The House by the Lake. Sommerhaus am See, englische Ausgabe

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In the summer of 1993, Thomas Harding traveled to Germany with his grandmother to visit her childhood holiday home by a lake near Berlin, a place she had been forced to leave in the 1930s when fleeing the Nazis. The trip was meant to be a final farewell, but the house had changed significantly. Nearly twenty years later, Thomas returned to find it derelict and slated for demolition. This house, once cherished by his grandmother, had a complex legacy marked by love, abandonment, and conflict. Determined to explore its history, he began speaking to neighbors, visiting archives, and uncovering secrets about the five families who had lived there: a wealthy landowner, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned composer, a widowed mother with her children, and a Stasi informant. Each had experienced joy and sorrow within its walls, facing dislocation and tragedy. As Thomas pieced together their stories, he discovered a chance to save the house, but this would require confronting his family's complex feelings about their homeland and the generational hatred they carried. This narrative offers a profound exploration of Germany's tumultuous history through the lens of a small wooden house, blending personal and collective memory.