A House in Berlin (2014) Movie Script
1
I met Stella Miles five years ago.
We became friends.
During the hot nights, exhausted
from the days work,
she told me the story of Jakob Milgroim
and the house in Berlin.
Stella liked those
rainy days in Glasgow.
She told me that her mother
never brought an umbrella
and would laugh when Stella
jumped in the puddles.
She came home drenched
and her father reproached her
mother for being irresponsible.
And then they stopped laughing.
Helene van Heusden wrote that
she had been Jakob's close friend.
According to her, the house in
Berlin meant a lot to him.
It would now be Stella's property.
She would always be welcome to contact
Helene if she could do anything for her.
Stella's old friend Robert seldom
came to the cottage anymore.
He worked until late, had
a wife and a young son.
He therefore no longer paid the same
attention to Stella as he used to
when they were both still unattached.
The usual story.
Stella's father, Philip Miles,
rented the cottage after
his wife haf left him.
Stella used to spend her
weekends and vacations
wandering along the
coast of the Irish Sea
while her father told her about
the books he had read
and the lectures he was preparing
for his students at the
University of Glasgow.
After her best friend Jeanny had
married and moved to London,
followed shortly afterwards
by two babies,
Stella went crazy and
began drinking too much.
But she gave it up just as quickly
and decided to become a lecturer,
just like her father.
She developed a great passion for books,
which connected us both.
In particular the books by
Robert Louis Stevenson,
whose South Sea stories aroused
feelings of yearning
in her lonely heart.
Her lectures mainly focused on
Stevenson's works set in
the South Pacific
as well as his letters to friends
and fellow writers
in which he described his exile.
"I agree with you the lights
seem a little turned down.
The truth is, I was far through
(if you understand Scots),
and came none to soon to the South Seas,
where I was to recover
peace of body and mind.
No man but my myself knew
all my bitterness in those days.
Remember that, the next time
you think I regret my exile.
And however low the lights
are, the stuff is true,
and I believe the more effective."
Robert knew Berlin, and Stella
had invited him to dinner
in the hope of persuading
him to travel there with her,
even though she expected him to decline.
Excuse me!
Stella often talked
about the first time.
The first time she saw the house.
The first time she saw Simon and Lukas.
These had been turning points
in her life.
The man who had just left
the house was in a hurry.
But he told her that she
could come by again
to talk to Lukas, the tenant
on the first floor.
Stella told me about her
first night in Berlin.
She wandered through
the city I knew so well
until the early morning hours,
searching for remnants of a world
that existed when the Milgroims
still lived in that house.
She decided to delay
her return to Glasgow.
Had Mr. Zimmer conveyed a false
impression of the house to her?
ZIMMER & LWENSTEIN
Attorneys at law
LIBRARY
The Jewish address book for
Greater Berlin from 1931.
I recall Stella telling me that her
perception of the city changed
after leaving the library.
The dissonance of laughter,
unsuspecting pedestrians
and the Jewish address book
echoed in her head.
Stella was not to leave any time soon
and found an apartment
with the help of an agency.
Just give me a call shortly beforehand.
Take care! Goodbye!
She should talk to Mrs. Otto
from upstairs. Yes?
Lukas had a friend,
the brother of a lawyer who had
represented several Jewish families.
But Kthe Blacher was very busy
and Stella had to wait.
- Mom, when are we finally leaving?
- Come here!
Sit down for a second. I'll be
right back and then we'll leave.
BOOKSTORE
The Milgroim family had been selling
fabrics in the house in Berlin.
She found a book:
"The Berlin Fashion and
Clothing Industry, 1836-1939.
The Destruction of a Tradition."
Stella learned that after the
unification of Germany in 1871
and the emancipation of the Jews,
their traditional ties in the
textile and tailoring trades
increasingly turned towards
ready-made clothing.
Berlin became an important
fashion center
and clothing exports were
a significant economic factor.
In 1933, the Nazis began to aryanize
and liquidate everything.
