SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD 2015<\/b>
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2016
<\/b>A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK<\/b><\/p>\n
‘A superb portrait of twentieth century Germany seen through the prism of a house which was lived in, and lost, by five different families. A remarkable book<\/b>.’ Tom Holland<\/p>\n
‘Personal and panoramic, heart-wrenching yet uplifting, this is history at its most alive.’ <\/b>A.D. Miller<\/p>\n
‘A passionate memoir.’<\/b> Neil MacGregor
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In 2013, Thomas Harding returned to his grandmother’s house on the outskirts of Berlin which she had been forced to leave when the Nazis swept to power. What was once her ‘soul place’ now stood empty and derelict. A concrete footpath cut through the garden, marking where the Berlin Wall had stood for nearly three decades.<\/p>\n
In a bid to save the house from demolition, Thomas began to unearth the history of the five families who had lived there: a nobleman farmer, a prosperous Jewish family, a renowned Nazi composer, a widow and her children and a Stasi informant. Discovering stories of domestic joy and contentment, of terrible grief and tragedy, and of a hatred handed down through the generations, a history of twentieth century Germany and the story of a nation emerged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the summer of 1993, Thomas Harding travelled to Germany with his grandmother to visit a small house by a lake on the outskirts of Berlin. It had been her ‘soul place’ as a child, she said – a holiday home for her and her family, but much more – a sanctuary, a refuge. In the 1930s, she had been forced to leave the house, fleeing to England as the Nazis swept to power. The trip, she said, was a chance to see it one last time, to remember it as it was. But the house had changed. Nearly twenty years later Thomas returned to the house. It was government property now, derelict, and soon to be demolished. It was his legacy, one that had been loved, abandoned, fought over – a house his grandmother had desired until her death. Could it be saved? And should it be saved? ‘The House by the Lake’ is a history of Germany over a tumultuous century, told through the story of a small wooden house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[75],"product_tag":[679,1986,1247,76,1674],"class_list":["post-101720","product","type-product","status-publish","product_cat-history","product_tag-20th-century-history-c-1900-to-c-2000","product_tag-family-history-tracing-ancestors","product_tag-second-world-war","product_tag-the-cold-war","product_tag-the-holocaust","pa_book_author-harding-thomas","pa_cover-paperback","pa_dewey-943-08-edition23","pa_imprint-windmill-books","pa_language-english","pa_pages-xxi-442-8-unnumbered-of-plates","pa_publisher-cornerstone","pa_readership-general-trade-code-k","first","onbackorder","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"yoast_head":"\n