Source: Spiegel

By Guido Kleinhubbert and Antje Windmann

Anne Schönharting/ DER SPIEGEL

Communities have long worried about the physical safety of the elderly. But the swelling number of senior citizens living alone in Germany now has them scrambling to respond to even more pernicious threats: loneliness and isolation.

Even during these cold winter months, Erna J. regularly opens the balcony door of her small, two-room apartment in the Berlin district of Neukölln. The 93-year-old places a bowl of peanuts on her flowery carpet and watches the blue tits flutter into her living room and steal nuts. “The little birds are my subtenants,” she says.

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