Uschi's 95th birthday and our visit to Bad Belzig had put us into a nostalgic mood which was to dominate the coming days, hence the title of this blog.
26 August. Wednesday.
Once more Sieglinde's physiotherapy appointments limited our movements to Steglitz. This time there were no problems with the lifts and I made my way straight to Hugendubel where I bought a guide to Devon and Cornwall for Sieglinde and settled down with a coffee. There were individual guides to Cornwall but none for Devon and I decided that Lonely Planet was most equitable in its coverage of the two counties. In all publications Devon played very much second fiddle to Cornwall. When she returned from her physio, Sieglinde swept me round to the clothes shop next door to Hugendubel and bought two shirts for me so that I looked more presentable. As a thankyou I treated her to coffee and cake in the grounds of Schwartzsche Villa.
In the late afternoon we went to the cemetery in Stubenrauchstraβe to tidy up Jürgen's grave. I had also wanted to scatter some of Jill's ashes there which Sieglinde thought was very appropriate. We spent almost an hour there cutting back the roses and clearing the ivy and other invasive weeds. The plot seemed to have been recently watered.
Jürgen's grave with Jill's ashes
Later that evening we received a message from someone who asked whether he had lost his job. Apparently he had arrived to water the grave shortly after we had left and had seen our handiwork. Sieglinde reassured him that his services were still required for the regular watering and twice yearly weeding and pruning.
27 August. Thursday.
As it was a fine day and we had no appointments we decided to go to Treptower Park which was laid out beside the Spree river between 1876 and 1888 according to the plans of Gustav Meyer (no relation of Sieglinde Meyer), the city's director of gardens. As it was in the Soviet sector of Berlin it houses the Soviet War Memorial, built to the design of the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky to commemorate the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in 1945.
However as the weather was fine with not a cloud in the sky and a breeze over the waters lessening the heat of the sun, we decided to repeat the boat trip to the Müggelsee that we had made almost a year ago on 21 September 2025. This time our account is illustrated by a map:
The route took us along the Spree, passing under bridges so low that sometimes the roof on the sundeck had to be lowered and the passenger remain seated. The river was busy with a variety of craft from miniature jet skis to rickety crafts with upper decks where groups were having parties with drink and music and those on board waving to our fellow passengers. Sieglinde enthusiastically waved back. There were bathers, some naked from the their feet upwards, as our commentator put it, and a bewildering variety of houseboats. It was largely an industrial area and the old GDR factories mostly looked clean although some were being demolished or converted to residential accommodation or retail outlets.
Some passengers were only going as far as Köpenick and while we moored it gave our commentator the opportunity to give an account of a local hero.
Köpenick, with the tower of the Rathaus (town hall) to the right
The town hall of Köpenick is notable because of a con man and imposter, Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt (1849–1922). Between 1864 and 1891, Voigt was sentenced to prison for a total of 25 years for thefts, forgery and burglary. In his most famous exploit, Voigt masqueraded as a military officer of the elite Prussian Guards in 1906, rounding up a number of Imperial German Army soldiers under his command, arresting the Mayor of Köpenick, and confiscating 4,002 marks from the city treasury. Voigt then changed back into civilian clothing and disappeared with the money. The German people considered Voigt's exploit to be both clever and hilarious. Although Voigt was soon caught and served 20 months in prison, he became a folk hero as "the Captain of Köpenick" (der Hauptmann von Köpenick) and was granted a full pardon by Kaiser Wilhelm II. His escapade inspired Der Hauptmann von Köpenick, a satirical play by the German dramatist Carl Zuckmayer which was first produced in 1931 and is still regularly performed in Köpenick, often on the town hall steps. It became the stuff of films and musicals in Germany and the English-speaking world where it was seen as a satire on German militarism.
