never a recluse. He wanted to be with other people.
Behind our Kinderhaus was a playground with a slide, merry-go-round, swing, sandbox, and seesaw—all from a miners’ kindergarten that had just closed. The mining crisis had already begun, and the feudal world was crumbling around us. A big slate blackboard hung on the fence, with a tree trunk in front of it as a bench—that was the school. We could sit behind the wheel of an old, brightly painted BMW and play driving. We used the nearby brickworks as a kiln for our little clay bowls and figurines. We could play croquet on the grass, hopscotch and double Dutch on the sidewalks. There was a big suitcase in the attic with costumes for dressing up.
The gigantic garden, as big as a park and surrounded by huge old trees and two little wild forests, was there to enjoy. Everything practical—vegetable garden, greenhouse—our father tore down and then started to rebuild. So the garden filled up with bushes and trees, lilacs, goldenrain, tree of heaven, roses and sumacs, classical columns and billboard posts, a flagpole, a bathtub for cooling the drinks at parties and then the guests. More and more sculptures populated the garden: Genevieve the Pretty and others of less classical beauty—a cowboy and horse, and a hunter with dachshund, made by a retired miner who caused a sensation as an outsider artist. There was a large terrace, where later the Hollywood swing stood, and next to the old weeping willow was a lake where the ducks swam.
Other people had dogs and cats. If it were up to our mother, we would have had no animals at all—she didn’t care about them, and they made extra work for her when she had more than enough to do. But since it was up to our father—who at least knew enough not to buy monkeys; if he had, our mother threatened, she would leave him—we did have animals: bantam chickens, goldfish, turtles, and two ducks, Angelina and Antonius. Nobody in the family, our mother wrote, had any more of a clue about animals than she did, but “in place of actual knowledge they substituted enthusiasm. The consequence for the turtles was a rapid death.” The exotic birds that our father bought all quickly died off, too. The only animal tough enough to survive in our family was Little Hans, the canary.
“The Kippenberger Children’s Carnival,” with our father as clown
(Reiner Zimnik, 1961) © Reiner Zimnik
Our house was always full of children, full of pictures, full of visitors. You were never alone. “House others happily” was the pastor’s parting advice for our parents at their wedding, but they would have done so anyway. A year later, in Aachen, they had cards printed up with our father’s drawings to use for inviting guests. In Frillendorf, the door was always open: whoever came, invited or not, was welcome to sit down and join in.
There were nannies and au pairs, live-in maids and men who helped around the house (or didn’t). Friends’ and relatives’ sons and daughters who needed a place to stay while at school or in a residency lived with us; so did various children stranded in Frillendorf. Petra Lützkendorf, the artist, brought her son Pippus to stay with us for a couple of weeks. The “Belgian fleas” spent their holidays there too: two siblings, a brother and sister, whose mother was in a psychiatric ward and whose professor father had his head in the clouds, so they were left to hop and leap over our tables, benches, and armoires at will, grabbing onto anything and everything. Pedro, the fat waiter from Martin’s regular bar, lived under our roof for a while, too, since he had no place of his own. For a long while, in fact, until our mother finally threw him out.
Sigga came to stay with us from Iceland, Chantal from Belgium, and Genevieve from French Switzerland. Carolyn came from Wales for what should have been a couple of weeks, but she stayed a whole year. She was short and fat and uncomplicated, and the family chaos didn’t bother her at all. We all loved Carolyn and later went to visit her in Ffestiniog; Martin stayed with her a few times.
“Easter with the Kippenbergers” (Reiner Zimnik, 1961)
© Reiner Zimnik
Pelle, the student from Norway who wanted to work for a couple of weeks in Essen, was our mother’s favorite. Dear, cheerful Pelle, who was training for the Olympics.
They all came and went. Only Heia and Köckel were always there: our neighbors. Without them we would have sunk into chaos, and our lives would not have functioned. Köckel fired up the old coal heater in the basement every morning and helped out whenever anything needed fixing. Energetic Heia kept things running smoothly, looked after the little ones, and kept her cool, even when her hand got caught in the blender. She roasted the meatballs and fried the potato pancakes that our mother didn’t know how to cook for us, and that we used for eating contests (Bine won: she ate twelve). The kitchen was our favorite place, because, among other reasons, it was the only warm room in the whole huge house. We ate there, talked there, drew, fought, baked cookies, and did our homework, and Martin monkeyed around and imitated people.
Our father called us “the Piranha family”: wherever there was something to eat, we threw ourselves at it, afraid that otherwise we would find nothing left. There were never enough treats; actually, there were sweets only when visitors brought them. But with seven family members, houseguests, and grandparents, it was almost always someone’s birthday: the only day in the year when the child was in charge of who was invited, what game to play, and what food to eat. Other holidays we celebrated included Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Children’s Day (which our parents had introduced specially for us), the Mother-Isn’t-Home Party, Confirmation Day (in “special house style”), May Day, and Summer.
“St. Martin’s Day Procession at the Kippenbergers’” (Reiner Zimnik, 1961)
© Reiner Zimnik
Our parents were in their element as hosts: relaxed, happy, and generous. And they enjoyed themselves at least as much as their guests. “They didn’t go around serving their guests,” one cousin said. “They were ahead of their time that way.” They just put a big pot of soup on the stove for people to serve themselves, and a hundred eggs next to the stove for them to cook on their own. After a meal our mother sometimes even pressed aprons into the hands of the astonished men so that they would help with the dishes.
On December 6, St. Nicholas came to our house in person in his fur hat and loden coat and with his golden book. For advent it was the trombone choir, and at Christmas we hosted our whole extended family, who came back again for Easter. Several hundred eggs would be painted, Father would haul them into the garden by the bucketful, and many of them would be found only weeks later, or never.
Every year there were two Carnivals, one for the children and one for the grownups. Our parents would dress as Caesar and Cleopatra, or Zeus and Helen of Troy; our mother especially liked dressing up in slutty costumes: “cheap and trashy with all my heart.” “They kissed each other, loved each other, stayed in love, tragedies ensued,” our father wrote. “It took three years before some people surmounted the moral crisis of our first Carnival celebration in Aachen.” There was often a theme for the party, usually from a play or movie: “Greek Seeking Greekess,” “Suzie Wong,” “Guys and Dolls.”
Even for the summer party, people dressed in costume and danced until dawn. The massive buffet was set up on a market stall—pickled eggs, cucumbers, peasant bread—and we children got to drink whatever was left in all the opened cola bottles the next morning. Every party was planned, with things to watch and things to do, from a polonaise to a pantomime show to a ride in a donkey cart. “We will expect you at 4 p.m. and assume you will stay late,” read the invitation to the advent party of 1962, where more than a hundred guests spread out through the whole house and into the side houses, too, to “make, glue, decorate, bake, paint, dress, arrange, and photograph” under the direction of the master and mistress of the house, artists, and other friends. The church trombone choir appeared on the stairs. Guests were asked not to come empty-handed: “We also plan to collect clothes, toys, groceries, etc. for the elderly and needy in our community and for packages