events. But the house was not merely a bystander. By 1991, part of a discarded social system, the Kinderwochenheim's existence was threatened. The teachers who worked there resented the social upheaval and feared for their jobs. They lamented that there was no place for them in a reunified Germany. Descendants of the former owner, meanwhile, were returning from overseas to claim what they regarded as their heritage. The fact of their claim engendered still more uncertainty. Would their ownership be restored? If it was, would the family want to live there? Even if they owned the house, could they ever be Germans? Were they ever Germans in the first place? Here, as elsewhere in Germany, Germans were examining the past, as if the experience of reunification had not settled but only raised anew the question: to whom does Germany belong?