My friend Elisabeth King isn’t the only person in Berlin who heats her flat exclusively with burning coal. A real coal burning stove. A real coal stove!
Here’s the front of the coal-fired stove that Elisabeth uses to heat her Berlin apartment. The vent at the top,
I assume, feeds the flame and the metal boxes below are where one puts the coal. I need to do some more research on this.
While Berliners now commonly use gas and electric heating, quite a few of the flats in the East of Berlin — the former DDR — still thrive like the old days.
Coal is delivered into the basement or schlepped from a vendor and then, every few days, Elisabeth needs to bundle up and head down to the basement where she stacks up as many pressed bricks of coal as she can carry — more if I am helping out.
She then keeps both her living room’s ornate and beautiful heating stove and the cooking stove in her kitchen lit and stoked.
It is really quite amazing, rather charming, and I am told, very annoying when she needs to get up super-early in the AM in order to light her stove so that the apartment will be warm and happy by the time she gets up for the second time.
Here’s a little, adorable, coal-powered, cooking stove. I wonder what the rocks are for? Are they a way of testing the heat of the stove or some way of radiating the heat into the room? If anyone knows, please let me know.
She’s an amazing sport and the apartment is gorgeous and very affordable, so all is well.
And, she does have electrical outlets, so she does have a heating pad in her bed to help with the warmth and an electric kettle in her kitchen to make sure she has ready water for her tea.
These are pressed-coal bricks used to heat apartments and homes in Berlin and in greater germany — many still have wood and coal-fed heaters and ovens and many people prefer it that way.
I think it is very charming and doing it this ways makes one very aware of how much and how many resources we use instead of just running the gas or the electricity.
