Strausberger Platz on Stalinallee: Here the Henselmann family lived with eight children in the “House of the Child”
Foto: Imago/glasshouseimages
In late summer in late Berlin, Isa Henselmann ran desperately towards the Frankfurter Tor intersection, a sky blue Trabant. In the case of impact, “only” her left leg was injured and has remained shorter since then. That she could have been dead, this thought will have been different, because then she would never have been born herself. She is the daughter of Isa, who in turn is the daughter of Hermann and Irene »Isi« Henselmann. Among other things, Hermann planned the development at Frankfurter Tor, in the 1950s.
But after the dramatic scene at the beginning of her book “Die avenee”, it is only swiveled to 1931, in which ISI fell in love with just 16 in the architect Hermann Henselmann, who is ten years older. In short, chronologically ordered chapters, Florentine Anders reviews the history of her large family. In detail and clearly, she tells, exciting to the end. It is her first book and very successful. Family stories in particular are threatened with longness and, the further they are branched, can also become confusing.
But let’s not do anything: First of all, it is the radiance of a well -known name that pulls us into reading. In the cover picture I thought of the famous three -way picture of Marx, Engels and Lenin, only that Hermann Henselmann is flanked by two laughing self -confident women. The gifted book designer Kat Menschik immediately made it clear what the novel is about: about stubbornness male and female. She brought Henselmann’s designs to the picture in the GDR: in Berlin the high-rise on Weberwiese, the teacher’s house with the congress hall, the development of Leninplatz and Leipzig the university high-rise. Not to forget the “tower of the signals” as a template for the television tower.
Whoever is interested in the GDR – still or only now – cannot avoid this book. It is a book of the signals. There could have been no better title than “the avenue”. Until 1961, today’s Karl-Marx-Allee was called Stalinallee, Hermann Henselmann was involved in her development. From his history and that of her grandmother and her mother, Florentine has created a social novel that ranges from 1931 to 1995.
Hermann Henselmann never let himself be kept down, searched and found ways again and again to stay true to his talent. The son of a sculptor, born in 1905, sought to the international architectural guild, but soon had to cope with conditions that contradicted his cosmopolitan ambitions. Not only because of his Jewish roots, he clashed with the Nazi regime. After the end of the war, he came to Gotha as a city building council, from 1946 as director of the University of Building and Fine Arts to Weimar, from 1949 to Berlin as department head in the Institute for Building at the Academy of Sciences. In the positions levied, however, he also felt slowed down all the time in his architectural ambition and had to make compromises. Florentine differed something differently, which was typical for many who wanted to work creatively in the GDR.
June 17, 1953, Masonbau, 11th Plenum, “Prague Spring”, Biermann Excessive Office-these are stations of contemporary history in the ensemble of real people: Ulbricht, Honecker, Brecht, Robert Havemann, who was part of the family through marriage to the family, Manfred Krug, Alex Wedding, Brigitte, the jazz musician Hermann Anders (here only Hermi named), Benno Pludra-the MfS interest in this illustrious circle included. In addition, there are almost everything that can happen to women: rape, abortion, male betrayal.
Isi actually wanted to be an architect, but she got eight children. Her daughter Isa had five with whom she was at times alone. You think about how male dominance leaves its traces. Hermann Henselmann was charismatic, as a head of the family, responsibly, but also cholerically, even violent. He needed the challenging and remained free inside. “You can collapse every wall, you just have to go against it long enough,” he is quoted in the book. His granddaughter managed to put a dynamic, contradictory character in front of us. I understand why you could love him.
Florentine differently: the avenue. Galiani Berlin, 352 pages, born, 24 €.
Book presentation on 18.3. at 6 p.m. in the literary salon in FMP1, Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, Berlin