Old Wennigsen customs house
| Old Wennigsen customs house | |
|---|---|
 The old customs house in Wennigsen from the 1820s / 1830s |
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| Data | |
| place | Wennigsen (Deister) |
| Construction year | probably between 1829 and 1832 |
| Coordinates | 52 ° 16 '24.9 " N , 9 ° 34' 31.3" E |
The old customs house Wennigsen is a half-timbered house in Wennigsen , probably built between 1829 and 1832 , which was probably built as a toll station today and is now a listed building .
Reasons for origin
Until the middle of the 18th century, the highways in the Electorate of Hanover were unpaved sand roads for which no tolls were levied. This also applied to the paths and streets near Wennigsen, the condition of which was complained about in various reports from the Wennigsen “office”. The increasing freight traffic from the 18th century onwards caused severe damage to the road network. From the beginning of the 17th century, heavy coal transport vehicles passed the unpaved roads that carried hard coal from the Bröhn im Deister to Hanover. After the Thirty Years' War interrupted work in the coal mines from 1618 to 1648 , Count Platen had hard coal mined there again in 1695, which he needed for his lime distillery and brewery in Linden . The transport there took place on the still poorly developed roads and made their maintenance difficult.
From 1763, after the end of the Seven Years' War , many sovereigns recognized that only state-controlled road construction could maintain the public road network and promote trade. King George III von Hannover provided larger sums for road construction and had a state "Royal Curfürstliche Wegebau-Intendance" founded, which was initially to carry out the expansion of the highways. In 1764, the Chaussee between Hameln and Hanover, which today represents the B 217 and ran near Wennigsen, was developed as the first trunk road . In 1766 the plan was made to share the costs of building and maintaining the road with the users of the developed roads. From May 6, 1768, a law in the state of Hanover decreed the establishment of road houses on Chausseen, in which road tolls should be collected. The road leading through Wennigsen, that is, the path from the coal mine in Deister to Chaussee Hameln – Hanover, was initially not developed as a road. As a result, no mileage could be collected there.
During the time of the Napoleonic wars and the occupation by French and Prussian troops between 1803 and 1813, road construction and thus also the road money facility could not be further developed. It was not until 1817 that a “General Road Construction Commission” and a new road payment regulation from September 19, 1817 were created in the state of Hanover as the successor organization to the “Intendance”. Now plans were made to expand the previously unpaved roads, which also affected the Wennigser area. Between 1829 and 1830 the new “Amts- und Kohlestrasse” was built between Wennigsen and Hamelner Chaussee, at the beginning of which is the “Old Customs House”. The reason for this road construction was an application from the then tenant of the coal mine in Deister, Johann Egestorff , who asked for permission to expand the mining facilities in Deister. The approval for this application was only given in 1836 for the son of the applicant Georg Egestorff , when the expansion of the “Official and Coal Road” made it possible to transport the coal without damaging the road. After the expansion of the Kohlestrasse, the operation of a toll station near Wennigsen had to be justified.
history
The history of the old customs house is only sparsely documented. Only the first person who received the road allowance is known by name. It is a Mr. Großstück, exact dates are not known. The descendants of Mr. Großstück lived in the house until 1913. On October 3, 1913, Mrs. Theresa Hühnerberg, b. Großstück, the house to the monastery gardener Gustav Kiesow, who ran a gardening shop on the site and set up a sales room in the house. In 1924 Kiesow built a horse stable on the northeast corner of the property.
In 1964, a driver collided with the western pillar and knocked it over. Major damage could be averted through timely security measures. The original column was reinserted.
In 1982 the roof was re-covered and the light yellow painted vertical planking on the west facade was replaced by a tile curtain. The building, which was last only used as a residential building, has not been used for residential purposes since 1987.
Dating
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The year of construction of the old customs house is not known. A rough limitation of the construction time to the beginning of the 19th century can be inferred from the "Summary List of the buildings, structures and equipment in the Wennigsen office to be maintained by the Royal Chamber" of January 12, 1819. Since the old customs house in Wennigsen is not yet mentioned in it, its time of construction can be set to a point in time after 1819.
Two arguments speak in favor of a date of origin between 1829 and 1832:
- The Amtsstrasse and Kohlestrasse between the Deister and the Chaussee Hameln-Hanover (today's Bundesstrasse 217 ), at the beginning of which is the old customs house, was expanded between 1829 and 1830. Only then was the construction and operation of a toll station justified at this point.
- Various sources show that there are clear parallels in structure between the old customs house and a number of other road money houses built around 1828 in the Göttingen district, which suggest that the construction period was almost the same. This includes a rectangular floor plan, the eaves construction, an associated garden plot and a small stable attached to the house.
One problem with dating arises from an inscription with the year 1822 on the north side of the building. In Wüllner's native work, “From Wennigsen's Past - Contributions to Local History”, the year of construction 1822 is given based on this inscription. The reliability of this dating is questionable, as the year 1822 was only applied in 1974 by a painter who reproduced an older inscription that was still faintly visible at this point. So it could be transmission errors from 1829 to 1822 or from 1832 to 1822.
