Peeping from the Hut

Going through Germany by train I was immediately struck by the small gardens lining the tracks on the outskirts of cities and small towns. These community gardens are called "Schrebergartens" after the Leipzig doctor (Moritz Schreber) who fostered the drive to unify these small holdings into a regulated community club (verein) movement.

Small-holding gardens were originally provided in the early 1800's as way to counter poverty and malnutrition among the poor, begun by Carl of Hesse, in what was then still Denmark. By 1826, nineteen states already had spread the garden fever.

Bylaws were all set down last during the 1920's, and the goal of the gardening movement was to provide a place in nature for city dwellers, improve the nutrition and access to fresh food for families and the unemployed, help integrate immigrants, provide a play area for city kids, and generally improve the lives of everyone. They became an important feature of survival during the second world war, as well.
A little hut on a garden plot is called a "laube." Schrebergarten folks are known derisively as "laubenpieper." Hut whistlers.

I theorize that German society is so well oiled and smoothly running, every i is dotted and every t is crossed, that folks were occasionally need a place to escape to. A place where they won't be reminded by the neighbor that it's their turn to mop the apartment floor, that last Saturday they were parked in an inappropriate place, or any of the millions of ways that German folks (especially the older and bored variety) regulate each other's behavior.

Germans generally have two places they can escape to, to really cut loose and ignore some of the rules. One of these is: going on vacation. Here is where German folks can refuse to line up neatly for services, where they sing loudly at two in the morning in youth hostels, where they can snap their fingers and dominate waiters rudely -- where they can generally get away with behavior that would never do at home. Unfortunately, the boorish behavior of some German travellers has become somewhat legendary (although clearly nearly all peoples have worst-case-scenario reputations in some way when they escape overseas: the English are louts, the Americans want to buy everything, et cetera...) but Germans generally are not that way with each other, rather, they all stay on a short leash so nobody gets bitten.

And the other of these places to escape is the Schrebergarten. Theoretically, I say. Because actually most people have their gardens in a community club, a verein, and the rules and the oversight of the rules are extreme. You can only paint your house a certain color or it can be wood, the hedge can only be so high, no chickens are allowed, no hanging laundry, no music, and you must stay quiet during these hours, et cetera, et cetera. (All of it unpleasantly recalls the massively regulated new suburban developments in the USA...which are even more fascist.) And if you are not of a mind to follow the rules to the letter, there are neighbors to the back, forward, right and left of you to remind you. (Post 1968-folks, hippies and others, think of the schrebergarten folks as "spiessers," small-minded conformists.)

But when you look around at many schrebergardens, they show an individualism that is rarely seen among apartments and homes. Our home on the hill was white with brown roof tiles, like all the other houses on the street: white, boxy, plain. How I longed to paint it mustard yellow or lilac! There is often no way to tell what sort of person is inside the house, as they all look just the same, exactly as in the Pete Seeger song.



But the gardens are so different. Some are so neat, they may as well have been licked clean. Some are falling down, weed infested, with piles of plastic junk waiting to be used for harvest, chickens pecking about, others are dreams of perfect flower and vegetable beds, laid out in right angles. Some are really only for partying with the family weekends during the summer. Others contain caged dogs, insanely barking. Folks who wouldn't dream of having anything sloppy in their homes, let themselves go in their gardens.

Now I have a garden, too. But luckily, it is privately owned, and I don't have to pay attention to by-laws and nosy neighbors. I will post about it as things develop. Right now all that has developed is: intense scratches on my arms from removing blackberry brambles. The brambles are very defensive, and we all know the first step to war is defense. Therefore I find when I grasp them gently, they come along with less of a snarl. Sometimes in a garden you have to go in the opposite direction of what seems to be called for.

By the way, here is an excellent program on America's National Public Radio by the Kitchen Sisters, (Hidden Kitchens: how communities come together over food) about garden plots inside London, for you English speakers.