Annette and Anna, the two women
whose apartment Stella was renting,
unexpectedly returned from
abroad for the night.
They had just been to Israel.
That looks great! Super!
Annette was curating a multimedia
exhibition on the subject of memory.
She told her about a Palestinian artist
who wrote down the memories of refugees.
These were memories of
their erstwhile houses,
which were now in Israel
and to which they were no longer
allowed to return, not even for a visit.
The artists located the houses
or their last traces
on the basis of their memories
and photographed them.
She then returned to the refugee camps
with the photographs.
And another first time:
It was the first time anyone had talked
to her about Palestine, Stella said.
The encounter left her irritated
and she avoided the apartment
until the two women had departed.
What did Palestine have to do with her?
Purchased from the A.S. Drey
company in Munich
Interior design
Mrs. Commercial Councillor Jandorf
I) 19th century paintings and drawings
II) 19th century paintings
The inventories of the Berlin companies
Old art, antiques
The house in Berlin was
only a small component
of the immense, thoroughly
organized state decrees
to expropriate and pillage everything
that German and European Jews
had produced and possessed.
Citizens, companies and even museums
took part in this legitimate looting
in order to profit from it.
To German mothers! 72000 Jewish soldiers
died honorably for the fatherland.
Kthe Blacher called.
Mr. Zimmer didn't like it at all that
Stella had involved another lawyer.
He refused to disclose the
name of the potential buyer.
Kthe Blacher found that suspicious.
Stella and I often talked about the fact
that some people recognize
injustice and oppose it,
while others tolerate it, excuse it,
ignore it or profit from it.
The diaries of the Jewish
professor Victor Klemperer,
who lived in Dresden during
the rise of the Nazis,
detailed how the situation
worsened by the day,
until the point of no return
was reached.
Klemperer wrote:
"All believe, insofar as they are
not honestly carried away,
that it is inopportune,
in terms of political realism,
to be outraged at such details as
the suppression of civil liberties,
the persecution of the Jews, the
falsification of all scholarly truths,
and the systematic
destruction of all morality."
And then there was mention
of Palestine again.
Klemperer wrote about fiery
discussions among the Jews
regarding the emigration to Palestine.
He rejected Zionism and sympathized
with the Palestinian Arabs.
His wife Eva called it
the fate of the natives.
Klemperer's words were even harsher.
Stella spent hours reading and
strolling through the city.
Berlin revealed itself to her
in a different way
in the early hours of the
morning or late at night
than when the streets
were full of people.
After the war, Mrs. Otto had worked
for an American military family
until the Berlin Wall forced her and
the house into the eastern sector.
She provided her with
fragmentary information,
but did not answer Stella's questions.
Stella didn't insist and also
didn't mention to her
that the house was to be sold.
Kthe Blacher had made
an interesting discovery
in the files of the cadastral office.
It was a letter from Mr. Zimmer in
which he declared his intention
to sell the house to
a development company
on behalf of Jakob Milgroim.
Stella couldn't believe it.
She remembered the letter
from Helene van Heusden,
the executor of the inheritance.
Kthe Blacher advised her to
contact Helene in Rotterdam.
Helene had plenty to tell her.
As German Jews, Jakob and
his older brother Walter
were denied access to higher education
due to a law passed in 1933.
From that point on, Walter worked
together with his wife Rosa
in the family business.
And Jakob studied at home.
They talked about leaving Germany.
Walter harbored a certain sympathy
for Zionism, which enraged Jakob.
They argued fiercely until their
parents finally declared
that emigrating to Palestine
was not an option for them.
Stella talked about her father
and mother Morna,
and about finding out after
her mother's death
that her father's parents had been
opposed to the marriage.
Her mother had left the family
when Stella was eleven.
There were two letters that
Rosa had written to Jakob.
In the first, she asked him if he
could imagine taking Philip.
Walter tried to love the boy,
but he saw in him the betrayal
by his wife and brother.
