Virtual European Cultural Centre
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Residential biographies / cooperative living
Our first apartment -the student's apartment-
Our first apartment -the student's apartment-
I was a student in Leipzig and lived in a room in an private apartment
in Leipzig, Gohlis-Nord. We had gotten married in 1952, in 1953 our
daughter was born and my wife and the child lived at her parent's in
the Lausitz. My attempts to find an apartment in Leipzig failed. Under
these circumstances, my landlady offered me a second room in the 4-room
apartment. She was quite old and lived in the apartment with her
daughter and her grandson. According to the law of that time her
daughter was not allowed to keep living there after she died. Thus, her
offer for the room was a precaution for her and a stroke of luck for
us. So I got the assignation from the housing office and soon
afterwards, my wife, child and a set of furniture came to Leipzig.
We made a monthly payment of 25 Mark for 30 square meters.
My student room became the breakfast-kitchen and the second attached
room served as a shared bed room and -during the day- as a study, we
already had furniture for the kitchen and the bedroom and studied the
offers for used household equipment in the newspaper. Thus, we often
were in the city with a trolley in order to pick up things we still
needed. Among those was a small oven. Our accommodation had to be
completed in small steps as I lived on a stipendium of 180 Mark per
month and my wife had not yet found a job. Additionally, we needed room
for our child. Our purchasings had to be paid for by my summer job. Our
only electronic equipment was a flat iron and a small radio. The radio
was attached to the inside or the door of the desk because we had to
save the radio license fee.
Our apartment was on the 3rd floor of an old apartment building. There
was no bath room and the toilet was outside the apartment in the
stairway. The cold water for cooking and bathing the child was fetched
out of the landlady's kitchen where we also got rid of the sewage. The
water was heated in a pot on the oven or on the gas cooker. We had coal
ovens for heating. The coal had to be carried from the cellar four
stories up, to get rid of the ashes and waste took only three stories.
In the cellar was a washhouse (without electric lights) with a coal
oven for doing the laundry- according to a strict schedule. A wooden
tub, a wash board and a brush were the usual equipment at that time.
Older tenants had an additional wringer, a forerunner of the spin
dryer. The laundry was dried on a line in the yard.
In the first winter we still had the fetch coals with the trolley and
carry it into the cellar in bags. Afterwards, 25 centner of allowance
coal was delivered for free by my former employer, the gas works
Böhlen. My wife also found a job as well as a place in a daycare centre
for our daughter.
In 1955, our second child "announced" itself. Our little apartment
would have gotten very crowed and my studies become nearly unbearable.
But we got help: in her company, my wife was a candidate for a space in
a new housing development in Leipzig, Neu-Lindenau.
Note
Our apartment assignment, which we got from the housing office in Leipzig, was based on the following law:
- Articel VIII of the Wohnungsgesetz No.18 from 8.3.1946
- Durchführungsverordnung of the Landesregierung Sachsen from 7.2.1947
