“Makarenko was just into it”: A youth in the former GDR children’s home in Treptow

Around 25,000 boys and girls once lived in the Berlin children's home in Königsheide. Some are still looking for their parents today. 

Behind the gate with the squirrel emblem, an almost unreal idyll opens up - it's hard to believe that the Schöneweide S-Bahn station is only around 600 meters away: Neoclassical buildings stand in a sparse forest of tall oaks and pine trees. They are reminiscent of the Zenner house in Treptower Park. Here and there there are hammocks stretched between the trees.

All buildings are decorated with blue, red and beige scratch paintings, showing happy children in all walks of life. The houses are on the right and left on a street lined with flower beds. It leads from the entrance gate with the squirrel to an imposing house with figures standing in front of the column-decorated portal. It looks a bit like a miniature of the Weimar National Theater.

This afternoon, a group of two dozen people strolled through the listed complex on Südostallee in Johannisthal, a district of Treptow . Some carry folding stools in their hands; the tour will last two hours, at least.

Balconies were added to the houses a few years ago. The residents of the ground floors were given terraces. There is a sign attached to one: “You should be a caterpillar: eat – sleep. Eat – sleep. Eat – sleep. Zack – nice.” The current residents of the complex want life to be so easy here. But it's not a carefree place.

Today a residential park, formerly the GDR's model children's home

Today's residential park was once the GDR 's model children's home . Work began on the 13 buildings in the early 1950s - including a baby ward, an outpatient clinic, four large residential buildings and the school that looks like a theater. The children's home was the second most important construction project in the young GDR, right after Karl-Marx-Allee , says the woman who leads the group across the twelve-hectare site.

Not knowing why they came to the home is sometimes the worst thing for many people.

Sabrina Knüppel, chairwoman of the Königsheid Squirrel Association

The woman's name is Sabrina Knüppel and she is 42 years old. She heads the association and the foundation, thanks to which the historic facility did not completely fall into disrepair. The two organizations brought in journalists after 2008, when the empty houses became increasingly neglected. A Würzburg real estate entrepreneur became aware of the reports, bought the site and had apartments built. Today the main focus of the association and foundation is once again on the welfare and woe of the former children in care.

From the end of 1953, thousands of girls and boys grew up here without their parents, an estimated 25,000 in four decades. At first there were many war orphans, later children of fathers and mothers who had gone to the West. There are also many girls and boys from neglected backgrounds. Or from particularly privileged people. Diplomats, SED officials and intellectuals also gave their offspring here - trusting that their sons and daughters would be raised here particularly competently and in a socialist spirit.

THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY WILL BE CELEBRATED ON SATURDAY

On December 2, 1953, the children's home in Königsheide, which had taken 18 months to build, was occupied. The 70th anniversary of the opening will be celebrated on December 2nd with a reception in the Johannisthal town hall. The Königsheide Information and Meeting Center (IBZ) began its work
in autumn 2018 . The contact point for former children in care will celebrate its fifth anniversary on September 30th. The festival with coffee table and candlelight parade begins at 2 p.m. on the grounds at Südostallee 146 in Treptow. The Federal Police Orchestra Berlin is also giving a benefit concert.
Registration for both events at Veranstaltung@ibz-koenigsheide.de

John Erpenbeck, the son of the writer couple Fritz Erpenbeck and Hedda Zinner, grew up here. And Knut Strittmatter, a son from the first marriage of National Prize winner Erwin Strittmatter. The family of the first GDR Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl is also said to have brought their offspring here.

The group of visitors is now standing in front of the house where the dining room used to be. Sabrina Knüppel points out the stained glass windows designed by Walter Womacka and then explains that from 1968 onwards the children's home bore the name of the Ukrainian educator Anton Semyonovich Makarenko.

“Makarenko was just into it,” blurted out a visitor with short blonde hair. She is around 50, wears hiking sandals on her bare feet and three-quarter length trousers. “If they had listened a little more to Makarenko, then I would have felt better here.” Some of the group look surprised. Perhaps the outburst of emotion was triggered by the sight of that building next to the former restaurant. “House 3, in the room to the left of the door, that’s where I lived in the 80s,” says the agitated visitor. Sabrina Knüppel is not surprised. Former home children take part in every second or third tour.