He was very strict with Philip.
In the second letter,
Rosa apologized to him.
Because, she wrote, she would never
be able to part with her son.
One thing was clear now: Jakob had
been against the sale of the house.
Zimmer threatened to
have Stella arrested.
But she was on the right track.
The file contained a letter in which
the development company confirmed its
offer of 150,000 euros to Zimmer,
in addition to the payment Jakob
would have received for the sale.
Kthe Blacher countered his threats.
If Zimmer wanted to keep his license,
he would have to revoke all agreements
and renounce Jakob's fee.
Kthe's final counterattack
delighted Stella.
Stella looked at Glasgow with new eyes.
The width of the streets and
the height of the buildings.
The consistent stone architecture.
The colors of the buildings. The scales.
The gates, mounds and spires.
The people.
The relative casualness of
people in Glasgow.
Their generosity with their
time and money.
Their friendliness without
being snobbish.
The informal chitchat, the morning
bread roll, lunch and fried egg.
And the light in the evening.
Robert's grandfather had been
a master carpenter on the big ships
until the shipyards were shut down.
He still lived in the tenements
next to the titanium crane.
As they walked along the
harbor to visit him,
Stella told Robert about
the house in Berlin.
Robert didn't try to
hide his skepticism.
The Christmas days were stormy and she
kept the fire burning in the chimney.
Instead of preparing her lectures,
she read Klemperer's diaries.
And Primo Levi.
"It is a dream within a dream,
varied in detail, one in substance.
I am sitting at a table with my family,
or with friends, or at work,
or in the green countryside;
in short, in a peaceful
relaxed environment,
apparently without
tension or affliction;
yet I feel a deep and subtle anguish,
the definite sensation of
an impending threat.
And in fact, as the dream proceeds,
slowly and brutally,
each time in a different way,
everything collapses,
and disintegrates around me,
the scenery, the walls, the people..."
Stella made some inquiries.
Would she be able to get a loan for
a house in Berlin that she owned,
and on what financial terms?
One of the first questions
the banks would ask was
whether she owned any
property in Glasgow.
She was warned by friends to
take out a second mortgage
on her apartment in Glasgow.
In case that something went wrong,
she would lose everything.
Robert agreed to spending
a weekend at the cottage.
in order to discuss their
plans for the house.
But once again it didn't work out.
It was a beautiful day and Stella
drove to the Blackhead Lighthouse.
She called Robert while
she was on the road.
She told me about their conversation
as if it had occurred yesterday.
When she started talking
about the house,
he told her that he couldn't understand
why she would want that house in Berlin.
Stella replied that it meant
something to her.
"The house in Berlin means
something to me.
It's a family matter."
And Robert said: "But it's a
derelict house in Berlin, Stella.
It's a liability."
He said that he didn't understand
what she was supposed to live on
if she took on something that
was too challenging for her.
"Why don't you try to find a buyer?
Why don't you try to find
a good person, Stella?
There are good people out there
in the world, you know?"
"You don't understand. And it's none
of your business, she said.
After a long pause, he said:
"You know what? You're bloody right."
This one is also really wonderful.
She also had fun doing it.
She didn't do it reluctantly.
But she didn't want to be
pigeonholed as a mere artist.
She also wanted to pursue her
interests in natural sciences.
That didn't go down well at the time,
as it was totally unseemly for a
woman from that social class.
And her mother, or rather her stepmother
because her biological mother died
very young, also scolded her a lot
when she found boxes with small
insects in them in her room.
Nevertheless, she urged all her
friends to collect items for her,
which they did, in return
for which she would
draw them small embroidery patterns
that she had been taught.
In this way, she maintained
her kind of network.
Yes.
Can she come up here? Is that okay?
Yes, please. Ask her to come up.
Yes, it's nice. Yes.
Stella was glad to be back in the
company of Simon and Lukas.
She described her broom
chamber in a cheap hotel.