The Müggelsee is the largest of Berlin's many lakes, most of them really widenings of rivers created as glacial lakes during the ice ages. It was covered with yachts and the wind whipped the surface into wavelets. We enjoyed the three hour trip with a Bockwurst, mustard and roll, washed down with half a litre of beer. On the way home we stopped off at Tempelhof station, now back in West Berlin and the site of the former airport that I flew home from in 1964, having been unable to get a transit visa from the exclave of the Bundesrepublik across the DDR. Sieglinde knew of an Italian restaurant just by the station and we sat outside and consumed vast ices and two cappuccini. Another wonderful day.
28
August. Friday.
I
let the family, Exeter Civic Society and others know of my problems losing access to my
hotmail website, which seems to have happened when I tried to
install Microsoft
onto my tablet. I told them I had ordered a security stick, due
to arrive next week but which was delivered earlier than expected late on Friday.
29
August. Saturday.
In the
morning I went into town to pick up the security stick at Cyberstore
in Friedrichstrasse and came straight home but could not get it to
work before it was time to go out.
We met
Jonas, Jenny and their three children in Lulu restaurant after after
Schulung, the start of the school year, an Important Day when
children receive Wunderhorne – gaudily decorated cornucopias full
of goodies. Despite this the children appreciated the little packets
of Gummi-Bears that Sieglinde gave them, declaring them to be the
best they had ever tasted. Over the meal there was an intense
discusion with one of the boys, aged nine about death and what
happens to the body when it is buried or cremated. He had a
remarkable vocabulary and depth of thinking for a lad so young.
Jonas, who
worked in computing, had made several helpful suggestions and when I
retuned home I continued to wrestle with Microsoft who finally asked
whether I had a recovery code, which I discovered on a USB backup
stick I had brought with me. At midnight it worked, and all my emails
and contacts were there with a daunting backlog that had built up
while I was incommunicado.
30
August. Sunday.
In the
morning we went to church again, this time by taxi. There was a long
and complex sermon from a visiting preacher, difficult for others in
the congregation to hear as well as myself because of the acoustics
and garbled delivery. We stopped briefly for coffee and cakes but
soon departed with three of the congregation for huge ice goblets
topped with whipped cream in the Eis Tempel over the road from the
Baptist church.
It was a
hot day and we decided to seek out cooling lakeside breezes on the
Wannsee, a few stations further along the S-Bahn. There we caught the
bus out to the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz and went straight to the
Seehaase restaurant where we managed to get a table directly at the
lakeside. It was our friend Hubert's birthday. He was born in Berlin
in 1942 and I got to know him in 1964. He was a friend of Sieglinde
for more than ten years and committed suicide at the end of June
2024, just one week
before my Jill died. It
was he who had brought us together, so there was much reminiscing
over Aperolspritz and a succession of nibbles, looking out across the
lake as the yachts glided by and the sun went down.
We
had to pay for this idyll; two buses failed to arrive and the crowd
at the bus stops grew. Phones were used in vain to assess what might
be happening and eventually people began the long walk back to the
S-Bahn station, meaning that when the bus arrived after more than one
hour’s wait, we had no trouble in getting a seat. Sieglinde had
asked a couple of people picking up cars from the nearby car park
whether they could give us a lift but they were going in a different
direction. So, the Berlin transport services, which I have so
admired, can let you down sometimes.
31
August. Monday.
Today was a
household day, washing laundry and shopping, but I persuaded
Sieglinde to visit Wild Caffè which I sneaked into when sent on
local shopping trips. She loved the Bohemian feel of the place, a
little rustic, but very friendly and I had a loyalty card. We were assured that we had chosen the best seats in the cafe, from where we watched a Spanish family coping with three sons with very different ideas of what each wanted to do. Nostalgic
reminiscing of other favourite cafes and eating places followed and
it was determined that tomorrow we would seek out her childhood
haunts. As we left, we got into conversation with a French woman who had worked in a ministry in Bonn and moved to Berlin when the federal government moved there. She was aware of all the political contoversies of the past twenty years and certainly did not want to retire back to her native France.
1
September. Tuesday.