Why did I come to the home?

Sometimes they register in advance, like the blonde-haired woman who came with a friend. But even if they don't come out when registering, Sabrina Knüppel usually still recognizes them during the tour - based on what they say.

And many people arrange a consultation appointment with her after the tour - more precisely at the Königsheide Information and Meeting Center (IBZ).. The alumni association and foundation have been running this contact point for five years. The center, which is financed only through donations and is run by volunteers, helps former children in care with research into their biological parents and siblings, supports them with applications for rehabilitation and tries, for example, to establish contacts with childhood friends. More than 4,000 former inmates have so far sought contact with the alumni association .

“The question that concerns most people is: Why did I come to the home?” says Sabrina Knüppel. A question that was not welcome in GDR times. And even if it had been provided, the staff also knew little about the history of the individual children.

Even today, the question of why cannot always be answered. The IBZ Königsheide only has a fraction of the files. Some documents were destroyed after 1989 or lost in the chaos of the settlement. Other files moved with the girls and boys, most of whom only lived in Königsheide temporarily and from there were transferred to other facilities or placed with adoptive parents.

Despite the incompleteness of the files, in one case or another it is still possible to answer the question why. But that doesn't always make it easy for Sabrina Knüppel. In one case, for example, she struggled for a long time whether she should tell the questioner the truth: she had come to the home after her father had killed her mother.

Sabrina Knüppel then told her. Of course it was a shock, tears of dismay flowed. But ultimately the woman was relieved. “Not knowing is sometimes the worst thing for many people,” says the club chairwoman. And sometimes there is a happy ending, for example if, through research, the former child in care can be brought into contact with his or her family of origin. Or at least find the address of the parents' grave.

The IBZ Königsheide has been building a database for several years and it is continuously growing. In the meantime, some former educators, teachers and administrators have bequeathed their estates to the association. Your photos and documents complement the database and are, in the best case, a piece of the puzzle that helps this or that affected person. The information provided by former residents who turn to their old address for help is also systematically recorded using a specially developed questionnaire. The club benefits from the fact that Sabrina Knüppel is familiar with administration. The Berliner is an administrative specialist, worked in human resources departments for a long time and is now a lecturer in the federal administration.

Here a tricycle, there a sleigh, above the GDR constitution

This afternoon she is sitting in the former youth club of the former children's home. The IBZ has its headquarters in the one-story building next to the gatehouse at the entrance, where it also operates a one-room museum. The sun barely manages to illuminate the packed room. Dolls in pioneer uniforms stand in a corner, a tricycle dangles from the ceiling here, a sleigh there, and the GDR constitution stands on a shelf. There is a screen on the wall on which you can watch excerpts from the “Current Camera” and other GDR television reports about the children's home. In the room itself, the visitor has to make his way through banners hanging from the ceiling. They talk about who was admitted there and what everyday life was like.

“Wake up at 6:15 a.m., line up according to size and report. Immediately afterwards, morning exercise, gymnastics or cross-country running, regardless of whether it was raining, hailing or snowing outside. After morning exercise, washing, building cupboards, building beds.” Then line up again in the hallway, silently in single file for breakfast. And alas, a word was spoken on the way there. Then there were silent practice marches – “from the gate to the school and back. Always back and forth.”

When you're young, there are always a lot of things to remember fondly. That's how I feel about my time in Königsheide - friends, adventures, etc. - but it wasn't all good. And in a children's home in which several hundred children are housed like barracks and are supposed to be raised in strict order to become young GDR socialists, how could everything have been warm and comfortable?

Klaus Kordon, writer, lived in the children's home from January 1958 to the summer of 1959

This is how the writer Klaus Kordon describes everyday life in his autobiographical novel “Crocodile on the Neck”. Kordon was 14 when he came to the home in Königsheide after his mother's death. He lived there from January 1958 to the summer of 1959.