Once again, she had to
rent an apartment.
It's her house, isn't it?
Jakob's house.
Her family's house.
Her house.
The Milgroims had lived above her.
They had walked through the rooms.
They had gone up and down the stairs
between their apartment and
their store on the first floor.
Weaving businesses were
aryanized in 1938.
In 1939, Gring decreed the registration
of all Jewish businesses,
bank deposits, accounts and
real estate holdings.
By that time, the parents of Walter and
Jakob were trying to leave the city.
THE JEWISH MERCHANThe Jews are our calamity!
Stella introduced herself to the other
tenants living in the house.
A young couple with a son,
a quiet and withdrawn
man in his late forties,
a single mother and her daughter,
and a collective of computer
freaks on the first floor.
She rarely saw Mrs. Otto.
One of the apartments was vacant
and she didn't have a key to it.
An alcoholic had lit a fire in it
the previous winter.
There was still a faint
smell of smoke in the air.
But how was she supposed to
pay the interest on a loan?
Speculators vacated buildings across
Berlin and raised the rents.
This was also a form of expropriation.
Lukas and Simon hated them
like the plague.
They advised her to take things slowly.
The urgent repairs should be done first.
The apartment with the fire damage would
generate some additional rental income.
Lukas suggested that she should look at
other buildings in former East Berlin.
During one of her lengthy walks,
Stella spotted a book in the display
of a second-hand bookshop.
Palestine and the East Bank
It was published in 1917.
Its pictures presented
a flourishing, multi-ethnic,
beautiful country brimming with
old towns and villages.
This was the land of yearning
for the Zionists.
Palestine had never been
an uninhabited country.
Where, then, had Jewish emigrants
from Europe settled?
And who lived in these old houses today?
Stella didn't understand the German text
and looked it up on the internet.
It was a small, innocuous step
with far-reaching consequences.
Helene van Heusden sold some of Jakob's
furniture and sent Stella the money
together with some letters she
had found inside a drawer.
They had been written by their mother
and were addressed to Jakob and Walter.
Mrs. Otto must have known about it.
She'll be here soon, Mrs. Otto.
What was she supposed
to do with the house?
It was the house in which
her father's family had lived.
But what future does it hold for her?
Was she fulfilling a duty?
What were her responsibilities
to her family
and the people who now lived there?
What did she need and want for herself?
Was she the one who needed
to look after the house?
How could she be sure about anything?
Once they are dead, they are gone.
She remembered her mother.
In Berlin, Stella was reminded of
how much she had loved her.
Stella placed an ad in the newspaper.
"House for sale. Only to
private individuals."
Potential buyers walked
through the house
while Stella read about Palestine at
the beginning of the 20th century.
She read about the inhabitants
of Greater Syria
towards the end of the Ottoman Empire,
the Zionists
and the British Mandate.
She came across the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions.
It organized summer camps.
Volunteers from all countries worked
together with Palestinians and Israelis
to rebuild houses in the West Bank.
To rebuild a house.
Max Lsser visited the
house a second time.
He was one of Kthe Blacher's clients.
They became friends
and he learned from Kthe that
Stella wanted to sell the house.
He had moved back to Berlin,
the city of his birth.
It was his city, as he said.
Max noticed how difficult it
was for Stella to let go.
He told her:
"You're too young to carry
such a load on your back.
I, on the other hand, am just the
right age to take on such a task."
He made her laugh.
Sometimes I walk past the house
and remember.
Stella bid farewell to the
residents of the house.
To Simon and Lukas.
She returned to Glasgow to
pack her things away.
Robert apologized for being
so harsh with her.
But how could she resent him?
She gave the apartment key to a visiting
professor who rented it for the summer.
Then she headed for Portpatrick.
Spring was her favorite season
due to the gentle coloring and the
sudden onset of lake mist
that drifted across the land.
After the summer camp,
I returned to Berlin.
And Stella remained in Palestine.
She's still there.
