The unusual return of Gertrud Kolmar: a poet enters the old family home, which is now a police station

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Die Rückkehr an den Ort der Kindheit kann für viele Menschen eine nostalgische Erfahrung sein. Doch für Gertrud Chodziesner war diese Rückkehr eine erschütternde Begegnung mit der Vergangenheit. Im Winter 1940 besuchte sie das Haus in der Ahornallee in Westend, in dem sie aufgewachsen war, nur um festzustellen, dass es nun eine Polizeistation ist. Dieser Besuch, so beschreibt es die Biografin Friederike Heimann, gleicht eher einer unwirklichen Traumszene inmitten der sich verschärfenden Verfolgung durch die Nazis. Trotzdem betrat Gertrud Kolmar, wie sie als Schriftstellerin bekannt war, das Haus und wurde vom Hausmeister höflich behandelt. Sie fand jedoch heraus, dass nichts …
Returning to the place of childhood can be a nostalgic experience for many people. But for Gertrud Chodziesner, this return was a shocking encounter with the past. In the winter of 1940 she visited the house on Ahornallee in Westend, where she grew up, just to find out that it is now a police station. This visit, the biographer Friederike Heimann describes it, is more like an unreal dream scene in the middle of the tightening persecution by the Nazis. Nevertheless, Gertrud Kolmar, as she was known as the writer, entered the house and was politely treated by the caretaker. However, she found that nothing ... (Symbolbild/MB)

Returning to the place of childhood can be a nostalgic experience for many people. But for Gertrud Chodziesner, this return was a shocking encounter with the past. In the winter of 1940 she visited the house on Ahornallee in Westend, where she grew up, just to find out that it is now a police station. This visit, the biographer Friederike Heimann describes it, is more like an unreal dream scene in the middle of the tightening persecution by the Nazis.

Nevertheless, Gertrud Kolmar, as she was known as the writer, entered the house and was treated politely by the caretaker. However, she found that nothing comparable was between the offices and her own rooms. She even refrained from visiting the upper floor. In letters to her sister Hilde Wenzel, who had fled to Switzerland, Gertrud Kolmar carefully reported on this experience and of many others, which she experienced as a Jew in Berlin.

The biographer herself visited the Ahornallee in 2014, together with Gertrud Kolmar's nephew Ben Chodziesner, who had traveled from Australia. Ben, who only met his "Aunt Trude" in the last decade of his life, visited the places that played an important role for the Chodziesner family: the Ahornallee, the Kurfürstendamm and the Bavarian Quarter. These inspections and encounters make the book about Gertrud Kolmar particularly worth reading.

The biographer Friederike Heimann integrates biography, history and psychogeography in her work. For example, she describes how Gertrud Kolmar made his way to a reading of her cousin Walter Benjamin after leaving the house on Kurfürstendamm. The Ku’damm and Meinekestrasse, places that are now taken up by shops such as Budapest shoes and Marc O’Polo fashion, also play a role in history.

The story of Gertrud Kolmar, however, takes a tragic turn. From March 2, 1943, it was deported from the Grunewald train station and murdered shortly afterwards. Her father, in whom she had stayed instead of fleeing, was also murdered shortly before. The memorial Gleis 17 is reminiscent of this terrible deportation, in which 1758 Jews from Berlin were brought to Auschwitz.

The new biography of Gertrud Kolmar has been published by Jewish publisher near Suhrkamp and, in addition to detailed interpretations of her poetry and prose, also offers insights into the life of the poet during the time of National Socialism. Especially the poems published in the GDR under the title "The Word of the Moli" testify to their examination of the Nazi era. Gertrud Kolmar's story shows us the shattering effects of the Holocaust and the need to remember this terrible time.