(Jewish Group) 'An emotional journey': uncovering the hidden Jewish history behind Berlin's garden c

[Behind the Aegis]

‘An emotional journey’: uncovering the hidden Jewish history behind Berlin’s garden city

When Stella Flatten bought her terrace house in south Berlin’s Fliegerviertel (aviation district) several years ago, a condition set by the seller was that she would research the history of its first owner.

“It was a big responsibility and whilst part of me wondered why the previous owner hadn’t done it, I willingly embraced the task,” she said.

In between sanding down the original floorboards and uncovering the first layers of paint used to decorate the walls, she has been painstakingly piecing together the life of Gertrud Rothgiesser, a leading Berlin paediatrician and campaigner for better living conditions for city children, who moved into the modest three-storey garden house in 1926 and set up her doctor’s practice on the ground floor.

The experimental Tempelhof garden city – each house having front and back gardens – attracted many progressives, from doctors and social workers to social democrat MPs to architects. Like Rothgiesser, many of them were Jews who saw their idyllic lives uprooted by the Nazi regime.

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