In the meantime,
five years have passed.
I met Stella Miles five years ago.
We became friends.
During the hot nights, exhausted
from the days work,
she told me the story of Jakob Milgroim
and the house in Berlin.
Stella liked those
rainy days in Glasgow.
She told me that her mother
never brought an umbrella
and would laugh when Stella
jumped in the puddles.
She came home drenched
and her father reproached her
mother for being irresponsible.
And then they stopped laughing.
Helene van Heusden wrote that
she had been Jakob's close friend.
According to her, the house in
Berlin meant a lot to him.
It would now be Stella's property.
She would always be welcome to contact
Helene if she could do anything for her.
Stella's old friend Robert seldom
came to the cottage anymore.
He worked until late, had
a wife and a young son.
He therefore no longer paid the same
attention to Stella as he used to
when they were both still unattached.
The usual story.
Stella's father, Philip Miles,
rented the cottage after
his wife haf left him.
Stella used to spend her
weekends and vacations
wandering along the
coast of the Irish Sea
while her father told her about
the books he had read
and the lectures he was preparing
for his students at the
University of Glasgow.
After her best friend Jeanny had
married and moved to London,
followed shortly afterwards
by two babies,
Stella went crazy and
began drinking too much.
But she gave it up just as quickly
and decided to become a lecturer,
just like her father.
She developed a great passion for books,
which connected us both.
In particular the books by
Robert Louis Stevenson,
whose South Sea stories aroused
feelings of yearning
in her lonely heart.
Her lectures mainly focused on
Stevenson's works set in
the South Pacific
as well as his letters to friends
and fellow writers
in which he described his exile.
"I agree with you the lights
seem a little turned down.
The truth is, I was far through
(if you understand Scots),
and came none to soon to the South Seas,
where I was to recover
peace of body and mind.
No man but my myself knew
all my bitterness in those days.
Remember that, the next time
you think I regret my exile.
And however low the lights
are, the stuff is true,
and I believe the more effective."
Robert knew Berlin, and Stella
had invited him to dinner
in the hope of persuading
him to travel there with her,
even though she expected him to decline.
Excuse me!
Stella often talked
about the first time.
The first time she saw the house.
The first time she saw Simon and Lukas.
These had been turning points
in her life.
The man who had just left
the house was in a hurry.
But he told her that she
could come by again
to talk to Lukas, the tenant
on the first floor.
Stella told me about her
first night in Berlin.
She wandered through
the city I knew so well
until the early morning hours,
searching for remnants of a world
that existed when the Milgroims
still lived in that house.
She decided to delay
her return to Glasgow.
Had Mr. Zimmer conveyed a false
impression of the house to her?
ZIMMER & LWENSTEIN
Attorneys at law
LIBRARY
The Jewish address book for
Greater Berlin from 1931.
I recall Stella telling me that her
perception of the city changed
after leaving the library.
The dissonance of laughter,
unsuspecting pedestrians
and the Jewish address book
echoed in her head.
Stella was not to leave any time soon
and found an apartment
with the help of an agency.
Just give me a call shortly beforehand.
Take care! Goodbye!
She should talk to Mrs. Otto
from upstairs. Yes?
Lukas had a friend,
the brother of a lawyer who had
represented several Jewish families.
But Kthe Blacher was very busy
and Stella had to wait.
- Mom, when are we finally leaving?
- Come here!
Sit down for a second. I'll be
right back and then we'll leave.
BOOKSTORE
The Milgroim family had been selling
fabrics in the house in Berlin.
She found a book:
"The Berlin Fashion and
Clothing Industry, 1836-1939.
The Destruction of a Tradition."
Stella learned that after the
unification of Germany in 1871
and the emancipation of the Jews,
their traditional ties in the
textile and tailoring trades
increasingly turned towards
ready-made clothing.
Berlin became an important
fashion center
and clothing exports were
a significant economic factor.
In 1933, the Nazis began to aryanize
and liquidate everything.
