March 11, 2001 (Day 4)

Visited the Junkerhaus in Lemgo today. Anna had visited the house years ago when she was an exchange student. Her description of the place always intrigued me, but we never had the opportunity to visit when we lived in Düsseldorf. The building is currently closed for renovation but Sabine contacted the curator, told them about our trip, and they agreed to open the house for us.

The house is impressive …in that it leaves an impression.

Herr Junker lived in and worked in this house for 25 years in the late 19^th century. One rumor – since discredited – associated the house with love lost and subsequent madness. It is easy to see how such a story might arise. The interior is like a wooden, gothic spider web.  It possesses an organic quality, as though the thousands of small pieces of wood were born from a network of vines that grew through the house and became, over time, part of the structure itself. Some of the literature makes the comparison with Gaudi’s unfinished Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. I imagined the Ta Prohm temple complex in Cambodia, where the overgrown trees have become so entangled in the edifices that to remove them would destroy the buildings structural integrity.

This filigree of wood grew from the walls becoming makeshift shelves and coat hooks and a faux Gothic arch overhead. The gray day added a malevolent tone to the construction, making it seem more like a net designed to hold and capture. The net must have worked since the only original furniture remaining was that which looters could not carry away.

On the whole, the building is less sinister than sad. The house holds his wedding bed, a baby’s crib and a child’s toilet – yet he did not marry nor have children. Herr Junker seems to have built himself a temple populated with symbols of what the future could have held, but did not.

With that, we departed the final oasis of the trip – the last bit of comfort of the “known”.  It was another sad farewell on the rail station platform with Kai, Sabine and the girls running beside the train waving goodbye. It is hard not knowing for certain when we will see them again. To help us remember them, the girls made us each a friendship bracelet of braided colored thread. We have them tied around our wrists and will continue to wear in the spirit intended.

[Editor’s note: This bracelet is visible in a number of pictures of me on this trip.]

Post-script: More on the Junker Haus from Atlas Obscura.