Thankful Thursday - The Wägelchen and Heilige Johannes

How many Groschen am I bid for these fine pieces?

In my February post, I talked about the auction of Johann and Magdalena Meier's "moveables"; how the auction was carried out, a few of the items that were sold, the amount of money that my great-great grandparents earned from the auction, and how, in the absence of banks as we know them, how a Jewish tradesman served as money lender, taking a risk on the ability of the buyers' readiness to pay him in a few months, with an interest charge added to the amount due. It was not unlike having a credit card.

I did not list all of the 168 transactions that took place on that late March day, for obvious reasons. But as I studied that list, I began to see that there were more bits of history to be gleaned and a few that touched my heart and made me thankful for my great-great grandparent' willingness to give up many of the things which were either close to their hearts or which had been acquired by endless days of work on their farm.

While it is possible to find information on the layout of a typical house and barn, it is more difficult to discover what was inside the structures that might have been unique to my emigrant ancestors. The auction adds so much color and realism to what lay behind closed doors of an especially meaningful farm home - in the barn where there were tools and equipment that were used again and again, in the storage areas where provisions that brought them through hard times as well as through winter, and in the living area where the cupboards and closets held many items used every day. Given the amount for which each item was sold, it is possible to know what the members of this farming community found most valuable. Some items that were purchased with Thaler; others with the more lowly Groschen (there were 33 Groschen to a Thaler). The items seem to have been sold in a way that would keep both men and women interested, mixing household goods with farm tools. To keep the crowd from leaving before all the items were auctioned, some of the highest priced and most highly prized goods were held to the last - the bags of potatoes, the tub of cabbage, barrels - with Trank/drink - and the wagons.

Sold from the barn area

Spades and axes; hammers, hay forks, scythes, rakes, flails, chains of varying lengths, a wedge and a small ax for splitting wood, a saw, knives and a whetstone to keep a sharp edge on tools used for cutting, a Fruchtwand which separated the grain seed from the hull, a flail, ladders of varying sizes, a winnowing fan - All of these things were sold from one to 28 Groschen.

More expensive were a rack-wagon which sold for 14 Thaler, a handcart sold for 6 Thaler, harnesses or Pferdegeschirr* earning approximately one-half to one Thaler each. A Hexelbank* brought in two Thaler. Several other items sold for a Thaler or more, but unfortunately the handwriting on these items is not readable.

Livestock:

Two of the cows that the Meiers owned had sold for 40 and 48 Thaler and had already been claimed by their new owners on the same day that the barnhouse and all the farmland were auctioned. That auction, with much higher bids, was held in February. The third cow, however, was needed for her milk until the family was only a few days away from leaving Irsch. Thus it was still in the Meier's barn on the day of the moveables auction. While the first two cows sold had brought in a few Groschen more than 40 Thaler, the winning bid for the remaining cow was only 25 Thaler and 6 Groschen Most likely this was due to which people attended the second auction, many of whom were not rich enough to buy more land.  They were also not able to bid as much for the last cow. The four geese were sold for varied sums from eight to 12 Groschen.

Sold from the living quarters:

I picture the doors of the cupboard open, the shelves bare as these items are auctioned bit by bit: a spoon, cake pan, tin kettle, three iron kettles, coffee grinder, crockery, pitcher, a plate (perhaps it was considered special by great-great grandmother Lena, since it was sold separately from other crockery).

From inside the kitchen or the Stube, furniture and larger pieces no longer stood in their usual places. On offer were chairs and benches, a stove, a straw basket. Is it possible it was one worn on the back for harvesting grapes? More likely it is one that carried a meal to the fields to to feed the hungry family when the Angeles bell of the church rang out. A bed and a bedstead (I don't know how these were different), a house stove, and a Laden, which my dictionary tells me is either a shutter or a shop) sold for Groschen; a cabinet or cupboard, sold for three Thaler, one of the more valuable items from the house.

Provisions Stored for Future Use:

For the stored potatoes, the winning bid was usually one Thaler  for 50 kilograms. Considering that a baking or cooking pan sold for about seven to ten Groschen, the potatoes to put in the pan were a valuable and expensive commodity and more important than most things man-made.  The potatoes were sold in bags weighing from five, two, or one Zenter (according to Wikipedia, one Zentner equaled about 50 kilograms) and seemed to sell at a price of one Thaler per Zentner of potatoes.  An empty barrel was worth about 27 Groschen, but the barrel with "Trank" or drink (wine or Viez?) was worth 10 Thaler and 15 Groschen to one buyer.  The tub of cabbage sold for over two Thaler.  There were also bundles of wood meant for fires in a fireplace or stove, and the harvested Lohrinde, which was the bark stripped from oak trees that could be sold to the tanneries in Saarburg.  The buyer gambled that some one tannery would pay more than the twelve Thaler he originally paid. 