Annette and Anna, the two women
whose apartment Stella was renting,
unexpectedly returned from
abroad for the night.
They had just been to Israel.
That looks great! Super!
Annette was curating a multimedia
exhibition on the subject of memory.
She told her about a Palestinian artist
who wrote down the memories of refugees.
These were memories of
their erstwhile houses,
which were now in Israel
and to which they were no longer
allowed to return, not even for a visit.
The artists located the houses
or their last traces
on the basis of their memories
and photographed them.
She then returned to the refugee camps
with the photographs.
And another first time:
It was the first time anyone had talked
to her about Palestine, Stella said.
The encounter left her irritated
and she avoided the apartment
until the two women had departed.
What did Palestine have to do with her?
Purchased from the A.S. Drey
company in Munich
Interior design
Mrs. Commercial Councillor Jandorf
I) 19th century paintings and drawings
II) 19th century paintings
The inventories of the Berlin companies
Old art, antiques
The house in Berlin was
only a small component
of the immense, thoroughly
organized state decrees
to expropriate and pillage everything
that German and European Jews
had produced and possessed.
Citizens, companies and even museums
took part in this legitimate looting
in order to profit from it.
To German mothers! 72000 Jewish soldiers
died honorably for the fatherland.
Kthe Blacher called.
Mr. Zimmer didn't like it at all that
Stella had involved another lawyer.
He refused to disclose the
name of the potential buyer.
Kthe Blacher found that suspicious.
Stella and I often talked about the fact
that some people recognize
injustice and oppose it,
while others tolerate it, excuse it,
ignore it or profit from it.
The diaries of the Jewish
professor Victor Klemperer,
who lived in Dresden during
the rise of the Nazis,
detailed how the situation
worsened by the day,
until the point of no return
was reached.
Klemperer wrote:
"All believe, insofar as they are
not honestly carried away,
that it is inopportune,
in terms of political realism,
to be outraged at such details as
the suppression of civil liberties,
the persecution of the Jews, the
falsification of all scholarly truths,
and the systematic
destruction of all morality."
And then there was mention
of Palestine again.
Klemperer wrote about fiery
discussions among the Jews
regarding the emigration to Palestine.
He rejected Zionism and sympathized
with the Palestinian Arabs.
His wife Eva called it
the fate of the natives.
Klemperer's words were even harsher.
Stella spent hours reading and
strolling through the city.
Berlin revealed itself to her
in a different way
in the early hours of the
morning or late at night
than when the streets
were full of people.
After the war, Mrs. Otto had worked
for an American military family
until the Berlin Wall forced her and
the house into the eastern sector.
She provided her with
fragmentary information,
but did not answer Stella's questions.
Stella didn't insist and also
didn't mention to her
that the house was to be sold.
Kthe Blacher had made
an interesting discovery
in the files of the cadastral office.
It was a letter from Mr. Zimmer in
which he declared his intention
to sell the house to
a development company
on behalf of Jakob Milgroim.
Stella couldn't believe it.
She remembered the letter
from Helene van Heusden,
the executor of the inheritance.
Kthe Blacher advised her to
contact Helene in Rotterdam.
Helene had plenty to tell her.
As German Jews, Jakob and
his older brother Walter
were denied access to higher education
due to a law passed in 1933.
From that point on, Walter worked
together with his wife Rosa
in the family business.
And Jakob studied at home.
They talked about leaving Germany.
Walter harbored a certain sympathy
for Zionism, which enraged Jakob.
They argued fiercely until their
parents finally declared
that emigrating to Palestine
was not an option for them.
Stella talked about her father
and mother Morna,
and about finding out after
her mother's death
that her father's parents had been
opposed to the marriage.
Her mother had left the family
when Stella was eleven.
There were two letters that
Rosa had written to Jakob.
In the first, she asked him if he
could imagine taking Philip.
Walter tried to love the boy,
but he saw in him the betrayal
by his wife and brother.
