In 1959, at age 19, my dad turned his back on Hamburg and moved to California. His Germany is still one of bombed-out buildings awaiting reconstruction, a doting mother with home-grown berries for homemade marmalade, a stepfather with a Dickensian attitude towards stepchildren, and cold gray days. Germany has moved on. The Harbor City will erase some of the last traces of destruction, my Oma is now too old to work in her garden, and no one will touch her moldy marmalade; only the weather remains gray.
I still remember, aged ten, when Oma’s sisters, Tante Thea and Tante Ente (Irmingard) first visited us in Anaheim. I especially remember Tante Thea sleeping with her eyes open, convincing me that she was dead. They always seemed so old to me. Now aged 94, Tante Thea still sweeps her sidewalk. Ever since her evil husband died, she lives with her lively sister and everyone’s favorite aunt, Tante Ente. The house is across the street from Oma on Rungwisch in Eidelstedt.
Tante Ente is good for a few dozen great stories, but I will stick to Vicki’s theme of Hamburg trivia: Tante Ente owns the oldest house in St. Georg, built in 1621. It was originally built by a Hamburg businessman as a weekend home in green St. Georg outside the city walls with its narrow back garden so close to the dusty Alster promenade. The house changed from a single family home with servant rooms upstairs to rented apartments. One tenant in the 1800s was the mother of Hamburg’s famous son, Johannes Brahms, 1833-1897. She died in this house. The mother of Burgermeister Mönckeberg, after whom the city’s main shopping street is named, once maintained a school for “girls of good family” in this house. As the centuries passed, the house decayed, at one point even goats lived in it – or at least a lot of goat dung was found in the straw used as insulation material, which was discovered during renovation in 1990. Throughout the 1980s the city was pressuring my aunt to renovate. She was to pay 40% and the city the rest. The work would be performed by the city’s own team of craftsmen for historical buildings. Ever try to get your granny to remodel her kitchen? Older people usually shy away from big undertakings. Finally the city threatened to condemn the building and enforce a sale. She signed. The renovation revealed its year of construction; shoddy stop-gap construction done over the years was ripped out, revealing beautifully-painted ceilings. The house is now in its original glory, very charming and a treat to visit. I first saw the house in the 70s, in a dodgy and decrepit state. The upper floors were closed off because of safety. A thin, steep staircase climbed through the heart of the building. There was only one toilet on the ground floor built snugly below the staircase – no sink. The ground floor also housed Uncle Horst’s store where he sold sewing machines.
So how did my Auntie acquire this house? Horst was not really my uncle because Tante Ente refused to marry him, although she agreed to an engagement that lasted 45 years. He was a good and kind man, tight with money and otherwise a match, BUT he had a mean-spirited father who spat poison at everyone. Tante Ente would not have a Mann who was not man enough to stand up to his father when he spat poison at her or her family. Horst lost the chance to prove himself when his father died during those decades of engagement, and Tante Ente liked the status quo. Of course when Uncle Horst died and she had to pay inheritance taxes that a wife would not and didn’t receive his pension, someone else had a laugh. But the last laugh is hers: at almost 70 years old, she took a grungy functional sewing machine shop and transformed it into a place where women would want to come to buy. It is the number one address in the city – it thrives while others close.
So the next time that you are strolling though fascinating St. Georg, stop in at Lange Reihe 61 to browse. Formerly named Schwidrowski Nähmaschinen-Haus, Uncle Horst’s family name, it is now the Hamburger Nähmaschinen-Haus.