Some Unique Surprises:

*A sail was one of the more surprising items on the auction list; perhaps the family story saying Johann Meier was a sailor is more accurate than I thought.  It was purchased by a sailor from Beurig (a sailor would often be a barge owner) for one Thaler and 12 Groschen.  A correction and proof of an assumption: I made a mistake in translating the word Seil; which is not a sail at all.  Instead it is a cord, rope or line which would have been used by the Halfen, men who controlled the horses pulling a barge against the current.  I had always suspected that Johann Meier sometimes worked as one of these Halfen, handling a team of horses on the trip between Saarburg and Serrig.  

*A resin pot - Resin or Rosin is added in small quantities to traditional linseed oil/sand gap fillers and used in building work. Players of bowed string instruments rub cakes or blocks of rosin on the bow hair so it can grip the strings and make them speak. While there is good reason to have such a pot as building material, I would like to believe that someone in the Meier family played the violin. I know that the grandchildren descendants born in this country had good voices and sang in harmony at parties.  Why not fantasize that one of their grandparents also played a "fiddle."

*Boxes of junk - Coming from a long line of pack rats, I have a "junk drawer" - doesn't everyone?  I also have a box here and there of stuff I might need in the future like old eyeglasses in case the three pair that actually have my current prescription might all be stolen by a thief with poor vision; a bunch of cassettes that already have something on them but could be used to tape something new; bunches of string in case I need to give tie support to every plant in my flowerbeds; and so forth.  I smiled when the auction list of my 2nd great grandparents included two boxes of Gerümpel, the German word for "junk." One box sold for two Groschen, the other for 12 Groschen (evidently the second box had a higher class of "miscellaneous" - or it was a bigger box).

*Two of the most touching pieces sold during the emigration process of Johann and Magdalena were "The Holy Johannes" and the Wägelchen. Both received a high bid of five Groschen, and I think that these two items in particular must have been difficult to part with. Holy Johannes may have been a picture or a small statue of the patron saint of Johann Meier, perhaps given as a gift to Johann at his baptism or first Holy Communion. The Wägelchen was some sort of a carriage for a baby, perhaps more like a small wagon than a decorated Victorian baby buggy one might picture.  Had all five children been taken to the fields or to a neighbor's farm in it?  For Magdalena it would be much easier to part with the crockery or an iron kettle, I think, than with these last two possessions. 

I wish one or the other of any of the auction pieces, but especially "The Holy Johannes" had come to America and been handed down to my generation.  But survival meant that only the practical pieces could be placed in the travel trunks and bundles.  On this thankful Thursday, I am so thankful that my ancestors had the courage to sell their unnecessary items to add to their resources for beginning a new life in a new land.

*A Pferdegeschirr is a harness, although the word gave me a moment of pause and a grab for a dictionary since Pferde means horses and Geschirr means some kind of crockery. My first thought was that this was dishware decorated with horses.
*a Hexelbank was a device that cut straw into small pieces.


Sources and Resources: 
1. Records from the Koblenz State Archive
2. The patience of Ewald Meyer for his many hours spent struggling with the translation of the German of yesteryear as written by a careless official.
3. The generosity of the researcher who remembered the family names which I had been seeking when searching for his own purposes
4. The great memory of a fellow genealogist who recalled that an article on resources in the Koblenz Archive had included my ancestral villages

Climbing the Stairs of the Farmhouse

Stairway to the upper floor 

Remember Onkel Willem and his simple barnhouse?  We explored the ground floor of his dwelling in my last post.  You probably guessed that there was more to come because his house had two stories.  So it is time to climb the stairs to see what is in the rooms situated above the Stube and the tiny dark kitchen.

Bedroom in one of the houses at the Roscheider Hof Open-Air Museum

The second floor of Onkel Willem's house had more space because it covered not only the two ground-floor rooms but also extended above the stable.  The animals below, snug in their stalls, provided heat to the upper floor during the winter.  This is where the sleeping rooms were situated.  Another room, called the little meat house, was the place where the smoked meat (that had originally been cured in the fireplace downstairs) was now strung on a pole.

Meeting the family's need to save whatever might have future value -and to visiting children's delight - there was a little, almost invisible door in a dark corner of the upper floor which led to a kind of low-ceilinged space filled with a mixture of objects.  They were seldom if ever used, but they might be needed at some yet unknown time in the future.  We would call it a junk room perhaps; the German language calls it Gerümpel, one of those great nouns that sounds like what it is.  It was also a place where young imaginations could run wild.  Two or three children could pretend that one was the jailer and the others the prisoners.  The prisoners had to pay to get a bread crust and some water and were confined until the master jailer (Kerkermeister) opened the door.  Or they could imagine that the attic was the place where a fugitive, during some long ago war, had hidden a treasure - a basket with Zwetschen brandy, a nice fat ham, and perhaps even a pig bladder full of hard tallow (an air-tight container that could be used as a ball in a variety of games).