He was very strict with Philip.
In the second letter,
Rosa apologized to him.
Because, she wrote, she would never
be able to part with her son.
One thing was clear now: Jakob had
been against the sale of the house.
Zimmer threatened to
have Stella arrested.
But she was on the right track.
The file contained a letter in which
the development company confirmed its
offer of 150,000 euros to Zimmer,
in addition to the payment Jakob
would have received for the sale.
Kthe Blacher countered his threats.
If Zimmer wanted to keep his license,
he would have to revoke all agreements
and renounce Jakob's fee.
Kthe's final counterattack
delighted Stella.
Stella looked at Glasgow with new eyes.
The width of the streets and
the height of the buildings.
The consistent stone architecture.
The colors of the buildings. The scales.
The gates, mounds and spires.
The people.
The relative casualness of
people in Glasgow.
Their generosity with their
time and money.
Their friendliness without
being snobbish.
The informal chitchat, the morning
bread roll, lunch and fried egg.
And the light in the evening.
Robert's grandfather had been
a master carpenter on the big ships
until the shipyards were shut down.
He still lived in the tenements
next to the titanium crane.
As they walked along the
harbor to visit him,
Stella told Robert about
the house in Berlin.
Robert didn't try to
hide his skepticism.
The Christmas days were stormy and she
kept the fire burning in the chimney.
Instead of preparing her lectures,
she read Klemperer's diaries.
And Primo Levi.
"It is a dream within a dream,
varied in detail, one in substance.
I am sitting at a table with my family,
or with friends, or at work,
or in the green countryside;
in short, in a peaceful
relaxed environment,
apparently without
tension or affliction;
yet I feel a deep and subtle anguish,
the definite sensation of
an impending threat.
And in fact, as the dream proceeds,
slowly and brutally,
each time in a different way,
everything collapses,
and disintegrates around me,
the scenery, the walls, the people..."
Stella made some inquiries.
Would she be able to get a loan for
a house in Berlin that she owned,
and on what financial terms?
One of the first questions
the banks would ask was
whether she owned any
property in Glasgow.
She was warned by friends to
take out a second mortgage
on her apartment in Glasgow.
In case that something went wrong,
she would lose everything.
Robert agreed to spending
a weekend at the cottage.
in order to discuss their
plans for the house.
But once again it didn't work out.
It was a beautiful day and Stella
drove to the Blackhead Lighthouse.
She called Robert while
she was on the road.
She told me about their conversation
as if it had occurred yesterday.
When she started talking
about the house,
he told her that he couldn't understand
why she would want that house in Berlin.
Stella replied that it meant
something to her.
"The house in Berlin means
something to me.
It's a family matter."
And Robert said: "But it's a
derelict house in Berlin, Stella.
It's a liability."
He said that he didn't understand
what she was supposed to live on
if she took on something that
was too challenging for her.
"Why don't you try to find a buyer?
Why don't you try to find
a good person, Stella?
There are good people out there
in the world, you know?"
"You don't understand. And it's none
of your business, she said.
After a long pause, he said:
"You know what? You're bloody right."
This one is also really wonderful.
She also had fun doing it.
She didn't do it reluctantly.
But she didn't want to be
pigeonholed as a mere artist.
She also wanted to pursue her
interests in natural sciences.
That didn't go down well at the time,
as it was totally unseemly for a
woman from that social class.
And her mother, or rather her stepmother
because her biological mother died
very young, also scolded her a lot
when she found boxes with small
insects in them in her room.
Nevertheless, she urged all her
friends to collect items for her,
which they did, in return
for which she would
draw them small embroidery patterns
that she had been taught.
In this way, she maintained
her kind of network.
Yes.
Can she come up here? Is that okay?
Yes, please. Ask her to come up.
Yes, it's nice. Yes.
Stella was glad to be back in the
company of Simon and Lukas.
She described her broom
chamber in a cheap hotel.
Once again, she had to
rent an apartment.
