Communal Living Stories - The Miracle Table that gives off heat

(DE) The winter of 1979/80 was freezing in Berlin. The city was beautiful that winter. The snow was high, and stomping through the snow-covered streets was fun. However, I took less pleasure in our freezing flat. Of course, my two classmates at the Schule für Erwachsenenbildung e.V. and I lived in a cheap and unrenovated old apartment without central heating, but with a tiled stove, no insulation of the walls, high rooms and draughty windows.

The wonder table that gives warmth

My room was the coldest. The cold wind whistled through the windows and two balcony doors. Even if I fed my tiled stove properly with briquettes, the room temperature seldom exceeded 16 degrees. That was the time when I had to study for my A-levels. But sitting at a desk to work was out of the question. So I sat in bed, wrapped in blankets with all my books around me and prepared for the exam. I had placed the bed in the room so I could lean against the tiled stove and get a little warmer. The scene reminded me a little of Carl Spitzweg's painting "The Poor Poet", except that it didn't feel idyllic. It was all to no avail. Nothing more could be done.

I also needed to develop a strategy to procure coals for the tiled stove to warm our home. Since there was a tiled stove in each of the three rooms as the only source of heat, we had a high demand for briquettes. We had ordered enough coals in good time, but they were stored in the coal cellar. Our house was about 100 years old, and this was a real old cellar in which generations of families had stored their coal and potatoes, cabbage and all kinds of equipment. During the Second World War, people had probably sought shelter here and later stored and forgotten everything that was not essential. This cellar was dark, smelled musty, and was perhaps inhabited by mice or rats but certainly by spiders and cockroaches of all kinds. None of us dared to go down alone. It was always an effort to get coal out of the cellar.

When it got too cold in our flat, my flatmates had the habit of moving in with their boyfriends, who had warmer flats for a few days. Unfortunately, I didn't have that option. So I was left alone, with the cold, the tiled stove and the coal cellar. What else could I do but trudge down there alone, collect as many briquettes as possible and drag them upstairs? After all, I didn't want to do this creepiness to myself too often!

Upstairs in the flat, I proudly and contentedly piled up my supply and was happy that I didn't have to go down to the cellar for a while. When my flatmates returned, they were pleased about the briquettes supply and heated their rooms properly. But none of them made any effort to replenish the supply. Frustrated, I worked on a plan to build up a coal supply that my flatmates would not thoughtlessly help themselves to. After all, going to the cellar was a pain for all of us, including me. And I had an idea! I built a table from the briquettes in my room. So that no one would get suspicious, I camouflaged my coal supply with a pretty tablecloth.

No one noticed that the table was sometimes as low as a coffee table and sometimes almost as high as a dining table. My flatmates were only surprised that it was always warm in my room, but there was never a supply of briquettes to which they could have helped themselves. My little miracle table was most helpful in keeping me warm.

(LL)