MANSTEIN CAFÉ AM LIETZENSEE, OR HOW WE CAME TO BE IN BERLIN

The news on February 16th that Bruno Ganz had died transported me back to another February ten years ago.  We were living in Italy at the time and had come up to Berlin for the International Film Festival.  We were staying in a shabby chic hotel in Charlottenburg, a bourgeois, leafy (but not at that time of the year!) residential neighborhood that was spared the worst WWII bomb damage.  It boasts its own eponymous Schloß, commissioned in 1695 by Sophie Charlotte, wife of Friedrich the Great.  

Like the hotel, its owner was a Frau of a certain age who had also seen better days.  She was dressed in ‘60s thrift shop, rather heavily made-up, and coiffed in a towering blond beehive (definitely not her real hair color).  At all times she was flanked behind the reception desk by two unfriendly white poodles.  Needless to say, we set out early that first February morning in search of a nearby café before heading off to our first film.  

The hotel was within blocks of Lietzensee, a small lake set in a park with mature trees.  These were probably planted after the end of WW II.  During the war and until the Berlin Airlift, trees in Berlin were cut down for fire wood, there being no coal for cooking or heating.  By Lietzensee, at the corner of Witzlebenstraße, we saw what we were looking for:  Manstein Café.  Across from this croissants and Milchkaffee destination, was a large, very-imposing-indeed stone building which wrapped around the corner.  I announced somewhat flippantly to my husband, who had been trying for some time to get me to move to Berlin, “Well, if I could live here, you might be able to convince me to move.”   No sooner had the words left my lips than serendipity struck.  Lo and behold, there was a sign in the courtyard advertising an apartment for rent.  I took a picture of the sign with my phone.  When we returned to Italy, we called the rental agency, made an appointment, flew back, and signed a one-year lease--as just an experiment, mind you.  

Only after moving in did we discover that the building was the former highest military court of the Third Reich.  Talk about wrong way feng shui!  We were living in the courthouse where members of the Resistance had been condemned to their deaths between 1936 and 1943.  A plaque outside the entrance reminds residents of the victims of the National Socialist “justice” system.  There is an apocryphal story that von Stauffenburg, who was part of an officers’ plot to kill Hitler in 1944, was tried here.  That can’t be right, though, because the dates of his death and the courthouse’s use don’t square up.  Nonetheless, von Stauffenburg was convicted and executed by firing squad at the Benderblock military headquarters in Berlin, not far from this former courthouse.  And he is buried in the cemetery behind our current apartment.  Lots of bad juju in Berlin.  More on that in a future post.

But now back to Bruno Ganz.   As I started across icy Witzlebenstraße toward Manstein Café that February day 10 years ago, I was stunned to see my first festival star!  It was none other than Bruno Ganz, with his navy blue cashmere overcoat’s collar turned up against the biting cold, hurrying toward me with rosy cheeks, completely oblivious to my star-struck presence.  As he quickly passed to the other side of the street, I mouthed to my husband, “Did you see who that was?  BRUNO GANZ!”  And so from there it was love, actually, with Berlin at first sight of Bruno.  

Keep it real!

Marilyn