One consideration when dating was that the building in Wennigsen was a privately operated toll station. It could have been built before the completion of the Kohlestrasse, which only justifies the state levying of road money and thus the establishment of a state road money house. In individual cases, there have been such private levies on particularly well-developed roads with the condition that the income be used again for expansion and repair. A private collection point is not likely in Wennigsen before 1829 because the road in question was not well developed. Above all, it is convincing that the use of columns as structural elements in the first half of the 19th century was only allowed in buildings with a state function as an indication of sovereign tasks performed here. This allows the conclusion that the Wegegeldhaus in Wennigsen with its pillars was not a private but a state institution and can only be dated after the completion of the state Kohlestraße 1829-1830.
use
Although the name Altes Zollhaus has become common for this building in Wennigsen and is also used in local literature, there is no evidence that the building was used as a customs house or customs office. Even before the building was erected in the 1820s, internal tariffs were no longer levied in the Kingdom of Hanover . It is likely that it was a toll office . These stood on specially paved roads or on bridges. The toll takers stationed there collected fees from the carts driving by. The funds raised had to be used for the expansion and maintenance of the road.
Attachments and conversions
Subsequent additions and alterations to the building must have been carried out after the building was no longer used as a toll station, because the toll takers were generally prohibited from changing the buildings they managed and lived in. A wooden barn was temporarily attached to the west facade. This was canceled in the second half of the 1960s. In 1924 the gardener couple Kiesow built a brick stable in the southwest corner of the main house. Today it is used as a shed.
Further outbuildings in the south-eastern area of the property were obviously needed for the nursery. The installation of a shop window in the north facade was implemented with the use of the space behind as a sales area for the nursery. The winter garden-like extension on the east facade could be added in the same period. According to the assessment of the form elements, this must have happened in the first quarter of the 20th century. The road money houses built in the same period had a "symmetrical design of the street-side facades". It can be assumed that this principle also applied to the original arrangement of the windows in the old customs house in Wennigsen. Such symmetry no longer exists today, the arrangement of the windows in the western area of the street facade was changed, probably in connection with changes in the interior design. These changes can no longer be dated.
Todays situation
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The old customs house in Wennigsen is a simple half-timbered building on an almost square base. The edge length of the two-storey house is approx. 10 m, as is the ridge height. The roof is designed as a pan-roofed crooked hip roof. The eaves side (north facade) extends along the street. The upper floor protrudes on the street side and thus forms a covered corridor over the entire width of the facade. Four Doric sandstone pillars delimit the corridor and support the projecting storey. Three cylindrical so-called "wagon wheel deflectors" made of sandstone are attached to the street side at the foot of the pillars and are intended to protect them from damage by the incoming carts.
The building is privately owned.
Preservation and further use
The main parts of the existing building are from the early 19th century. For this reason alone, it is unique as an example of utility half-timbered construction. Furthermore, it is a building with a proven historical function that played a role in the economy and transport of the Hanover district in the first half of the 19th century. It is particularly important that the function is reflected in the exterior design so clearly that a viewer can guess from the facade what happened at such a toll station.
If the aim is to preserve the first building structure true to detail on the outside, this goal can hardly be achieved inside the house. It is not possible to find an exact picture of the first division of the house, which is why it is difficult to restore it in such a way that the original function of the rooms becomes clear. The reconstruction of the interior is not possible due to the lack of sources and therefore cannot be aimed for during the renovation. Rather, the planned use should be decisive for the design of the interior.
A local initiative is currently planning the renovation of the old customs house. The aim is to create a center for cultural education based on the model of the sensory perception of the Wennigs precision mechanic and artist Erich Pollähne and the artisan philosopher Hugo Kükelhaus .
Monument preservation
The old customs house was included in the inventory list of the monument authority in 1980. The monuments of the Hanover region are recorded and cataloged in this list . The old customs house meets several criteria of the Monument Protection Act and was classified as a cultural monument of the upper category. Since August 17, 1988, the building has been in the official gazette of the Lower Monument Protection Authority and is therefore officially a cultural monument. The road money house is referred to as an individual monument because it is a rarity due to its construction and its former economic function.
The renovation of the old customs house sometimes requires major interventions in the old building fabric. The following monument conservation objectives have been formulated by the monument protection of the Hanover region:
- Retention of the facade, elements, roof and structure.
- Maintaining the staircase inside - the shop window on the ground floor can be moved back to the original.
- All changes must be coordinated with the monument protection authority.
- In addition, the ground floor can be leveled by filling the cellar.
- To create space, the partition walls on the upper floor can be removed, but not those from the stairwell.
literature
- B. Adam, S. Office, M. Burci: Old Customs House-Wennigsen. Construction investigation. University of Hanover, 1993.
- M. Liebe, N. Nasser: Renovation concept for a half-timbered house - the "old customs house" in Wennigsen / Deister. Thesis. Hanover University of Applied Sciences 1998.
- F. Wüllner: From Wennigsen's past - contributions to local history. Self-published, Wennigsen 1973.
Web links
- History and historical pictures of the old customs house Wennigsen. Archived from the original on December 9, 2013 ; accessed on September 5, 2018 .
- Usage concept. Archived from the original on December 9, 2013 ; accessed on September 5, 2018 .