The House by the Lake

by Thomas Harding

  9 ‘On the stroke of ten, the six commissioners …’ The trial record can be found at the Landesarchiv Berlin (File: C 031-01-02/1281/1-3).

  10 ‘including the forty-year-old chairman and former communist, Alex Vogel …’ Alex Vogel had been a communist since the age of eighteen. He had been arrested in the months after the Nazis seized power and then he fled Germany, but returned in 1935. During the war he served in the Wehrmacht and then in a penal battalion, until he deserted in 1944. There were rumours that Vogel worked for the Gestapo, spying on the Russian embassy.

  11 ‘Vogel pushed him on this point. “Have Herr Fago and Herr Hartmann” …’ Eighteen months prior to Meisel’s tribunal one of the members of the denazification commission, Dr Flören, interviewed Paul Fago on 30 December 1946 about the relationship between Will Meisel and Hanns Hartmann. According to the file note written by Dr Flören: ‘On the question of whether there has been a hatred between Hartmann and Meisel, Fago said yes and no. Meisel without doubt has been doing a lot for Hartmann simply through allowing him and his wife to stay in Glienicke during the worst times. On the other side Hartmann assisted Meisel on professional matters. The question is did Meisel help him only for these reasons? Meisel has always been the ideas man but needed help to put these into actions. He has Hartmann and Fago by his side supporting him. Most of the fights were about views on artistry because Hartmann wanted to reach a high level where Meisel wanted simple operettas. Mr Fago also had problems with Meisel but it was the way of Meisel that he never broke relations which he needed for his professional work.’ This file is kept in the Landesarchiv Berlin (File: C 031-01-02/1281/1-3).

  12 ‘In order to prove that …’ Will Meisel had a history of being less than forthright in his questionnaires. For example, on his first Nazi Party questionnaire in 1941, he declared that his wife was a Protestant like himself, and then on subsequent documents he said she was Catholic. He was not the only one to dissemble in official documents. On the CV attached to her British questionnaire, Eliza Meisel wrote on 9 October 1947 that her artistic career stopped in 1935. In fact she starred in a 1941 film titled Ehe man Ehemann wird (see Bundesarchiv Berlin File: R/9361/V, signature 128869).

  13 ‘Of course, Vogel and his fellow commissioners didn’t know …’ The Gestapo and Berlin tax department files for Dr Alfred Alexander are held by the Potsdam Landesarchiv. Vogel did not have access to these during the trial as they did not form part of the records that were captured at the offices of the Reich Chamber of Culture.

  14 ‘The chairman of the proceedings then returned …’ Will Meisel gave a lengthy submission as part of the court proceedings, written on 13 February 1947. Along with a letter which asked for ‘full denazification’, he included a filled-out questionnaire, a book titled Will Meisel: Life and Songs, a photocopy of an article, along with sworn affidavits from friends and colleagues attesting to his good character. There was also a witness statement, written by Will himself, which ran for nine pages and included headings such as ‘Why I Joined the Party’ and ‘Political History’. Will’s statement concluded with the following passage: ‘Despite the twelve-year reign of terror, I have remained true to my democratic sentiment and mode of operating – and, as this composition proves, I undertook, insofar as the modest powers of an artist would permit, to work against the party and the machinery of war. I need lower my eyes before no one. I was, am and will remain a democrat! A heedless and hasty signature in no way identifies me with Nazi terror practices … The past twelve years have been very difficult because of my “anti” attitude. In my position as publisher I had to represent the interests of my authors before the competent authorities. Fist in pocket, I had to present a mask to the outside world. Denouncers were to be found among my best friends. I could erect a monument to myself today – considering my lack of caution – for so skilfully having evaded the concentration camp. I had not only to represent the interests of my author-clients but also my own interests as a composer. On top of that there was the finalising of performance commitments for my wife, the singer Eliza Illiard. After all, one had to make a living in this state. However, I believe that in the arts world there is none who could condemn me. The witnesses I have listed in the following will attest to my “anti” sentiment and the measures I took against the Nazi Party.’ See Landesarchiv Berlin (File: C 031-01-02/1281/1-3).

