Housing shortage, Berlin, railway carriage serves as an apartment for a family of 8 Photo: ullstein bild
By Oliver Ohmann
How did our great-grandparents live in old Berlin? That is the topic of the new BLICK BACK, the history podcast of the BZ: “Rieke and the Herr Kommerzienrat”.
Everyone knows that an apartment can make you very happy, but it can also make you sick. Health has a lot to do with how you live. A study by the World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that improved housing conditions prevent diseases.
The people live in different living conditions. That’s how it is today and that’s how it always was.
In Berlin it used to be proverbial: the misery of the tenements. Families crammed into cramped spaces. Without a bathroom, with a toilet halfway up the stairs or in the yard. Constant furnace smoke in the living room, plus moisture from drying laundry. You lived sick! Rieke Busch, known from a novel by Hans Fallada, talks about it in the podcast.
The bourgeois life is different. In many high rooms, supported by servants. This is how Herr Kommerzienrat Ribbert from Westend lived, for example.
Otto Sommerstorff, Austrian actor, poet and contributor to “Flying Leaves”, and his wife Theresina Gessner, actress, Austria at the dining table in their Berlin apartment – Recording: Georg Busse – Original recording in the archive of ullstein bild History Podcast
Click on bz-berlin.de or simply scan the QR code on this page with your smartphone – you can start listening. The BLICK BACK with all older episodes is also available on all podcast portals.
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