Bobsleigh
Bobbelage ( Frankfurterisch Bowwelasch ) is the name for a low mezzanine in Frankfurt am Main . Such mezzanine floors were particularly common in merchant houses in Frankfurt's old town . While the offices and sales rooms were on the ground floor , in which the goods were exhibited, especially during trade fairs , the bobsled surface served as a storage room.
The families' living quarters were on the upper floors above the bobsleigh floor (mostly two, and up to three gable floors above).
Most of the houses in Frankfurt's old town were half-timbered houses . One of the most famous among them was the Haus zur Goldenen Waage , which was destroyed in the air raids on Frankfurt am Main in the Second World War and reconstructed from 2013 to 2018 , and which also had a bobsled surface. The most famous stone patrician house , the Stone House from 1464, also had such a mezzanine.
etymology
The etymology of the word is not completely clarified, but it is probably a term from Yiddish that has been blurred over the centuries , the old household items and junk - which were preferably housed in the bobsleigh floor next to trade goods - called bawel or bowel . This makes sense insofar as Frankfurt traditionally always had a large Jewish community until the pogroms of the Third Reich .
literature
- Bobelage . In: Wolfgang Brückner (Hrsg.): Frankfurt dictionary . Based on the material collected by Joseph Oppel and Hans Ludwig Rauh , published on behalf of the Frankfurt Historical Commission in conjunction with the Institute for Folklore / Institute for Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . Volume I: Introduction, A – Eva. Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-7829-0360-9 , p. 346-347 .