Next, up a flight of very narrow stairs, came the third floor "real" attic where the corn, wheat and oats were stored.  There were small white ovals here and there amid the hills of golden colored grains.  Those were the eggs that Onkel Willem's wife, Mimi Sus, had stored there to preserve them for the winter months.  (Winter was the time the hens lacked food and stopped producing eggs).  Sacks with dried peas, linseed and clover seed for planting in the spring stood nearby.  There was a ceiling beam in the upper attic where the women hung small bags with garden seeds.

An even longer beam was hung with work shirts, bed linen, dish and hand towels that were washed each week but which were not needed before the next "big wash" in either spring or fall.  During the big wash, these pieces, along with other anything else that was dirty, were soaked in lye made from ashes - then bleached white in the sun and given a fresh, pleasant-smelling scent before they were stored in cabinets and on shelves for future use.

Now we have a word picture of the house of Onkel Willem, one which bears a strong resemblance to many of the houses of his neighbors - and to the Irsch house of my great-great grandparents.

Source:  Croon, Maria.  Die Dorfstrasse, Eine Bunte Heimatchronik

Three generations Living Under One Roof

Front of Meier House

Sometimes you have to think outside the box; other times the box needs to be flipped!

In my last post, I described the house-barn-stables of my great-great grandparents.  Most of my information came from Ewald Meyer, who had obtained the 1927 building plans of the property from the current owners.

I thought I had understood that data pretty well, but I had a tendency to forget that the plan which I had before me was not from the year 1860 nor from 1828, when the Kataster map, which came with the tax documents,  was published.  In 1828, Johann Meier was only 3 years old and had a one year old sister.  They lived with his father and mother, who were newly married, and with his grandfather and grandmother.  In this scenario, there were three adult couples and two children.  Johann's father Matthias also had two unmarried brother who undoubtedly lived with the family until 1847 when  this youngest son of Michael Meier (not much older than Johann Meier) married a widow from Freudenberg and went to live there for the rest of his life.

 In the 1860s, as I said in the previous post, there were four (sometimes five or six) adults and five children in the living area of this very small barnhouse.

That led Herr Meyer to contact me and point out some possible misconceptions on my part.  It was obvious I pictured eight to ten people shoe-horned into tiny rooms on the first floor.  His ideas made a great deal of sense and helped me understand how a family with a very small barnhouse managed to live together in what seemed an impossibly small space.

To make it easier for me (and you) to envision the house from its front, I have turned the diagram of the house plan to show just where the front of the house was located.  It is easy to forget that the front of the house did not border the large main Saarburger street that ran the length of the building and the length of a good part of the village.  Instead, it faced a smaller side street - a street that does not exist today.

The following are the thoughts sent to me by Herr Meyer after he had read my February blog post.  They completely reoriented my thinking, and my plans for describing the Meier family's living quarters as I continue to write their story:

"The building owned by Johann Meier in 1860 reached to the street in front of the house. In the picture (which was taken in 2011) a car is parked there. On the ground floor there was house, barn and stable. You have correctly determined that the house was quite small for all the Meiers. This applies to the ground floor. There, the interior dimensions of the living space is so small that there was scarcely place to live. I suspect, therefore, that there were also rooms on the upper floor, which passed over the stable. It even had the advantage that these spaces were, due to the underlying stable floor, heated!  In comparison with the attached neighboring houses on the street, the building of the Meiers was small."

Now I could understand how as many as ten adults and as many as five children had managed to live in the small space at one time or another. And because I often forget just which people lived in this small dwelling in 1828 and 1860, here is the list of family members who probably resided in the house for those two specific years:

House of Michael Meier 1828/1829
Michael Meier, property owner
Magdalena Steffes Meier, wife of Michael
Matthias Meier, eldest son of Michael and Magdalena Meier
Maria Margaretha Weber Meier, wife of Matthias
Michael Meier, second son of Michael and Magdalena Meier
Peter Meier, third son of Michael and Magdalena Meier
Johann Meier, first son of Matthias and Maria Margaretha Meier
Anna Meier, first daughter of Matthias and Maria Margaretha Meier

House of Johann Meier 1860/61
Johann Meier, property owner
Magdalena Rauls Meier, wife of Johann Meier
Matthias Meier, eldest son of Johann and Magdalena Meier
Anna Meier, eldest daughter of Johann and Magdalena Meier
Anna Maria Meier, second daughter of Johann and Magdalena Meier
Johann Meier, second son of Johann and Magdalena Meier
Michael Meier, third son of Johann and Magdalena Meier
Matthias Meier, father of Johann Meier
Michael Meier, uncle of Johann Meier

The Meiers lived in a small structure compared to those of many of their neighbors. They had no place for a garden near the house, their two garden plots were far away. If they had a rough bench where they could sit on a Sunday or on a rare day when their farm work was finished before it was time to get a little sleep and start working all over again, that bench was in the road. And if I guess correctly, so was the manure pile. In spite of those almost impossible living conditions, the family was able to dream and to find their way to a new land. But meanwhile, in the interests of my further orientation, here are two maps from the http://www.irsch-saars/denkmaeler.htm.de website which show the street names and the buildings and monuments known to the Meiers while they lived in Irsch.

