Wilmersdorfers

It's hard to know exactly when my family first settled in Wilmersdorf, but for most of their lives pre-World War II, everything they did was in the neighborhood.

On my great-great-grandparents' wedding certificate from 1917 it says that Moscha Farkitsch lived at Gasteiner Straße 13 and Ida Ikenberg lived at Holsteinische Straße 55. If that is correct, they were basically neighbors. I'd like to imagine they met by accident, but it's probably just me romanticizing all of this. She was a divorced lady and he was a foreigner and judging by all the stories, it was probably fire.

In 1920 they are reportedly living in Berliner Straße 160. That's probably also the house where my great-grandmother Alice was born in 1918. I believe this was slightly more upscale, since the building seems bigger and it's in an important street between U Bayerische Platz and U Berliner Straße.

Every time I'm taking the U7 or the U9 and I pass by the station Berliner Straße I always think "Ah, my family's house." Somehow that's a calming thought. As someone who has always lived alone and far away from my family, I like the idea of being able to visit my family's house.

 In 1922 they move to Prinzregentenstraße 84, where they spend the largest part of the next few years. I've been to the front of the building and it's beautiful. It's a very old Altbau, I imagine it still looks like what it used to look like back in the day. There are a few Stolpersteine in front of the building for the Melchiker family. I have exchanged some information with the person responsible for tracing the history of this family. He was putting me in contact with someone who lives in the building and would let me see the apartment from the inside, but alas, it hasn't worked out yet.

Also at Prinzregentenstraße, but number 71, is an office of Moscha for when he ran the garage - which is located at Düsseldorfer Str. 66-69. Anja and Christoph took me there last week and it was truly wonderful to see. As I mentioned in the last post, Moscha buys the garage in 1925, sells it in 1939 and gets it back in the 1950's.

Moscha's garage still operating today. Photo by Anja.

The garage is super modern for its time: its original architecture had many "expressionistic" sharp edges, gas pumps, chauffeur service, mechanics, and, above all, a glass roof which protected the cars from the rain. Since most cars didn't have windows and were mostly made of wooden materials, this really made Moscha's garage stand out. The neighborhood baker who was apparently a jealous neighbor complained immensely about the garage. Perhaps because he wanted to build it first, maybe because of antissemitism. In any case, all of his complaints about the noise were the reason for building the glass roof, which was not really allowed, but Moscha got away with it by being witty. On top, Moscha built apartments and in the front there were little shops, such as a milk shop later operated by Mordehay Altarac - the supposed father of Rosalija.

It was also one of the very first garages in Berlin. It still operates today as a mechanic. The owner was super sweet and excited when we met. Nowadays the garage is in the Denkmaldatenbank. Another development of the Farkitsch A. G. für Kraftfahrzeuge was a garage at Knobeldorffstraße 56-62, which this website claims didn't work out because the company went bankrupt after the recession. This development is about 2km from my current home.
 
Things start to get a little rougher and in 1936 the family moves to Aschaffenburger Straße 36. I don't really know if the building was upscale or what, because at this address today there are only some modern-looking buildings.

At the moment of writing this post I got an email from Anja saying they found out that Ida died in 1939. Well, this is where it gets confusing. I know the family moves to Belgrade some time between January 1939 (when they sell the garage) and May 1939 (when the minority census happens, in which they are not a part of). I wonder if they saw what happened during Kristallnacht and decided - quite wisely - that it was time to leave. Or if Ida's death propelled them to do it.

I just had an image of the beautiful glass ceiling of Moscha's garage shattering into little crystal pieces.

Seems like this is another instance of my family being incredibly lucky and escaping in the last minute before danger gets too close for comfort.

.

Skipping forward in time, when Moscha comes back to Berlin he settles at Menzelstraße 2 until he dies, which is not exactly in Wilmersdorf, but close enough.

Why are these addresses interesting to me? Well, for starters I had no idea about any of this until a few months ago.

People will often ask me why I moved to Berlin and I think it's a mix of rational and irrational reasons. There's definitely a part of me that wants to claim back a space that was taken away from my lineage, but what's eerie is that a lot of the magic was not rational.

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to live in Berlin or not. I was living in the Czech Republic and seeing apartments online, visiting them when I came to Berlin every once in a while and I was just so uninspired by everything I saw. How could I trade the beautiful landscape of Western Massachusetts and the quaint villages of South Bohemia for...Neukölln? Nah, it wasn't my thing.

When I saw the the place I'm currently living in online, my heart dropped. It seemed to good to be true. And if the 5 months I spent (attempting to) live in NYC had taught me anything is that if it seems too good to be true, it usually is. Without giving out too much information, let's just say I'm not living in an apartment in the middle of Kreuzkölln. It was a bit far out and quiet and surrounded by nature. When I came to visit I knew immediately as soon as I stepped foot on the property: this is my place. If I couldn't live here, I didn't want to live in Berlin.

Maybe it's a coincidence that my family lived in my Bezirk. Maybe it was my instinct telling me something.

No creo en brujas, pero que las hay, las hay.