It's her house, isn't it?
Jakob's house.
Her family's house.
Her house.
The Milgroims had lived above her.
They had walked through the rooms.
They had gone up and down the stairs
between their apartment and
their store on the first floor.
Weaving businesses were
aryanized in 1938.
In 1939, Gring decreed the registration
of all Jewish businesses,
bank deposits, accounts and
real estate holdings.
By that time, the parents of Walter and
Jakob were trying to leave the city.
THE JEWISH MERCHANThe Jews are our calamity!
Stella introduced herself to the other
tenants living in the house.
A young couple with a son,
a quiet and withdrawn
man in his late forties,
a single mother and her daughter,
and a collective of computer
freaks on the first floor.
She rarely saw Mrs. Otto.
One of the apartments was vacant
and she didn't have a key to it.
An alcoholic had lit a fire in it
the previous winter.
There was still a faint
smell of smoke in the air.
But how was she supposed to
pay the interest on a loan?
Speculators vacated buildings across
Berlin and raised the rents.
This was also a form of expropriation.
Lukas and Simon hated them
like the plague.
They advised her to take things slowly.
The urgent repairs should be done first.
The apartment with the fire damage would
generate some additional rental income.
Lukas suggested that she should look at
other buildings in former East Berlin.
During one of her lengthy walks,
Stella spotted a book in the display
of a second-hand bookshop.
Palestine and the East Bank
It was published in 1917.
Its pictures presented
a flourishing, multi-ethnic,
beautiful country brimming with
old towns and villages.
This was the land of yearning
for the Zionists.
Palestine had never been
an uninhabited country.
Where, then, had Jewish emigrants
from Europe settled?
And who lived in these old houses today?
Stella didn't understand the German text
and looked it up on the internet.
It was a small, innocuous step
with far-reaching consequences.
Helene van Heusden sold some of Jakob's
furniture and sent Stella the money
together with some letters she
had found inside a drawer.
They had been written by their mother
and were addressed to Jakob and Walter.
Mrs. Otto must have known about it.
She'll be here soon, Mrs. Otto.
What was she supposed
to do with the house?
It was the house in which
her father's family had lived.
But what future does it hold for her?
Was she fulfilling a duty?
What were her responsibilities
to her family
and the people who now lived there?
What did she need and want for herself?
Was she the one who needed
to look after the house?
How could she be sure about anything?
Once they are dead, they are gone.
She remembered her mother.
In Berlin, Stella was reminded of
how much she had loved her.
Stella placed an ad in the newspaper.
"House for sale. Only to
private individuals."
Potential buyers walked
through the house
while Stella read about Palestine at
the beginning of the 20th century.
She read about the inhabitants
of Greater Syria
towards the end of the Ottoman Empire,
the Zionists
and the British Mandate.
She came across the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions.
It organized summer camps.
Volunteers from all countries worked
together with Palestinians and Israelis
to rebuild houses in the West Bank.
To rebuild a house.
Max Lsser visited the
house a second time.
He was one of Kthe Blacher's clients.
They became friends
and he learned from Kthe that
Stella wanted to sell the house.
He had moved back to Berlin,
the city of his birth.
It was his city, as he said.
Max noticed how difficult it
was for Stella to let go.
He told her:
"You're too young to carry
such a load on your back.
I, on the other hand, am just the
right age to take on such a task."
He made her laugh.
Sometimes I walk past the house
and remember.
Stella bid farewell to the
residents of the house.
To Simon and Lukas.
She returned to Glasgow to
pack her things away.
Robert apologized for being
so harsh with her.
But how could she resent him?
She gave the apartment key to a visiting
professor who rented it for the summer.
Then she headed for Portpatrick.
Spring was her favorite season
due to the gentle coloring and the
sudden onset of lake mist
that drifted across the land.
After the summer camp,
I returned to Berlin.
And Stella remained in Palestine.
She's still there.
In the meantime,
five years have passed.