We took the
S-Bahn circle line to the big junction station at Ostkreuz where we
made our way to the massive Jugendherberge (youth hostel). It was
somewhere that Hubert stayed when he visited Sieglinde and, with its
many rooms, it was a much more comfortable place than the youth
hostels of my younger days. It was also the place where Sieglinde
went to school.
Sieglinde goes to school
Sieglinde
realised that it was 78 years to the day since she had her first
Schulung, in her best dress and as full a cornucopia as her mother
could manage in the straitened post-War years. She told the staff at
the reception this, and they said that she was not the first to come
in search of childhood memories. We decided to wallow in them and to
have a meal in the restaurant. There was not much on offer but we
settle down to pizza and memories of the school that she had loved to
attend.
Sieglinde has school dinner in the mensa
Sieglinde Schmidt starts school with her cornucopia 2 September 1948
The
Boxhagen-Rummelsberg community school, a
massive red-brick institutional building, was built around 1900 and
largely survived the War, although the area was heavily bombed as it
was of strategic significance.
The Boxhagen-Rummelsberg community school around 1910. It largely survived the War
We
followed the route that Sieglinde would have taken to school along
beside the S-Bahn to
the flat where she lived on the fifth floor. Now it was part of a
terrace of apartment blocks but when she moved there is was isolated
open spaces on each side where buildings had been bombed. Patches of
land were used to grow vegetables and the ground floor and the
railway arches opposite were used by a bedding supplier for whom Sieglinde's mother worked as a seamstress. The balconies had been inserted after the family had moved out
Prinz-Albert-Straße 2 (now the Nöldnerstraße)
The site of Sieglinde's apartment on the fifth floor is highlighted.
There were munitions factories in the Rummelsberg area and a landmark in the area is the shot tower, a handsome building in red brick. It was covered in graffiti but I decided that they needed removing to restore its full dignity.
Pulverturm (shot tower) in Rummelsberg, Berlin
2 September. Wednesday.
Sieglinde decided that it was time to have our hair cut and we made our way, not to the Turkish barber in Steglitz but to Just Hair in Ludwigkirchstraβe which ends in the Fasanenplatz, a tranquil green space where broad but quiet tree-lined streets intersect, bikes and scooters outnumbering cars. There is "Bookinista - Buchkultur am Fasanenplatz" an independent bookshop where we sat outside under the trees to enjoy coffee and cookies and watch the world go by. At the appointed time we went down the road to the hairdressers and I thumbed through the women's magazines until it was time for my haircut while Sieglinde waited for some treatment or other to take effect. I was surprised at the amount of space devoted to the return of Megan and Harry to Britain. Somehow we were both finished at the same time and pleased at the results.
3 September. Thursday.
I had to accompany Sieglinde to her physio in Steglitz this morning to help her in the confusing lifts. On my way down, or as it turned out further up, I set off the alarm which I had inadvertently leant against. It was strategically placed at bottom height, probably for the benefit of wheelchair users. My fellow passenger was equally amused and it seems to be such a regular occurrence that no response was evident by the time I left the shopping centre where Sieglinde's Rehalife torture chamber was located for the Hugendubel bookshop, the equivalent of Waterstones, located next door. There I treated myself to a coffee and photographed all the guides to Devon and Cornwall, intending to make entries for the Devon bibliography.
Sieglinde found me and revealed that today was the day for another of her daunting shopping expeditions. This included a visit to the bank to withdraw sufficient money, followed by visits to HIT Supermarket situated below Rehalife to buy ginger jam and champagne which just happened to be on special offer and to Hussel for assorted chocolates for forthcoming visits - as well as some for ourselves. In Lindner's wonderful delikatessen pats of butter were beaten into shape for us and Sieglinde bought a pork spare rib steak (nine ribs, six for me) which was to make a delicious evening meal for us in the evening. In Rossman we were delighted to acquire a pack of limited edition Love you like no otter kitchen rolls by Alouette. We discovered that co-ordinated toilet rolls were available - next time, perhaps. We needed shower gel and Sieglinde decided that we should each have our own. Kneipp obliged with matching tubes: pink, titled Du bist wunderbar (thou art wonderful) scented with pomegranate and cocoa, presumably for Sieglinde, and blue, titled So schön, dass es Dich gibt (So beautiful that thou art there) smelling of organic cornflower and mallow. Such a new world for me; I would be content to shower in Fairy Liquid.
