before long, their fantasies came true. The house played host to huge parties every weekend. Each of the boys had a girl staying with them, they were drinking vast quantities of alcohol, and smoking weed. The only thing that did not happen were the home improvements, although they did organise for a repairman from the local government to fix the chimneys.

  When summer came, Roland and Marcel and ten friends constructed a permanent camp at the water’s edge, erecting an array of tents of various shapes and colours. During the day they headed out into the lake in two pedalos and two rowing boats, taking food and a large box of beer, slowly making their way to the islands at the centre of the lake, or joining up with friends further down the shore. When not on the water, they took turns riding bicycles down the steep slope from the back of the house, along the makeshift jetty and into the water, or competed as to who could perform the most somersaults off the rope swing that had been tied to one of the lakefront’s willows. Towards the evening they would congregate on the roof of the house, smoking, drinking and telling stories.

  At night, the campers were often joined by thirty or forty friends and acquaintances. Sitting around a fire, they sang along as a ghetto blaster blared the latest chart music from Berlin’s new radio stations, Fritz and Energy. Sometimes, Roland and Marcel called in requests on the mobile phone they shared. One favourite was ‘Dark Place’ by Böhse Onkelz2, a punk anthem lamenting the mistreatment of young people, with lyrics such as ‘We wait for death wasting our time doing what you expect of us’. Not all their requests were as morbid. ‘Waiting for Tonight’ by Jennifer Lopez was frequently asked for by Roland’s friend Matthias, and whenever the radio station obliged, the group would cheer and, at the appropriate moments, sing out ‘Waiting for Matthias’.

/>   Around the village the property became known as the Strand, with people agreeing to see each other ‘later at the Strand’. Occasionally the boys organised a bigger event – over two hundred people crammed onto the property for a birthday party held for Marcel’s girlfriend for example – but usually their gatherings were informal, and everyone was welcome, providing guests brought their own alcohol and drugs.

  The neighbours mostly tolerated the parties taking place at the Strand. When the noise became unbearable, Cordula Munk called the police, who would then visit, ask the boys to ‘turn things down a bit’, and move on. It became violent only once, when an elderly neighbour threatened to hit Marcel, only to be promptly punched by one of Marcel’s friends.

  Throughout this period, the boys continued to care for the house in their own way. Marcel was particularly eager to maintain a tidy living space. The front lawn was occasionally trimmed with an old mower Marcel had borrowed from his parents. The small pond Wolfgang had dug in front of the house was replenished with fifty goldfish given to Marcel by his father. Roland took on the responsibility of keeping the pond clean and the goldfish fed, often sitting next to it on a plastic chair like his step-grandfather, watching the fish swim round and round.

  People who visited the house at this time commented that, while it was untidy and unkempt, it was not a wreck. The walls were intact, the electricity remained on, the stoves were well cared for, the windows weren’t cracked and the plumbing worked. Inevitably, however, given their hard living, the boys’ jobs suffered. Persuading a friendly doctor to write a note saying they had some illness, they frequently missed days at work. When they did show up, they were often hung-over and unable to perform their duties. Sometime towards the end of the summer of 2000, Marcel’s employer threatened to throw him off his apprenticeship if he did not radically improve his behaviour. Hearing that their son’s career was now in jeopardy, Marcel’s parents told him that if he didn’t move back home, they would cut him off.