  15 ‘Vogel then said the last document … written by Hanns Hartmann … from Cologne …’ On 1 September 1947, Hartmann became director of Radio in Cologne. On 25 May 1955, he was elected to the board of the newly formed WDR and became its first creative director, running the company until 1960. He received the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Federal Cross of Merit, in 1959. He died on 5 April 1972 in Mindelheim, Germany. His wife, Ottilie, died at the couple’s apartment in Cologne on 26 July 1966.

  16 ‘In his statement, Hartmann said that it had been his idea to purchase Universal Edition …’ Universal Edition was founded in Vienna in 1901 and, until his death, was managed and owned by Emil Hertzka. The company published many of the world’s greatest composers, including Strauss, Mahler and Bartók. After his death in 1932, the ownership of Universal Edition passed to Jella Hertzka, Emil’s widow, who fled Austria after Germany’s occupation in March 1938. The company was aryanised soon after. It returned to family ownership after the war. In 1800, Peters Edition was founded in Leipzig, and was built into one of Europe’s premier publishing houses. Its catalogue featured Brahms, Bruch, Dvoák, Liszt and Wagner. Through the late 1930s it was owned and managed by Henri Hinrichsen, until the company was aryanised in 1939. In 1940, Hinrichsen fled to Belgium, until he was caught and deported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered on 17 September 1942. Following the reunification of Germany the company was returned to the family.

  Chapter 16

  1 ‘the Americans, British and French had acted quickly …’ The Berlin Airlift was primarily delivered by the USA and UK, as can be seen by comparing the number of flights – Britain (85,870), USA (189,963) and France (424) – as well as the Tons of Cargo transported – Britain (541,940), USA (1,783,573) and France (896). While not delivering as many tons as her two allies, France did allow its airport at Berlin Tegel to be used as part of the airlift, and oversaw its reconstruction to allow for greater air traffic. At the time, France was focused on the Indochina War, which had started on 9 December 1946. Additional flights were operated by other countries, including New Zealand, Canada and South Africa. The British transported 23 per cent of the total 2,325,000 tons, and manned 31 per cent of the 277,000 flights. The details can be found in the F540 reports, at the National Archives, London (Files: Air 28/1034 and Air 28/1207).

  2 ‘Attached was Will Meisel’s 1938 letter …’ Major Sely was in overall charge of Will Meisel’s case, a man known by the British as being particularly determined. In a letter sent on 28 May 1948 from the British headquarters in Hamburg to the Information Services in Berlin, Brigadier Gibson wrote that he was tired of the ‘witch-hunting by Sely’ and he wanted to stop him ‘inventing the rules’ when it came to denazification. See National Archives, London (File: FO 1050/603).

  3 ‘Herr Will Meisel is as black a character as can be …’ This document is filed at the Bundesarchiv Berlin (File: R/9361/V, signature 147724).

  Chapter 17

  1 ‘Around 10 p.m., Gerda looked out of her window …’ This account comes from Burkhard Radtke, who I interviewed in the summer of 2014.

  2 ‘There were more soldiers than usual … extras in The Fall of Berlin …’ The film was a two-parter, commissioned by Joseph Stalin, directed by Mikheil Chiaureli, and lasting 167 minutes. Over 10,000 extras were used in the production, much of which took place west of Berlin close to Groß Glienicke. The Soviet Army provided five divisions, including four tank battalions and almost two hundred aircraft. At one stage the military manoeuvres proved so realistic that they caused alarm at the nearby Gatow airfield, according to reports filed at the National Archives in Kew. Classified as a documentary, the film
was released on 21 January 1950 and was watched by 38 million people in the Soviet Union. The film was also shown in the DDR with all members of the Volkspolizei required to watch it.

