This beautiful picture book tells the fascinating story of a real house, located in the village of Grob Glienicke, about fourteen kilometers west of Berlin. It was built by a German physician, Dr. Alfred Alexander for his family. The book takes young readers through the various families that lived in the house, beginning with the family of "a kind doctor and his cheery wife who wanted to live with their four children away from the busy city." This " house held their dreams."
After a few years, the doctor's family was forced to leave when soldiers showed up. After a year empty, the house saw a new family arrive. The family was musical, the father played piano and the mother sang. Their two boys joined a youth group and spent time marching around the house. The metal gutters were given to make guns. War was coming and the father was told he needed to fight. This family fled and the house was once again empty.
More families would come to live in the house over the next many decades. The house would cut off by a large wall. It would be abandoned eventually, the floorboards and doors taken for firewood. Until one day a young man came to the house, saw that the house needed to be repaired. That man worked along with the villagers to clean and restore it until he was able to hang a picture of his great-grandparents above the fireplace.
Discussion
The House By The Lake is a picture book adaptation of Thomas Harding's hardcover of the same name. Harding is the great-grandson of Dr. Alfred Alexander, who built the house for his wife Henny and their four children in 1927. In July of 2013, Thomas Harding returned to Germany, and was able to locate the lake house or Glienicke he had been told about all his life.
Harding's ancestor, Alfred Alexander was a Jewish physician who was part of Berlin society in the 1920's. His hard work meant that he was able to build a small, nine room wooden house on the shore of a nearby lake for his family. The Alexander family was the first Jewish family to live in the village of Grob Glienicke. Summers were spent at the house, swimming in the lake and hosting parties. However, this idyllic time was soon to vanish with the rise of Nazism and the threat of another world war. As Germany began to sink further into the mire of Nazism, the Alexander family's situation began to change. The various laws passed by the German state restricting the rights of Jewish citizens began to impact Alexander. His practice was affected and even some of the children were no longer able to attend school.
However, Alfred refused to leave Germany as he believed the political situation would eventually improve. By 1936, the Gestapo were beginning to arrest prominent Jews like Alfred. At this time he was visiting a daughter who had just given birth, in London, England. A friend warned him that he was on a Gestapo list and so Alfred remained in London. Their remaining adult children left Germany, while Henny and Elise worked on selling the building where Alfred had his medical practice.
Henny and her daughter Elsie, who would become Thomas Harding's grandmother, closed up the lake house and gave the key to the family lawyer, Dr. Goldstrom. So began the next chapter in the history of the house by the lake. The Alexander family officially lost ownership of the house in 1939 when the Gestapo seized their assets. From this point on, the house would be occupied by four different families over the next sixty years.
Accompanying the text are the mixed media illustrations of Britta Teckentrup. The illustrations capture the many moods of the events that occurred during the last eighty years of the house's existence. For example, illustrations showing happy, summer days at the house are filled with greens and blues, while the arrival of the Nazis is portrayed in black, grey and brown colours. Nazi war planes flying over the house and the coming of war feature black, orange and greys, symbolizing war, bombing and fire. The final illustration of the restored house is one of lovely summer colours.
The House by the Lake is a picture book that provides the opportunity to study the effects of war on a personal level, exploring how one family lost and regained a beloved family home, but also a chance to explore some important historical events of the twentieth century.
For more information, readers are directed to the Alexander Haus website: https://alexanderhaus.org/
Book Details:
The House by the Lake by Thomas Harding
Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press 2020
Britta Tecketrup illustration: https://twitter.com/BTeckentrup/status/1258771788722511876/photo/1
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