Meier farm stood near No. 7

The Meiers lived near the Catholic Church
 on the Saarburger Straße

The Building That Was Left Behind

Getting near to hallowed ground in 2004

Every time I came to Irsch - from the 1980s to my last visit in fall of 2010 - I passed the place where my ancestral home once stood.  Part of it, greatly changed over time, was still there.   But I had no idea I was walking or driving past what was, for me, hallowed ground.   

I had asked about records that would show the location of Johann and Magdalena Meier's house many times over the years and was always told that those records no longer existed.  In a village that had seen severe destruction from the time of Napoleon to World War II,  I had to accept the idea that I would never know where my Meier (or Hauser, Schawel, or Weber) ancestors had actually lived.  

I also thought that I had exhausted the resources in the Koblenz Archive when I found great-great- grandfather Meier's and Hauser's emigration documents.  But that was definitely not the case.  That Archive has so much more to offer - if you know how to look.  A genealogy friend told me about a researcher friend in Germany who used the Archive documents regularly and about the possibility of additional records.  She encouraged me to write him and ask him if he would do a search for me when he next visited the Archive.  He graciously agreed.  That was in about July of last year.

Just back from my trip to Germany in September  and October 2010, I retrieved my mail and found a package full of documents from the Archive.  It had been sent by the German researcher.  There were Kataster maps of Irsch and Zerf, or what we here in Wisconsin would call plat maps.  There were also pages of tax lists.  They dated from approximately 1829.  The Kataster maps showed not only numbered land holdings, but also tiny sketches of each house in the village.  It was possible to see the shape and relative size of each dwelling including the barn-house where Johann and Magadalena, my 2nd great grandparents had lived just before they came to Wisconsin!

No. 4091- Barn House of Matthias Meier in 1829, future home of Johann Meier and Magdalena Rauls Meier

That was exciting but would not have been as much help without the tax documents which came with the maps.  The copies of tax lists gave the size of each land parcel by number, told what type of land it was, the name of the area in which it lay (Beim Holzapfel Baum, In Der Wolfshek),  and showed the tax rate for each piece of land, no matter how small.  I matched Kataster number to Prussian tax number, and found the pieces of land owned by my Meier and Rauls ancestors in 1828-9, including their dwelling.

Herr Ewald Meyer of Irsch, who has always been a wonderful help to me, is able to read the old German handwriting, and once more I counted on his aid.  I sent copies of the documents to him, knowing that he would be able to read the difficult handwriting on the tax lists and also hoping that there might be a place in Irsch and Zerf to keep this duplicate information as an example of what a wealth of family history information can be found at the Archive in Koblenz.

E-mails began to fly back and forth.  I learned that the Meier family had pasture land, two small garden plots (neither close to the house they lived in) some fallow land - 19th century Germany used the three field system at this time - and one small field of "wild land/hedges."  Herr Meier, analysing the total land ownership in 1829 of Matthias Meier, Johann's father, came to the conclusion that he was a "small farmer" known as a Kleinbauer.  He had barely enough land to feed his family and probably owned very little livestock -- perhaps a cow or two and a pig.  To pay the taxes on the land, most Kleinbauern like Matthias had to have a second way to make a living, perhaps as a small-time craftsman such as a tailor or barge puller.

I thought my knowledge of the area couldn't get any better than that - but it did.

Remains of the Barn House of Johann Meier today

As always, Herr Meyer went the extra distance - and then some.  Soon after he got my package of documents, I received e-mail pictures of the part of the dwelling - the storage barn and the stable - which exists today in highly remodeled form. It is owned by the family across the street, even though it stands wall to wall with the home of another Irsch resident.  The Fisch family uses the former home of my ancestors for storage of wood, tractors, and other equipment.  This remodel was done sometime after I visited Irsch in the 1980s.  Because of the German love of order and paperwork, there were documents which spanned the time of the first remodel in 1927 and, after a visit from Herr Meyer, Herr Fisch, the current owner, was willing to give them over for scanning.  You can imagine my excitement when the e-mail scans arrived in my mailbox. 

First the building of today.  Notice the wall without windows in the new storage building.  That was the length of the Meier family's living space - and the width of their quarters was about one-third of that length.  According to my calculations, there could hardly be more than three rooms on the first floor; and each room on the first and second floors would have been about 6 feet by 7 feet in size.   Have you ever felt your kitchen or bedroom was too small?  It is probably palatial by these standards.