  3 ‘The only measure that was put in place …’ The murders continued through to the mid-1950s, though it is not clear if the culprits were connected beyond being linked to the Soviet Army. Hans Dieter Behrendt, who was later in charge of the border crossing at the Glienicke Bridge, and lived in Groß Glienicke from the 1970s, remembers the case of a couple who were murdered in 1955 by Soviet soldiers while making a black-market deal in Kamnitz, a few kilometres from the village. The Volkspolizei arrived to investigate, he said, bringing sniffer dogs with them. The crime scene was only 800 metres from the Soviet base. The dogs followed the trace to the base, right to the halls where hundreds of soldiers were sleeping. The kommandant of the base would not let the police onto the base, and shouted: ‘Schluss! Hier nicht mehr’, or ‘Stop! Do not enter.’ The kommandant went into the hall and told his men that if the guilty did not step forward immediately then everyone would be punished. A few moments later, two suspects stepped forward. ‘I am not sure what happened to them, maybe they were sent back to Russia,’ said Behrendt. He added that he had heard from other officers that the DDR press office did not cover such stories, they were ‘taboo’, because the ‘Russians wanted to keep up the positive image of the country, and socialism’. He thought that such cover-ups happened frequently. As the years progressed things ‘got better and became more safe’, he said. The Russians took measures to stop the abuse, preventing the soldiers from leaving the base. They investigated the crimes that they heard of and punished them more consistently. He recalled that the Russians came to his door in 1945 and 1946 frequently demanding jewellery, money and women. His family kept the door locked. ‘The majority of people hated the Russians,’ he added. In the days before they occupied his town, his family fled towards the oncoming American forces. ‘Everyone was scared of the Russians,’ he said. ‘Nobody was scared of the Americans.’

  4 ‘This was in spite of reports that Gerda Radtke had seen the murderer …’ Burkhard Radtke told me that his mother had seen the murderer with burns on his arms walking through Groß Glienicke in the days after the event. As they passed, the Russian shook his head, implying that she must not reveal his identity to anyone. Despite this, Gerda reported him to the police. At first the police did not believe her, but eventually they arrested him. When the soldier saw Gerda at his trial he shouted out that his friends would hurt her and her children. Because of this threat, the family was allowed to move back into the village where they would be less isolated. In my interview with Burkhard, he reported that his mother was scathing of the West Berlin press coverage of the murders. He pointed out that though the victims were attacked with an axe, this was not the same as being mutilated.

  5 ‘Two years later, in the spring of 1952 …’ In 1955 Leo Bauer was released from Siberian prison camp and deported to West Germany. For a time he worked as a journalist, editing a number of publications, before becoming an adviser to Willy Brandt. He died in Bonn in 1972. His file can be found at the Stasi Archive [File: MfS HAIX 24458].

  6 ‘With the prospect of further, seemingly arbitrary, government oppression …’ Murders and home invasions were not the only crimes taking place in the village. On 8 October, the Tagesspiegel newspaper reported that on the previous Sunday at 8 p.m., people had been standing at the bus stop in Groß Glienicke when they heard cries for help and then saw people in Russian uniforms cycling away on bicycles. Two days earlier, the article continued, several people in Russian uniforms broke into an apartment on Tristanstraße and stole jewellery and furniture to the value of several thousand deutschmarks. This was the twelfth break-in since the start of the month that had been reported in the village.

  Interlude: December 2013

  1 …’ According to a list posted on the Jewish Claims Conference website in 2015, twenty-five Groß Glienicke properties that had been owned by Jewish families are still to be claimed.

  Chapter 18

  1 ‘In the autumn of 1952, Ella Fuhrmann …’ Ella Fuhrmann arrived from Pomerania in 1947 with her two children. Two of her brothers were living in Groß Glienicke at the time, near to the lake house.

  2 ‘Inside, he was greeted by Wilhelm Stintzing …’ Pastor Stintzing became the village pastor in 1947, a position he retained until 1967. Once the village was split, following the Potsdam Conference, he continued to provide pastoral care on both sides of the border. Throughout his time in the village he was allowed to cross back and forth, which he did by bicycle. About the Wall, he told me that ‘it was paralysing, it slowly rolled into us that we could not go to the other side’, and then ‘slowly people got used to it’. He told me that many of his congregants spoke to him about the Wall and about fleeing to the West, but always in private. In June 2014, Groß Glienicke church held a reception for Pastor Stintzing to celebrate his hundredth birthday.

  Chapter 19

  1 ‘By 1958, the Stasi … oversaw a network of between 20,000 and 30,000 unofficial informants …’ This number would increase to 45,500 by 1971, and then, by 1989, to 91,015 full-time operatives. This final number represents a ratio of 5.5 MfS personnel per thousand citizens, far higher than the ratio in the Soviet Union (1.8 per thousand) and Czechoslovakia (1.1 per thousand). By 1968, the number of Stasi informants reached 100,000, rising to approximately 180,000 by mid-1975, and peaking in 1989 at 189,000. Many informants had only a short relationship with the Stasi, with about 10 per cent starting or ending contact each year.