Limited edition kitchen rolls and his and her shower gels
In the street market where we went to buy salads a stallholder saw me pass by in my jacket and produced the matching "Rez Germany authentic Irish Headwear new Wool blend" peaked cap with a Milano label, which he said he had seen for 90 Euro in Kaufhaus Karstadt. I was transformed for much less than that and proudly strutted round the streets of Berlin, the quintessence of an upper crust member of the Home Counties hunting set, soon to smell of organic cornflower and mallow. I will have to get myself some leather elbow pads to complete the new image.
Bertie Wooster or Peaky Blinders?
Having returned home early, while Sieglinde unpacked I revived a research project that started way back in the 1960s - cloacopapyrology. Several of you may know of this preoccupation which has produced several
Working Papers blogs. I had thought little of it since moving to Exeter, but the realisation that Sieglinde's store contained limited edition packs of the stuff revived my interest and I produced the following bibliographical records:
Three-ply soft tissue. Hygenie zum Wohlfühlen seit 1928 von unserem Familenunternehmen in Deutschland. The art of caring. Unser Anspruch seit 1928. Als Familieunternehmen entwickeln wir mit Leidenschaft Hygieneprodukte, die uns im Alltag begleiten - mit Verantwortung für Mensch & Natur. Text in German, English and French: Hakle Klassik, soft toilet tissue uniquely embossed for well-being. Made from sustainable pulp. Supporting responsible forestry. Website: www.hakle.de.
Toilettenpapier mit Dekor. Supersoft edition. Arnsberg: WEPA Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG,[2025?]. ISTN 4 000735-381708}.Dieses Toilettenpapier ist aus Zellstoff und mindestens 20% Recyclingfasern hergestellt. [...] Bitte unbedruckte Seite verwenden. Diese Verpackung ist aus Polyethylen. Website: wepa.eu.
Alouette : Love you like no otter, Toilettenpapier. Limitierte edition.
Burgwedel:
Dirk Rossmann, [2026]. 8 Rollen : 180 Blatt. ISTN 4 068134-183255.
3-Lagen. PEFC "stands for certified sustainable forest
management". 3 ply soft tissue issued in rolls with 180 sheets.
Special edition for Summer 2026. Hergestellt für Dirk Rossmann GmbH
Isernhaegenerstr. 16 30938 Burgwedel Germany. www.rossmann.de. Text
in 11 languages, English: Toilet paper. Keep plastic bags away from
babies and children. Danger of suffocation.
All
this made me aware that the world had moved on over the past thirty
or so years, with so much more information available on the internet
that it would be impossible to update and maintain my collection and
website, so I will add these to my collection and close this chapter
in my bibliographical endeavours. There at least nostalgia does not
rule OK. More on this in later blogs as I am looking for a home for the collection.
4
September. Friday.
Rain
was promised for the afternoon, so we decided to visit the Altes
Museum, a handsome classical style building in the Museumsinsel on
Unter den Linden.
Sieglinde visits Altes Museum, Berlin
On our last visit we had admired the Greek section on the ground floor and this time we decided, after a coffee and cheesecake in their café, to visit the Etruscan and Roman antiquities on the first floor. I was particularly interested in running Etruscan inscriptions to earth. The Etruscan language has not been securely linked to any language family and remains an isolate preserved in around 10,000 short texts, funerary, votive and ownership inscriptions. Only four longer texts are recorded including the ritual calendar shown below. The script runs from right to left and is based on the Greek alphabet.
