At the turn of the century, when Prussia was at its peak, the Wallich family, wealthy German-Jewish bankers, owned a splendid Italianate villa a few dozen yards from the Glienicke Bridge over the Havel River in Potsdam, just across from Berlin. The Wallichs lived there until the Nazis began seizing Jewish property during the Holocaust. First German troops, then Russian soldiers occupied the villa in World War II. Although much of Potsdam was destroyed by Allied bombing, the villa remained intact.

After the war, the East German government used the property for a Kinderwochenheim, a uniquely East German institution that functioned as a child-care boarding facility for working parents during the week. In 1961 bulldozers spared the villa as the Berlin Wall was constructed only yards from the front door, bisecting the Havel River and crossing the Glienicke Bridge. The teachers at the Kinderwochenheim and the children they tended witnessed failed attempts to escape over the Wall.

Several times they saw prisoner exchanges between East and West on the famous bridge. Then in 1989 they were eyewitnesses to history as the Wall began to crumble.

1. As the East German welfare state was dismantled, a reunified Germany embarked on an ambitious process of restoring properties in the eastern provinces to their original owners, and descendants of the Wallichs filed a claim on the decaying villa. But the claims process has become a complicated legal tangle, just as reunification itself has proved to be far more costly and complex than anticipated.

The story of the Wallich villa is the story of Germany today, a nation mired in dispute, as citizens of the former East Germany denounce the system imposed on them from the west. Through the lives of the people who have lived in this house, Katie Hafner illuminates the cross-currents of more than a hundred years of German history. Dramatic, personal, and revelatory, The House at the Bridge presents the human dimension of an era.

The house itself continues to bear silent witness as Germany confronts and tries to resolve its recent past.