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3-room unit, 77 square metres,
This beautiful home unit in the "Luisenhof" complex has been fully renovated and is now much sought-after ... (for the full advertisement - in German - click here)
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These days you can find anything on the internet. I have just found an advertisement for the sale of the exact same rental unit at # 47 Cyriaksring in my hometown Braunschweig where my parents lived and where I grew up in in the 1950s.
This three-roomed unit (not just bedrooms; in Germany they count all rooms) was home to my father, my stepmother, my stepsister Karin, my stepbrother Borkhardt, myself, and two sub-tenants who were billetted with us by the authorities because of the acute housing shortage in those bombed-out post-war years. Seventy-seven square metres for seven people, eleven square metres per person.
Acute housing shortage, unemployment, no money, and little to eat sum up those dreadful post-war years. We were lucky to have a roof over our heads, even though we had to share that luck with two total strangers.
The advertisement includes a number of photos showing how beautiful everything looks today. The view across the yard is still as it was then, although the metal bars which were used to give carpets a good hiding (vacuum cleaners were unknown) have been replace by kids swings.
The front door opened onto a small entry hall, next was the kitchen ...
... and straight across the one bedroom in which slept my father, my stepmother, Karin, Borkhardt, and I. My oldest brother and sister had already left but where were my two other sisters, Bärbel and Monika?
One bedroom for five. How did we all fit in???
The bathroom housed the only loo which, with seven people (or was it nine?), was always engaged. The gas-fired hotwater system has gone. It had to be lit with a match - and always ignited with a loud bang - to get any hot water, but nothing else has changed - well, except for the toilet roll on the wall. In my days we cut up the local newspaper and hung it on a hook. I learnt how to read and became a reader sitting on that loo.
The kitchen has been renovated and now also has a balcony, but the tiny coolroom is still in the left-hand corner as we didn't have fridges then. Nor washing machines; instead, we had a communal laundry in the basement with a huge wood-fired copper kettle which I had to stoke.
The "large" lounge room belonged to our sub-tenants. I still remember two Bavarian zither-players who could play the Harry Lime theme but, fortunately, there was no third man or it would've been really crowded!
The smaller lounge room was our "gute Stube", the parlour, which was reserved for visitors and our parents' attempt at being bourgeoisie. We lived our lives in the warm kitchen where we did our homework, made our own toys out of bits of cardboard with a pair of scissors and a bit of glue, and where we spent the long winter nights playing "Mensch ärgere Dich nicht" or chess or cards. We were poor but we didn't know it!
Thank you, W&W, for this wonderful trip down memory lane - and, by the way, you just took a couple of thousands off QANTAS's bottom-line.
