Hackesche Höfe

This guide to Hackesche Höfe in Berlin follows Jakob Michael, the Jewish businessman who took control of these eight interlocking courtyards in 1924 and emigrated to Holland in 1932, well before the Nazis seized power. It traces what happened to the property after the Nazis forced an auction in 1940 and stripped his name from the deed, through the wartime bombing that battered the courtyard and the decades of neglect under East German rule that followed. An intermediary is said to have kept the place in Michael's stead while he rebuilt his life abroad, working through a stranger's name because his own could get him arrested.