Diagram of the Barnhouse of Johann Meier in Irsch

The three colors on the diagram indicate remodel plans by Michael Britten in 1927 (red) and the later remodel (green) by the neighbor across the street, Herr Fisch.

Also notice the size of the stall area and the storage barn, (Stall und Scheune) compared to the size of the family's living quarters.

There was also a diagram for the walls and roof of the house.  You can see that in the last remodeling of the barn area; that is, the stable and storage, the top of the roof was reshaped and now has the flatter roof one can see in the current photo taken in 2011.  Before that time, there was a second floor for the living quarters.  A little more than a year before they applied for permission to come to America, Johann and Magdalena Meier had five children, and it is likely that Johann's father Matthias and his unmarried uncle Michael also lived in the house with them.

view of the buildings from the main street

It seems that by 1927, the part of the structure that had been the living quarters was in very bad condition and at that time was rebuilt by Michael Britten and combined with the storage area.

The living quarters faced the side street off of the larger main road

The final site plan shows an unusual land pattern.  The land on which the Meier dwelling sat had been divided into three separate plots: house, stable, and storage areas - each have their own site number.  Did Johann and Magdalena have a difficult time selling their dwelling and barn before they left for America and divided the lot for a quicker sale?  Another idea to be considered for my novel.

The building that was left behind saw its worst time in 1945 because of its unfortunate location near the German defense line set up to stop the invading WWII Allied troops if they managed to cross the Saar River.

American GI walks where once Johann and Magdalena lived

History ebbs and flows, changing destruction into renewal, enmity into friendship and, with luck; it allows families, once divided by unhappy circumstance, reconnection in future generations.  I feel privileged to be part of such a reconnection.

Sources:

Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, Kataster 001_Best.737 Nr.164 Bl.103 tif; Cataster 002_Best.737 Nr.164 Bl.103 tif;

Catastral-Steuer, Mutter-Rolle für die Catastral-Steuer der Gemeinde Irsch

Photo collection of Ewald Meyer, Irsch 



Living in the Einhaus

Stube at Roscheiderhof Museum

Drinking Federweißer and eating Zwiebelkuchen (last post) is not much fun if you are outside on a cold and rainy day. As autumn days get shorter and colder, one thinks about shelter, a warm fire, and home. November is a good time to come inside of the typical Quereinhaus of our ancestors.

In past posts, I've described bits and pieces of life inside the 19th century barn house. But I've not tried to organize everything into a unified whole because I knew it would be a difficult task. The floor plan for the family's living space in the typical "barnhouse" of southwestern Germany, Luxembourg, and French Lorraine is, unfortunately, foreign to me. My ancestors adopted American-style farm buildings once they settled in their new country.

My main sources of information for the typical floor plan of the Quereinhaus come from opposite ends of the spectrum - the published papers of a scholarly symposium given by architectural experts versus a children's book about farm life in French Lorraine or "Lothringen" as is was once called. In spite of the difference in intended audiences, these two sources are in remarkable agreement (I confess that the children's book is much easier to read.) After studying both of those sources, there were still a few things I could not quite grasp. Various German internet sites have helped fill in the gaps in my comprehension as has a museum guide for the Roscheidhof open air museum at Konz. After many hours of puzzling over the architectural drawings and definitions of words that are no longer in new German dictionaries, I still have questions about the rooms inside the Quereinhaus, but I do have a much clearer image of of the family's living space.


Ground Level of the Living Space

Diagram of the ground level of living space - left of drawing

Alkoven - alcove
Kuche - kitchen
Kammer - chamber, small room
Spüle - sink unit/dry sink
Eichener Unterzug - oak beam support
Tenne - thrashing floor
Stall - animal stable
Nachbar - neighbor

As you can see in the diagram above, a long hall separated the living quarters of the house from the barn and stable area. The house was entered from its street door leading to the hallway or, as it is known in the old dialect, the "Ern". This hallway ran from one end of the house to the other; that is, from entry door to the kitchen or Kuche. There was an inside door, usually closed, which was midway along the hall. It opened into the Stube, the family's living area. This is where the family ate, rested, or worked at chores, especially in winter. The Stube almost always had a spinning wheel (some also had a loom), table and chairs where meals were taken, a chest, a bench, a cabinet for dishes, a rocking chair and a cradle. A crucifix hung on the wall. Perhaps there were also one or two pictures of a religious nature purchased from a peddlar or brought back from a pilgrimage church.


The dividing wall between the kitchen and the Stube was the location for an open fireplace. This wall had an opening which enabled heat from the kitchen fire to warm the Stube by means of an iron plate called the Takenplatte. It functioned as a stove because the heat from the kitchen fire would heat the iron plate. The front side of the Takenplatte often was ornamental, embossed with religious figures or symbols. The use of the Takenplatte to heat the Stube was the common arrangement until sometime in the nineteenth century when each room began to have its own heating source.

