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Episode 16
‘We will pass your family’s house on the left’, the driver said, as we entered Altenburg from Leipzig.
Anticipating my first visit to the family’s hometown was layered with anxiety. With my father’s passing, came the realisation that I was free to visit Germany, without the worry of upsetting Henner’s equilibrium. Without him to protect, however, I felt my own vulnerability to the family experience more keenly. I wondered if I was up to handling it.
I decided to spend twenty-four hours in Leipzig, en route, as a buffer. Leipzig felt familiar, for some reason, though I had never visited, or seen many photos of it.
Arriving at the beginning of March, and exploring the centre of Leipzig, an icy wind exaserpated my tension, so I looked for a cafe to provide comfort. I found one, but it looked forlorn inside, so I moved on to find another. After five minutes I was surprised to have unwittingly arrived back outside the same cafe. I moved off a second time but when again I found myself passing it, I gave in and entered.
The woman behind a makeshift serving area was friendly. I tucked myself behind a rough table, drinking a mug of tea, feeling happier. An English language newspaper lay close by, and an article set me off writing. I covered every scrap of paper, and all my old receipts in my bag, with scrawl, in no time. This had never happened before. I felt more centred than I had for ages. I was reluctant to leave the cafe, which now felt like a friend, and where writing became the buffer that would help me through this special visit.
The cafe premises, I discovered, had been a Jewish business, and a central hub for fur exchange, until the Nazis had aryanised it. Some buildings, even in 2008, were still in limbo because of ongoing legal disputes about their ownership. Buildings that had been stolen from Jews by the Nazis, had then became owned by the communist state, and only after the Wall came down, could pass back into private ownership. Or in the case of this poor old building, stand in neglect, while two parties contested its ownership.
The family home in Altenburg had housed many people in the communist era, but had been left to fall into disrepair. After the Berlin Wall came down, when the house passed legally back to the family, the four heirs agreed to give it to the council, to be used for charitable purposes. It went to the Protestant Magdalene Foundation, who, it was agreed, were going to provide Altenburg’s mental health services. Under their umbrella, the building became a halfway house, run by the Horizons Association, acting as a bridge for people leaving the local psychiatric hospital into the community. My father, on behalf of the heirs, stipulated that apart from being used for charitable purposes, the house must be named after his grandmother. It was now the ‘Marianne Bucky House’, or as I was to discover, referred to as the Bucky house by locals.
The house was in a residential area created around 1900, adjacent to the medieval town centre. After the war, the communists built blocks of flats in an area further out of town. When the Wall came down the council changed the socialist street names. Carl Marx Strasse was renamed after my grandfather, Albert.
On this first drive into Altenburg, we passed the sign for Albert Levy Strasse.
Rather than feeling pride to see the street sign, it left me feeling rather bleak. It seemed so inappropriate for Albert, an astute capitalist, to have his name here, amidst communist concrete blocks. Was it generally an inappropriate gesture, or would it have been okay set amongst the central streets he’d so often walked?
As we drove down the hill into town, the house flashed past so quickly I could hardly take stock. I was, however, visiting it the next day.
The wind rattled through the windows, as I unpacked a few things in a large hotel, which had served as a hat factory during the communist era. The shadow of the Eastern bloc could still be felt in Altenburg.
Not so, in the medieval market place in the town centre, where I had lunch.
The ‘Bier Keller’ restaurant, next to the town hall, felt German through and through, from old beams to the wurst and sauerkraut. An elderly lady, at the next table, said her brother had been at school with my father. She took me across the cobbled square, to a side road, to point out the store which had once been M&S Cohn’s. C&A’s had bought the building in the optimism following the fall of the Wall, but had not done well. They had closed the store. I stared into the deserted building.
Buying old postcards of the town, the shop owner suggested I visit the bookstore. I will never forget standing facing the bookcase of local history books, that I went through one by one. To my surprise, I found a book with photos of the family. We were lucky to have photographs in the family that had survived, but these were snaps I had never seen before. Then just as I was about done, I stared in disbelief as I picked out a book titled The Jews of Altenburg. It, too, had photographs of the family, together with some written information. The book was written by Ingolf Strassman, who was from Altenburg, and left as a boy, in the 1930’s when his family fled Hitler. I clutched both books tightly to the till!
Back at the hotel for dinner, I felt at home with potato pancakes and apple sauce on the menu. This was my father’s signature dish, made by him on Sunday nights, which I loved. My mother wasn’t too pleased at the mess he created, while grating the potatoes.
It was fitting sustenance for the visit to the house, the following day.
To be continued in two weeks, Sunday April 3rd.
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/laurelevy3O