It is the military drill that remains in the writer's memory. There was hardly any warmth, closeness or comfort in the home “in which a few hundred children were supposed to be raised in strict order to become young GDR socialists”. Kordon, now 80, says he knows that many former inmates of the home - including formerly critical spirits - have developed a certain mildness in old age. The barracks-like accommodation and the required military discipline suddenly no longer seem bad to them, he says, perhaps because, looking back, “youth is always somehow beautiful.” He takes a closer look and risks discussions - knowing full well that the children in the West German homes didn't always fare well back then.

In addition to “Crocodile on the Neck” there are other books in which the time in – as it is temporarily called – home combine is reflected. “Heimkind – Neger -Pionier” comes from the dancer and choreographer Detlef Soost, born in Pankow in 1970 and in the children’s home from 1979. Soost remembers the well-organized daily routine, but also “loneliness, strangeness and humiliation”. The former juror of the ProSieben casting show “Popstars” writes that it was particularly bad on holidays like Christmas, when a depressing feeling spread: “No one wanted us. We weren't needed. We didn’t belong to anyone.”

Interestingly, other former children in care have fond memories of Christmas. They still observe the Christmas ritual from their childhood: they walk at dusk to the sports field, where a decorated Christmas tree awaits, just like before. “This here, the club, has become something like a family for many people,” says Sabrina Knüppel. “They often don’t have anyone else,” she says.

To this day there are also annual holiday trips to other children's homes, for example in Hungary or Slovakia. The two dozen volunteers working at the IBZ Königsheide are also fighting to keep their former holiday home in the Uckermark because they have fond memories of it. You can read about it in the book series “Heimecho”, which is published by the alumni association and whose third volume will be published next year. The descriptions in the book “More than a Father”, which consists of memories from contemporary witnesses of Günter Riese, the first director of the home, are also positive.

The home management influenced the entire climate in the complex, says Sabrina Knüppel. It depended on the directors whether the former home children now think of their years in Königsheide with good or bad feelings. And also the time and circumstances of their admission: to the war orphans, who initially camped alone in bombed-out houses, the rooms in Königsheide seemed like a hotel. The girls and boys who initially had a well-protected upbringing and who came to the home because their parents were imprisoned for political reasons felt differently.

The military drill was certainly also due to the size of the home, reports Sabrina Knüppel: 600 children from infants to almost adults initially lived there; it was the largest children's home in the German-speaking region and the second largest in the Eastern Bloc. But at the end of the 1970s it was recognized that size was a problem - and the home was converted into an auxiliary school home with fewer places.

From the mid-1990s onwards, the home went downhill: first it was converted into a youth center, then closed by the Senate in 1997 and finally sold by the property fund to a Russian investor in 2008. The buyer left the area neglected for years.

Youth in the Königsheide: Beautiful memories of the marching band

The blonde-haired woman said during the tour that she was there for the first time. Back then, her husband didn't dare to enter the cordoned-off area with the dilapidated houses; But her desire to see each other again was so great that she even decided to meet the security company.

The woman was very busy with her youth in Königsheide: she dealt with her traumas in therapy for many years, she says. During therapy she met the friend who was accompanying her that day. She also grew up here. She has good memories of the home, such as playing music in the marching band, and bad ones: At night, as a punishment, she sometimes had to stand in the dark hallway until she collapsed from fatigue.

For other former children in care, the connection to the place where they grew up was so great that they would have liked to grow old here, says Sabrina Knüppel. Some people looked at the model apartment in the residential park, but ultimately no one came along.

Knüppel herself grew up in Prenzlauer Berg , with her parents and grandparents. It was only after reunification that she came to the topic that shapes her life today. At that time, a friend asked her for help. Her colleague, who grew up in a children's home, was looking for her parents. It was the first research that Sabrina Knüppel took on, many more followed.

She will also take care of the gaps in the blonde-haired visitor's biography. There are chances to establish contact with her favorite teacher, to whom she owes a lot. “That could be a highlight,” says Sabrina Knüppel; like the case two years ago, when she ensured that a family could hug each other again after 50 years. “Then you’ll know again what you’re doing it for.”