The Writer in the Attic/The Lover in the Attic

The Writer in the Attic

By Denise Noe

I first encountered the bizarre story of Otto Sanhuber through a made-for-TV movie called The Man in the Attic.  Lightly fictionalized, Sanhuber’s stand-in was named Edward Broder.  In the film Broder (played by Neil Patrick Harris) was a young, orphaned teenager who fell in love with an older, married woman (Anne Archer) around the turn of the century.  The couple ran off together but were tracked down and found by the husband.  It is indicated that, at the time, the husband could have pressed criminal charges against the Broder and had a legal right to force his adulterous wife back into their marital home.  The young man, who had worked in the husband’s factory, found himself unemployed and unable to pay his rent.

The wife thought up a unique living arrangement that would enable them to continue their affair without jeopardizing her marriage or causing scandal.  The lover would move into the attic of the couple’s home, staying out of sight when the husband was there, and having the run of the house during the day when he was at work.  He would have to be a total homebody, not leaving the house lest someone see him.  The lover eagerly agreed to her scheme.

Incredibly, this situation went on for several years without the husband suspecting that there was a third member of his household.  Then tragedy struck.  The man in the attic heard an argument between the couple.  The wife screamed and he assumed the husband had hit her.  Actually, she had slipped on a throw rug.  The lover rushed down with a gun to rescue his sweetheart.  He and the husband struggled over the weapon and the gun went off, killing the husband.  The wife and the lover made it look like a burglar had murdered her husband. 

Several years later, the truth came out.  The lover was convicted of manslaughter but, at the time of that conviction, the statute of limitations had run out.  The wife’s trial ended in a hung jury.  Apparently their extraordinary passion had finally run its course, since they went their separate ways after their trials.

                                              

When I researched the case on which The Man in the Attic was based, I found that the film had stuck pretty close to the facts.  However, I discovered an aspect of the real Sanhuber’s strange life that may hold a clue to the inevitable question, “How was he able to stand it?”

                                              

Prior to moving into the attic, the young man had earned his living as a repairman (in those days there were no “repairpersons).  While secluded, he began to write short stories.  Dolly sent his stories off to pulp magazines and, after the inevitable multiple rejection slips, he began to publish in them. Like most writers, he never made enough to live on. But as constricted as his life was, it gave him the free time to exercise his creative talent and share it with others.

While Sanhuber lived under a kind of self-imposed house arrest, the characters of his short stories led lives of high adventure and sailed to a variety of balmy South Sea Islands. 

Learning that Otto Sanhuber was a fellow writer gave me a fresh insight his coping mechanisms.  The imagination has no barriers and a writer – any writer, not just the good ones – creates multiple environments and lives.  While all human beings fantasize, those of us who put our fantasies down on paper lend them a concrete and palpable sort of “reality.” Thus, a writer confined to a prison cell, a hospital room, or an attic, finds his or her own private freedom.