In order to regulate the heat better, the so-called Takenschrank cabinet was built around the Takenplatte. The doors of the Takenschrank could be opened to allow more heat into the room or closed when the heat was not needed. Because of the warmth, the Takenschrank in front of the Takenplatte was an excellent storage place for food or other objects which might be damaged by moisture. One might find the bread, jam, cheese, and even the homemade brandy in the Takenschrank.

The kitchen was, according to the one of the speakers at the Roscheiderhof symposium, "the kingdom of the wife" where she would cook and bake and get water ready for the washing. The open fireplace in this room was used to smoke ham and bacon as well as for the preparation of the daily meals. From the kitchen a wooden stairs went to the upper floor and a stone steps led down to the cellar. There was cellar space only under the kitchen and the Stube in most houses. This was the storage place for the potatoes, sauerkraut, other root vegetables from the garden and for the milk.
In many houses, a small room that served as the bedroom of the husband and wife and the youngest children was entered from the kitchen and heated by the kitchen's fireplace. When the parents grew old and were ready to give over the running the farm to the next generation, their living arrangements changed. These grandparents were no longer to be the occupants of the marital bedroom. According to one speaker at the Roscheiderhof symposium, a place for them to sleep was often worked into the Stube. Their bed might be placed in a corner and heavily draped in the Turkish style or built into a little alcove with locking double doors. This is the arrangement shown in the diagram above.

Upper Floor of the Living Quarters

Vorräte - storage
Salz - salt
Zucker - sugar
Honig - honey
Regate - shelves
Kruge aus Steingut - earthenware jars
Schranke - wardrobe
Kisten - chest
Truhen - trunk
Leinenvorrate - storage place for linens
Kleider - clothing
Wertsachen - articles of value
Schlafraum Gaste - guest room
Steigenkammer Schlafraum - sleeping room in the open area at the top of the stairs
Ofenstein - heated stone in upper chimney of the kitchen's fire place



The older children, unmarried brothers and sisters, and any household or farm helpers slept on the second floor of the home. As you can see in the diagram above, there is a small "Ofenstein," that is, a "stove stone." I am guessing it served somewhat the same purpose as the Takenplatte, but lacked the decorative styling and had less ability to absorb the heat from the lower level's fireplace and furnish warmth to the upper area of the house. Its placement in the main sleeping room on the second floor would indicate that this was not a "guest room" per se but a room which might be given over to guests who stayed the night with the family.

Much of the space in the upstairs area was devoted to storage rooms as you can see from the diagram. The preservable foods meant to feed the family would be housed here: root vegetables in bins, preserves in jars, honey, salt and flour and sugar. Items made of cloth, such as bed linens and towels, clothes (an early walk-in closet?) as well as any item that were of special value to the family members all had their place in a Vorrate as well.


Loft of the Living Quarters


Getreide - grains
Rauchkammer - small room for smoked meat

When one notes that the space above the ground floor living quarters housed not only the foods and clothing and sleeping space for the family but also the storage rooms for the various grains that would be used to feed the animals, make flour for bread, and seed the fields in the spring, it is easier to grasp the confined space which held families of eight to twelve or more people.

I remind you once again that the material above is a simply drawn picture, based on the architectural plan of one Einhaus and my less-than-perfect translations skills. But the information does help me picture the indoor life of my great-great grandparents as they worked, ate, slept and shared life in the company of their children, elderly parents, relatives and their neighbors and friends.
About one thing I have no doubt. I am sure that they made good use of the Takenschrank and the Branntwein kept in it.

Sources:
Symposium, Alles unter einem Dach, (papers presented in 200o at the Open Air Museum in Roscheiderhof bei Konz and published by the Museum)
Morette, Jean. Landleben im Jahreslauf: Alltägliches aus einem lothringischen Dorf vor siebzig Jahren für alte and junge Leser gezeichnet und erklart von Jean Morette, Saarbrucker Druckerei und Verlag, 1983
Museum Guide: Freilichtmuseum Roscheider Hof Konz, 2001

Living Wall to Wall

Street in Village of Serrig

In my last post, I described the exterior of the Trier Einhaus, also known as the Quereinhaus, the typical farm building in the border regions of Germany, France, and Luxembourg. These all-in-one-style barnhouses sometimes stood alone on a piece of property. But many were built wall to wall, so that the only way to get to the garden behind the house or the fields and meadows was through one's own back door or the door of a neighbor.

It occurred to me that my housing is very much like that of my ancestors in the Trier/Saarburg area. I live in a two-family condo. Like the Einhaus dwellers of the 19th century, my neighbors and I have two story "houses" that are connected (without stable and stalls, however), because we share a wall. Condo and townhouse dwellers can enter their dwellings from front and back just like the families who lived in the wall-to-wall Einhaüser. Obviously there are no windows to the outside on any shared walls. What goes around comes around?