Etruscan ritual calendar, S. Maria di Capua Vetere, clay, 500/400 BCE
Altes Museum, Berlin
Rome was a minor power in Italy at that time, indeed Etruscan kings seem to have ruled the city in the 6th century BCE. This is the probable date of the
Duenos inscription, discovered in 1880 by German archaeologist Heinrich Dressel in a valley between the Quirinal and Viminale hills in Rome. It is one of the very few archaic Latin inscriptions to have survived and its interpretation is almost as difficult as the contemporary Etruscan texts.
Altes Museum, Berlin
The closing bell rang before we reached the Roman section of the displays and, ushered out through the galleries by the staff, we realised that a third visit would be necessary. The rain had arrived while we were in the Museum. Although it had stopped by the time we came out, we decided to catch the bus and U-Bahn home rather than walk through the city centre.
5 September. Saturday.
We were invited to Ingold and Kerstin in Nudow, a village about 25 Km to the south-west of Berlin and close to Potsdam. Ingold met us at the S-Bahn station and we were soon tucking in to home-made cakes and coffee accompanied by Bo, now a very much larger dog than the last time we were there but still very much intent on stealing serviettes. At least he can respond to commands now most of the time and lies in the corner, an impenetrable tangle of fur which makes it impossible to know which end is which.
Cakes were followed after a pause by steaks grilled on an outdoor barbecue although the weather was too rainy and windy to allow us to sit outside. This was accompanied by home-made potato and bean salads, and interesting conversation. Ingold worked for a ministry linked to the environment and was quite revealing about how a large construction project could not be stopped, although it was no longer relevant, simply because the bureaucracy would not allow it. I reflected that such things were not unknown in England. They also discussed the upcoming elections with Sachsen-Anhalt going to the polls tomorrow. Night fell and Ingold gave us a lift back to our front door after a most enjoyable day.
6 September. Sunday.
A 6K day, and a very full one.
1. Kirche. Once again we failed to be ready in time to get to the church by U-Bahn so had to catch a taxi who missed the turn-off on the motorway because the ever-present roadworks which meant we arrived late anyway. It was a better service than many with a decent hymn to sing, a sermon which was better delivered than the previous week and holy communion brought round the congregation which meant that I did not have to conspicuously remain in my seat. It was also a concession to those on the congregation who were less mobile - I had to help two ladies into and out of the disabled toilet after the service. Sieglinde was loyal to that particular Baptist church, having been a member for some sixty years but most of the congregation she was close to had died or were in homes and unable to come. Although they were friendly, she did not feel inclined to stay for coffee.
2-3. Kaffee und Kuchen. We found these in the Eis-Tempel across the road from the church and I suggested that Sieglinde should look for a church close to home with more traditional services. The Kirche zum Guten Hirten might be an alternative. We had been to concerts there and it seemed to have an active community. Kirche zum Guten Hirten, Friedenau
But what to do with the rest of the day was our more immediate concern. The weather was not brilliant so we decided to go the the cinema to see Vaterland. We caught the bus and arrived just after the film had started, so we bought tickets for the next performance and set off to explore the neighbourhood.
The first place we found was the Jewish Community Centre where Sieglinde had sung in concerts with her Jewish choir. It was on the site of a magnificent synagogue in the Moorish style, reduced to ruins in 1938 in the Kristallnacht and demolished in the 1950s. Fragments of the original building were incorporated in the community centre when it was opened in 1959. In front of the building was a sculpture representing a Torah scroll and a monument to the concentration camps where so many Jews perished during the holocaust.
Jewish Community Centre, Berlin. Sculpture of Torah scroll
Jewish Community Centre, Berlin. Monument to holocaust extermination camps.
4. Kurfürstendamm.
After we bought our tickets but before the film we found a place at another Café Einstein in Uhlandstraβe just outside the Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur (closed on Sunday) where we had a coffee and admired the period lamp-posts silhouetted against the sky in Kurfürstendamm, West Berlin's equivalent of Oxford Street. Sieglinde says it is a shadow of what it used to be, run-down and hit by the high rental charges and the influx of cheap shops.
