Honka's Zeißstraße 74 Residence

Honka's Zeißstraße 74 Residence is a small attic apartment in Altona whose squalid interior becomes the setting of Gerda's confinement and, later, the discovery of human remains. Its rooms turn everyday domestic space into an environment of exhaustion, control, and decay; the discovery in the attic on July 17, 1975, makes the address central to the investigation of Fritz Honka's murders.

Setting and Interior

The apartment lies on the third floor, under the roof, at the end of a walk through Altona's broken streetscape: damaged motorcycles and bicycles, broken utility lines, crumbling walls, shattered windows, and rusting signs. Inside, the space is only 18 square meters, divided into two rooms by a kitchenette. The tiny blue-tiled kitchen contains a rusty stove, a refrigerator with a coffee machine and green bucket on top, and a brown cabinet. Seven cans of pine-scented room spray and five packets of air freshener stand ready against the pervasive odor.

The rooms are crowded with unrelated, deteriorating belongings. Pin-up photographs cover the walls; a sofa holds two large dolls, a smaller one, and an assortment of stuffed animals. A precarious chest, a partly collapsed dresser, a music cabinet, dirty clothes, pots, and discarded metal tubes share the living area. Liter bottles line the kitchen floor. In the bedroom, the mattress is partly torn open, while a dark-red dress and a rag hang from a clothesline. Decayed curtains, a smeared mirror crossed by tiny blood spots, and a carpet darkened by spilled drinks, cigarette ash, urine, and other stains complete an interior in which dirt has become part of the structure rather than a removable surface.

Gerda's Confinement and Domestic Labor

Gerda arrives at the apartment after an exhausting walk with Fiete Honka. She is physically spent, and the return through the ruined streets has left her carrying her own bag while he fails even to think of helping. Inside, the smell and filth provoke a sudden, overwhelming despair. Fiete plays Es geht eine Träne auf Reisen, drinks, and speaks of crushing bedbugs before they disappear into the cracks. His remark places the apartment's infestation alongside the human degradation taking place there.

Gerda's status in the apartment shifts from guest to captive. Having no money, she gives Fiete her identity card as security. The next morning, before leaving for work, he locks her inside and takes the card with him. With no food and little power to object, she tries to make the rooms more bearable by cleaning. The task is nearly impossible: the place seems to resist her efforts, and the grime appears embedded beyond the reach of cleaning products. Yet Fiete notices the difference when he returns, becomes moved by her work, and rewards her by taking her to the Golden Glove Tavern. His response casts a moment of apparent generosity against the underlying arrangement: he controls her access to the outside and treats basic shelter and an outing as favors.

Squalor and Control

The apartment's details register more than poverty or disorder. Bottles crowd the floor; the furnishings are unstable or mismatched; and the air is thick with the odor of damp, decaying carpets, stale urine, dirt, and dead animals. The perfumed sprays do not undo that decay but stand as an inadequate attempt to cover it. The contrast between the pine fragrance and the rotting interior sharpens the sense that the damage cannot be concealed by a superficial remedy.

The cramped layout also gives control a physical form. Gerda is shut inside while Fiete holds her identity card, and her cleaning becomes labor performed within the very space that confines her. Her temporary release to the tavern follows only after he has judged the apartment sufficiently improved. Domestic tasks, access to the street, and the means of identifying herself are thus bound together under his authority.

Discovery and Aftermath

During firefighting operations at the address on July 17, 1975, firefighters find human remains in a roof-space compartment. The remains indicate a homicide, and suspicion quickly falls on the forty-year-old night watchman Fritz Honka. After several days of silence, he confesses to the murders during questioning on July 29. The apartment's attic position, established earlier as part of its ordinary geography, becomes the location of a discovery that changes the address from a scene of private squalor into a crime scene.

The later court reasoning returns to the apartment as evidence of the extent of Honka's deterioration. It notes that he had been able to live there with decomposing bodies, whose odor filled the rooms and whose remains had attracted beetles and maggots. The address therefore matters both for what investigators found and for what the conditions of cohabitation revealed about Honka's state. The contrast is stark: the same rooms that hold the details of Gerda's isolation become the setting in which the concealed violence is brought into public view.