Advantages of Living Wall to Wall

*There were advantages in a wall-to-wall Quereinhaus. Sharing a wall or living wall to wall prevented heat loss in winter and helped keep the rooms cooler in the summer. So comfort was improved for both parties.

*Maximum use was made from available village land.

*For the families in the Einhaüser, there was the protection and availability of very close neighbors in times of trouble.

Disadvantages of Living Wall to Wall

*A major disadvantage of living wall to wall or sharing a wall, especially in the days before fire codes and fire-proof building materials, was the ease with which a blaze could spread quickly from one Quereinhaus to another. Although the picture postcard above is from Irsch's neighboring village of Serrig, the houses in both villages were similar. Thus the village of Irsch must have looked much the same, even in the earlier part of the century when fires broke out and raged through three villages.

Fire Catastrophe: In the summer of 1842 separate fires destroyed Einhaüser in three villages: Irsch, Wasserbillig (54 houses), and Coenen (16 properties). Ewald Meyer, in his book "Irsch/Saar: Geschichte eines Dorfes" says that 34 dwellings and 22 stables in Irsch went up in flames as the fire raged, leaving 500 residents either without a roof over their heads or lacking barn or shed. Certainly the wall-to-wall buildings were in the greatest danger of being completely destroyed as fire spread easily from houses built so very close to one another.

*Another disadvantage of wall-to-wall residences must have been the difficulty of striking an agreement when ones neighbor wanted to change part of the structure or build a new structure. Today we have such things as condo agreements. To my surprise I learned that, as early as 1821, there was an example of a contract that was not so different from the condo-change agreements of today.

New Construction: The document found by Herr Meyer, the author of the book mentioned above, was called a "House Allocation Contract." It was discovered in the Irsch community archives. It clearly addressed the matter of building a new barnhouse in Irsch when two families owned Quereinhauser with walls that were side by side, no space between. I found the detail fascinating. With help by e-mail from Herr Meyer, I think I now have a mostly clear understanding of those details.

The contract was handwritten by the schoolmaster, Herr Romey who, in addition to his position as schoolmaster and sexton for the church, also served the head of the village council and the Burgermeister as document writer. The contract was between Johann Klein and Johann Konter of Irsch. Together, they jointly owned the two wall-to-wall Einhaüser referred to in the contract.

The top of the document has the typical offical stamp with the Prussian Adler (eagle) and shows that the fee for this contract was 1 Groschen 7 Pfennig. It is dated March 13, 1821. The two houses, the barn with its stalls, and the outer garden and Hof (small area of storage space) were owned in common by the family of Johann Konter and Johann Klein.

The first item of agreement was that the hereditary rights for the old house would go to Johann Konter, his wife Helena, and their descendants. Johann Klein and his wife Kathrin would own the new house with barn and stalls. In other words, the two barnhouses would no longer belong to both parties. Klein was required to build his new barnhouse to strict specification so that it would match, width and height, with the gabel side of the Konter dwelling. The agreement spells out the size in detail, using the word Schu as the measure. For instance the wall of the new barn had to be 21 "true" Schu (21 Schu equal 8 meters or a little over 26 feet).

The actual building process was clarified in the contract. It seems that the walls of the adjoining structure owned by Herr Konter would be heavily damaged in order for Herr Klein to build the side wall for his new structure. If Herr Konter helped with labor, which consisted of breaking down the stone walls of Herr Klein, he would not have to pay the cost for any work to fix or rebuild the wall of his own dwelling. However, Klein would receive whatever wood was salvageable, no matter which house it came from. Klein was allowed to use straw as the roofing for his new building, if that was allowed by ordinance. (Because of the increased risk of fire spreading more easily, straw roofs were little by little being outlawed. There was the possibility that this could happen before the new structure's roof was begun. By the middle of the century, Prussia had outlawed straw and shingle roofs in newly constructed buildings, requiring tile of some kind, in all the lands it governed).

The back gardens and Hof, the outdoor work and storage spaces next to the gardens, were at an angle to a Herr Tressel's garden. This had to be taken into consideration in the building project. There had to be a way to get into and out of all the gardens of all parties concerned.

Both husbands and wives "signed" the contract, using their housemark rather than a handwritten signature. (see archived post of Aug 6, 2005 for a full explanation of the Rosenkranz and resultant housemarks). The housemark of the construction master, Herr Michel Brausch, is also on the contract, along with the names of three other men who were probably associated with the construction master. In all, six housemarks appear, not including the two witnesses and the signature of Herr Romey, the writer of the document

If you thought that detailed contract paperwork and condominium living were marks only of our times, think again. Your ancestors who lived in wall-to-wall Einhaüser seem to have known all about it.