5. Kino. We had heard about the film Vaterland, which had its world premiere at the 79th Cannes Film Festival on 14 May 2026, where Pawel Pawlikowski won the Best Director award. Thomas Mann (1875–1955), the German novelist and short story writer and 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, fled to Switzerland when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, and when World War II broke out in 1939, he moved to the United States and later became a US citizen. He first returned to Europe in 1949 to mark Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 200th birthday, traveling with his wife Katia and visiting both Frankfurt am Main (Western zones) and Weimar (Soviet zone). On 28 July 1949 he received the Goethe Prize of the City of Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main. On 1 August 1949 the couple travelled to Weimar in the Soviet zone and received honorary citizenship and the Goethe National Prize at the German National Theatre. The stay was short. He returned to the United States but the Mann family were later accused of being communists and finally returned to Switzerland in 1952.
In the film Thomas Mann is accompanied not by his wife Katia but by his daughter Erika also a writer and a leading actress in the 1920s and 1930s when she briefly married the actor Gustaf Gründgens who remained in Germany throughout the Nazi period. The dramatic scene where she slaps him publicly in Frankfurt therefore never took place. Klaus, Thomas Mann's son, another important writer, also appears at the start of the film. He was in Cannes, going through one of his mental crises and decided not to meet his sister in Frankfurt. His suicide took place on 21 May when Thomas Mann was already back in America.
These liberties with history make for for a much tighter dramatic plot and the film, which is shot in black and white, made a deep impression on us both, even though the Nationaltheater in Weimar was obviously not the real thing, a copy of the statue of Goethe and Schiller obviously placed in some similar location. Another Weimar scene though was obviously on location in front of Goethe's Gartenhaus in the park by the river Ilm.
It had just been released in Germany and it was on in the Delphi Filmpalast im Zoo, one of the largest cinemas in Berlin.
It was an interesting cinematic experience. There were the usual adverts and trailers at the start, but most of them were of a cultural nature, for films, theatre, exhibitions, museums, books and few for cars, perfumes, exotic holidays and fabulous cures for non-existent medical conditions. The film itself was an international European production by Germany, France and Poland with no involvement by Britain or America, although distributors and streaming services in those countries are mentioned. We watched with fascnation after the end of the film as a seemingly endless list of credits rolled up the screen.
6. Kantstraβe.
As it was late afternoon and the weather was fine we decided to window-shop in
Kurfürstendamm. We limited ourselves to a few fashion stores, our minds well and truly boggled by the 2,000 Euros Armani were asking for a men's outfit and thought an aperolspritz would be more interesting. This we found in an Italian restaurant in the Kantstraβe accompanied by a focaccia and a group of Turkish men who came and went, greeting each other with an embrace sometimes with a gentle bumping of the forehead. They were a friendly, good-humoured group even though Turkey were losing the women's volleyball match against Italy they were watching. By now the day was ending and we caught the U-Bahn home, aware of the shorter evenings as we approached the autumn equinox.
7 September. Monday.
Sieglinde had a rehearsal for her Jewish choir this evening and we arrived in Tempelhof early so that we could enjoy coffee and cakes in the Piano Cafe by the Lietzensee park. Besides the piano, which was not being played, other musical instruments were festooned around the walls and we spent a very pleasant hour there. We both went round to the Jewish retirement home where rehearsals are held. Sieglinde was a little concerned that her long absence through visits to England, back problems, operation and reahb might have made her return difficult, but she was greeted as a long-lost friend and was able to reassure the leader Gabriel that she would be able to attend all rehearals up to the concert in the Jewish Communty Centre on 28 September. I was able to work on the tablet for the two hours of the rehearsal, which provided pleasant background music with the voice of Gabriel, an opera singer, as soloist. I will be going to future rehearsals as she is anxious about finding her way over uneven surfaces in the dark.