  2 ‘At this time they were known as Geheimer Informator (GI) …’ After 1968, Stasi informants were known as Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IM), or informal staff.

  3 ‘Later, the file would be …’ The Wolfgang Kühne file can be found at the Stasi Archive (Files: MfS AIM 1768/61 B and P and MfS AIM 1768/61 B and A). Stasi documents regarding the border regiment’s activities in Groß Glienicke are kept in their Berlin archive (Files: MfS HA IX 1096, HA I 19543, and HA IX 5529).

  Chapter 20

  1 ‘Though they lived side by side …’ The neighbours had differing recollections as to the closeness of their relationship. According to Lothar and Sieglinde, they did not spend social time together and, besides taking care of Irene Kühne’s children once or twice, did not interact in any way. Irene remembers things differently. She recalled that ‘we had birthday parties together, invited each other over to eat, and had cake and tea in each other’s living rooms. We always had the Fuhrmanns over.’ She also said that Ella Fuhrmann ‘was very talkative, very calm and friendly and that she spoke about her husband a lot’. Irene added that Ella’s husband died in the war, while Lothar said his father died of cancer in 1951.

  2 ‘Ignition Key failed to turn up not only for the next meeting …’ Around this time, a court case about the lake house was taking place in West Berlin. On 12 December 1960, the case of Alexander vs Deutsches Reich was held in Court Room 149, on Am Karlsbad in West Berlin. Open to the public, the proceedings were presided over by a civil judge, a Dr Kiworr. Working with a Berlin lawyer, Henny Alexander was demanding that the German government pay out compensation for the assets that had been stolen from her family, including gold, silver and bank deposits, as well as the structures they had built in Groß Glienicke and the household goods contained within. Will Meisel appeared as a witness in the case and, reading from a prepared statement, he explained that he had rented the land from Dr Alexander before the war and then directly from the Wollanks. He had only a few documents to demonstrate those times, he said, as most went missing when his property was bombed during the war. Sometime after 1940, he said, he had paid 3,000 reichsmarks to the Alexanders via their lawyer, Dr Goldstrom, for the buildings and the inventory. Then, ‘unable to pay the remaining amount to the Alexanders’, as by that time Dr Goldstrom had ‘also left the country’, he had paid 3,000 RM to the Berlin tax office. He was not asked to provide proof of this purchase, nor was t
he Alexanders’ representative offered an opportunity to refute that a deal had been made between the Meisels and the Alexanders. As to the items contained within the house, Meisel added that ‘a large part of the furniture was built in so you could not move it. We left everything as it was, so it should still be there.’ He concluded by saying that ‘I also want to point out that we did not bring any of the inventory to West Berlin. We received notice that the land was managed by the Groß Glienicke community and, based on what I know, it is rented out now.’ Next, Eliza Meisel took the stand. Having taken the oath, she stated her name, birth date and place of residence. She then confirmed that while her husband’s statement ‘should be true’, she could not ‘remember the details of the transactions’. A month later, on 3 January 1961, the court pronounced its verdict: The government was ordered to pay the Alexanders 90.34 deutschmarks (about £300 in today’s money) in compensation for the building and the inventory. The Alexanders were not to be paid anything, however, for the furniture that had been left at the house, based on the Meisels’ assertion that they had not removed any of the items to their home in West Berlin. This was the last time that the Meisels and Alexanders had any form of communication, until I met Sven Meisel in 2013.

  Chapter 21

  1 ‘Despite the closing of the external border between East and West Germany …’ Until the permanent barricade was erected in August 1961, a significant number of East Berliners were able to travel to West Berlin. Many commuted for work, but others crossed the border for different reasons. Ursula Dargies, for instance, attended a boarding school in West Berlin since she was forbidden from attending an East German high school because her father was a priest. Every weekend she returned to East Berlin and was able to carry almost any item with her, with the exception of West German literature. In 1960, she moved with her parents to West Germany.