Sources:
Meyer, Ewald. Irsch/Saar: Geschichte eines Dorfes, Geminde Irsch, 2002
http://19thcenturyrhinelandlive.blogspot.com/search?q=rosenkranz (Information on housemarks)

Everything Under One Roof

Restored Quereinhaus
Alles unter einem Dach or "Everything under one roof" describes very accurately the farm buildings of the Trier region. It was also the title of a symposium at the Roscheider Hof Freilichtmuseum in 2000. Experts on the architecture of the German, French, and Luxembourg border regions shared their knowledge on the subject with a focus on saving this unique architecture.

The papers presented at the symposium were published under the same title. The copy that I have is written in German and French, since the participants came from countries that spoke one of those two languages. That helped explain to me why I rarely found articles in English about the farm dwellings of my ancestors. I had diagrams and pictures of Bavarian or Pomeranian or Westphalia farms, but the unique style of barnhouse that I saw when I visited the Trier area was rarely described. The architecture was not wholly German. It was very much like that of two other countries, France and Luxembourg. It is rather like an unacknowledged child that no one talks about - or so it seems to me.

Not too many of these "mixed architecture" farm buildings remain. They have been destroyed: either by WWII bombing, natural disaster, or by the desire of an owner for a more modern structure. Some still stand, but they have been modified to the point where the original architectural style has been mostly obliterated.

There are exceptions. The owners of the house in the photograph above have worked hard to maintain the important elements of what is often called a "Quereinhaus" or a "Trier Einhaus." My German is not good enough for me to distinguish a great deal of difference between these two terms: for that reason, I will call the typical house from the border regions of the German Saar-Mosel, Lorraine, and Luxembourg regions a Quereinhaus.

More about the 19th century's Quereinhaus

The Quereinhaus had the living quarters of the family on one side of the structure: the other side housed the working farm. The literal meaning of "Quer" is "from the side." Thus a Quereinhaus was a barn and a house under one roof, both parts accessible from the long side of the building. The front door to the house and the barn doors were usually located on the long side of the house that fronts on the main road.

Christopher Becker, who wrote a very good walking tour of the village of Irsch (my ancestral village) points out that the Trier Einhaüser (Trier "one-houses") in Irsch were typically disordered rows of wall-to-wall houses. This is known as the Trier Zeile (row), where the house walls do touch but also jut in and out instead of following a straight, smooth line. A few such examples remain in Irsch, in spite of the heavy destruction during WWII. Some of the Quereinhaüser spared by the war, such as the one above, have been carefully restored. Ideally, the doors of these restored houses should be of oak; the windows and doors remaining as they were in the earlier century (that is, they should be the original shape and bordered in the original style).

One of the striking features of many of the Quereinhaüser is a large stable door which is shaped like a rounded arch, giving the barn half of the structure a pleasing decorative aspect. The family's living quarters section had a house door and several windows, sometimes with shutters. The Quereinhaus was usually a two-story building.

The inside of the Quereinhaus was divided by a hallway that ran from front to back, splitting the building into two halves, with the kitchen, Stube (where the family ate and rested) and sometimes a bedroom on one side. On the other side were stalls for horses or cows and the threshing floor, etc.

In addition to a garden at the back of the house, there was usually a pig sty and a woodshed. All this was enclosed by a stone or stick fence, making a small Hof or "courtyard".

An original QuereinhausThe premises in the picture below was built in 1850 (inscription above the door: AR 1850 MC) and is nearly completely preserved in its original form today. I found it on the website of a small town called Fastrau near Fell. According to the site: "The house has been unoccupied for a long time, and still features the typical wood (framed?) glazed windows, the original classical door panel and the original white sandstone trimmings around windows and doors. The wide archway features an ornamental capstone at the centre. A smaller door is set into the larger double doors. The slate roofing of the half-hipped roof with the wooden cornice board is also typical. The cellar belonging to the property is accessible from the main road via a portal with sandstone trimmings and a mighty capstone. The façade has been plastered over, while the gable ends were left in their original beautiful local slate rubble stonework state."












The diagram for the Fastau Quereinhaus helps identify some of the primary features of this house:














1. Slate roof
2. Barge board and wind channel (instead of roof overhang)
3. Fascia (instead of roof overhang)
4. Double wood glazed windows
5. Sandstone slabs and caps
6. Shutters
7. Slate rubble (often plastered over at a later date)
8. Wooden doors
9. Sandstone slab steps

Sources:
Alles unter einem Dach? Die Hauslandschaft in der deutsch-franzosisch-luxemburgischen Grenzregion, hauskundiliches Symposium, Konz, Roscheiderhof, 2001.
Morette, Jean. Landleben im Jahreslauf, Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, 1983
http://www.irsch-saar.de/
http://wirtschaft.fh-trier.de/ri/fell/ortfell/fastrau.php?nr=7&unr=4&eTyp=n&lan=de