8 September. Tuesday.
Today we attended the funeral service for Klaus, the husband of Edeltraud, both of them long-standing friends of Sieglinde and Jürgen. Krematorium Ruhleben is located in Spandau on the west side of Berlin about ten kilometers from the city centre, and a long bus journey from the Zoologischer Garten U-Bahn station. From the bus stop, named from the crematorium, there was no clear signposting for pedestrians and, once we reached, it an intimidatingly long straight walk to a building that was the essence of 1960s brutalism with bare concrete girders, walls of concrete blocks, apparently sourced specially from the Netherlands and floors with dark red tiles. There was no car park apparent, so life was made hard for older people less mobile than ourselves who arrived with sticks and relators. The coffin was placed in the smaller hall, graced (if that is the right word) with monochrome murals in a constructivist style, tumbled columns with something that might be vegetation sprawling across the lower sections of the artworks.
There was nothing in the architecture to lighten the grimness of the occasion. That came from the flowers on and around the coffin and the little mementos. Klaus was a bus driver and his driver's cap was there, also a model railway carriage as, like Jurgen, he was a railway fanatic. It was a humanist service with two addresses by the celebrant sandwiched between three pieces of music. The celebrant had met with Edeltraut and the adult son and daughter and had captured the essence of a man full of humour who had scarcely ever become angry and was appreciated by all who knew him. It was a surprise therefore that the celebrant used the crematorium, which she described as a beautiful piece or architecture with wonderful murals, as a good reflection of Klaus's character.
Edeltraud had arranged for shared cars and taxis to get us to a retaurant near her home for the wake.
m
At the wake. Adolf Hitler was the man on the right's godfather
The friend who drove us from the funeral service to the restaurant told me that Adolf Hitler was his godfather. Apparently, he said, this happened as he was born on Hitler's birthday and his mother was more pleased with the resulting financial reward than she was with the honour received. He was born in 1940 and at that time what was really an Ehrepatenschaft (honorary sponsorship) was awarded to the seventh son or ninth living child in a family regardless of the day they were born. A condition of the award was proof of Aryan descent and the political reliability of the parents. Once this was granted, the family would receive a certificate and a one-off financial payment, normally around 50 to 100 Reichsmark. German citizens can still receive a certificate signed by the President and a one-off payment, currently 750 Euros, a symbolic recognition of the achievement of breeding a large family which has endured since the time of the Prussian monarchy.
There were about twenty at the wake with massive Wienerschnizels (I finished Sieglinde's next day) and ginormous servings of cake (I helped to finish Sieglinde's next day). I had a chicken dish with a rich onion sauce simply to find out what "country potatoes" were - they turned out to be potato wedges. Lively conversation flowed, full of reminiscences and laden with supplies in doggy bags, we were able to catch the bus home quite easily.
9 September. Wednesday.
This morning Sieglinde had an appointment at the
Immanuel Krankenhaus in Wannsee with the surgeon who operated on her back and he was delighted at her recovery. He also suggested an appointment with a colleague for a shoulder pain that she had developed, although this had disappeared before the appointment - such things come and go.
As it was close by we could not resist visiting the Seehaase restaurant by the shore of Wannsee lake. Above it a lion sits proubly on guard, high on a balcony overlooking the lake. We were in no rush as Sieglinde had been seen very promptly so took some time to find out the story behind it.
The monumental figure of a seated lion with its head raised—finished with a green patina—rests on a multi-tiered sandstone base; its plinth is constructed of iron and clad in sheet zinc. It stands in Zum Heckeshorn, Am Großen Wannsee and was created by Hermann Wilhelm Bissen in 1874 and cast in the founry of H. Pohl & Co. The original was created in Flensburg 1859–1862.
In 1863, Wilhelm Conrad (1822–1899), a Berlin banker and Privy Commercial Councillor, close to Bismarck, acquired a tract of land on Wannsee from the Royal Forestry Administration to establish a villa colony. Planning for the landscape design of the colony, known as "Colonie Alsen" since 1872, began in 1869. The colony’s name derives from the Danish island of Alsen, the capture of which by Prussian troops during the war of 1864 had been a significant event. An extensive park area named "Die Schweiz" (Switzerland) formed part of the landscape and garden design for "Colonie Alsen," which was implemented starting in 1871/72. Conrad decided to have a cast made of the "Flensburg Lion" and the Berlin foundry H. Pohl & Co. was commissioned to produce the copy in 1874. Presumably, a mold was created from the original bronze "Flensburg Lion" which was housed at the time in the courtyard of the Berlin Zeughaus (Arsenal) to produce the zinc cast of the figure. Wilhelm Conrad and the banker and consul August von der Heydt (1801–1874) covered the costs for producing the "Flensburg Lion" monument for the "Colonie Alsen" and for its installation. In 1938, the lion replica was moved to its current location at "Heckeshorn." A new inscription plaque added in 1988. Having become heavily weathered, the monument was restored in 1992 and was rededicated on 1 September 2005.
The 1988 inscrption reads in translation: "In 1850, the Danes defeated the Schleswig-Holsteiners at Idstedt. The Danish sculptor Hermann v. Bissen created the Lion to commemorate this event. It was originally erected in the Flensburg cemetery, [then within Danish territory]. In 1864, following the victory of the German Confederation over the Danes, the Lion was relocated to Lichterfelde [Berlin]. For Wilhelm Conrad, the founder of the Alsen villa colony (now a district of Wannsee), the Lion symbolized the victory decided by the crossing of Prussian troops onto the island of Alsen. Consequently, in 1865, he commissioned a zinc cast, which has stood on the banks of the Wannsee since 1938. The original was returned to the Danes by the Americans in 1945."
Having absorbed this little bit of history we descended the steps by the Flensburg Lion to the Seehaase where we were remembered by the Cypriot owner and had a leisurely Aperolspritz with chips followed by a coffee, watching the yachts glide past and one or two groups departing or arriving in pedalo boats from the landing stage below us.
Gardens of the Haus der Wannsee Konferenz, Berlin
I didn't want to leave this peaceful scene and persuaded Sieglinde to come with me into the garden of the Haus der Wannsee Konferenz next door, which swept down from the house to the lakeside. There we sat in peaceful calm. A plaintive song drifted town from from an avenue of trees behind us followed by the sound of voices and we found our way up to investigate.
The sound installation ”Wulf, die Zicklein und der vergessene Garten” (Wulf, the children and the forgotten garden) plays from spealers hung in an avenue of trees every half hour in the garden of the Wannsee Villa until 1 October. It had finished by the time we arrived.
At the heart of this sound installation is an encounter that never took place: Joseph Wulf (1912–1974) an Auschwitz survivor who, before his suicide, fought in vain to establish an official site of remembrance and documentation in the Villa, meets the children who came here until 1988, during which time it served as a Schullandheim (school camp).
In this artistic intervention, Wulf receives belated justice. His spirit reclaims the garden as a place of remembrance. He sings "Hey, Tzigalech" by Mordechai Gebirtig, whom Wulf knew in the Krakow ghetto, to the children in Yiddish in a recording made in 1967. It is a sombre fairy tale: a lovesick shepherd loses his goats and drowns himself in the lake. The children, who once played here unaware of the sins of their ancestors, follow Wulf’s voice into the depths of the lake. Beneath the surface, their voices ring out, reciting words from a 1952 brochure that promoted the rural school retreat to West Berlin parents in the postwar era: “… blue skies, green trees, water, wind, and waves do not exist only in stories but are truly there, even though fate has cut us off from them for many years.”
Such memories can hardly be called nostalgia, more the stuff of nighmares, but they deserve to be recorded and called to mind. This is what the Haus der Wannsee Konferenz and the library named after Joseph Wulf does so effectively.
