House Müller
The Müller house in Bielefeld in the Mitte district is a late Gothic hall house from 1485/86. It bears the house number Obernstrasse 51 and is considered the oldest still existing town house in the city. It became known through August Oetker , who experimented with baking powder here.
location
The house is at the end of Obernstrasse, not far from the former Obern Gate. On its west side, a narrow passage leads to the wave, which until the beginning of the 20th century was the only connection to this street. The shaft can only be reached from the street "Am Waldhof" after some buildings have been demolished.
History and ownership
It is not known who built the house. In 1670 the grain merchant Otto Bernd Kottenkamp, who was also a councilor, lived in the house around 1800 a glazier. In the middle of the 19th century, the yarn dealer Friedrich Kramer lived in the property. From 1870 onwards, the building belonged to the Müller family of bakers, who sold it in 1991. The pharmacist August Oetker experimented in that bakery towards the end of the 19th century to find out the right dosage of his baking powder , which he finally succeeded and laid the foundation for what would later become his company . With the purchase in 1991, a real estate company took over the building and restored it. Since then it has been used for residential and business purposes. During the fire in the neighboring house in 2011, extinguishing water penetrated the building because the fire brigade had to cool the house.
Building history
Based on an inscription on the street front, it was assumed for a long time that the house was built in 1592. A construction study carried out during the renovation of the building from 1991 to 1993 showed, however, that it is almost 100 years older. With the help of dendrochronology , the roof structure could be dated to the year 1485. It turned out that not only the entire roof structure , but also the outer walls made of quarry stone , parts of the facade made of ashlar and the main beam position came from the time it was built. The cellars under the hall and the western living room are probably even older and may have been taken over from a previous building.
The year 1592 refers to a thorough renovation, in which u. a. the street facade was renewed and provided with a richly carved half-timbered gable. Such a mixed construction of half-timbered and stone was widespread at the time and is today u. a. can still be found on many houses in Lemgo. At that time a canyon was built east of the entrance , but it was removed again at an unknown time. While the neighboring houses were badly damaged or even completely destroyed in the Second World War, the Müller house got away with only minor damage. The reason for this is said to have been the bakery's flour stored in the attic, in which the incendiary bombs fizzled out.
Building description
Exterior construction
The Müller house is a two-storey solid building with a half-timbered gable and a steep gable roof, which is covered with red hollow pans. It consists of a high hall floor and a significantly lower storey floor, which was later converted for residential purposes. Both storeys were once separated from each other by a wide cornice , which today has only survived in fragments. Inside the cornice there are four wrought-iron wall anchors that serve to stabilize the structure. Due to the installation of the two two-story built-in living rooms on both sides of the entrance, the house appears three-story from the street. The entrance is framed by a simple sandstone frame with a segmental arch . It replaces a much larger entrance gate, whose jambs are preserved even in part. While the outer walls were built entirely of quarry stone, the facade consists of carefully hewn sandstone blocks .
Interior
Inside, the original room layout can still be largely understood. To the west of the entrance is a two-storey, built-in room with a cellar, which is likely to date from the time the house was built, but which was later renovated. This is indicated by the inscription from 1593. Another living room can be found east of the entrance, which was not built until the 16th century and was extended in the 18th century. The two-storey hall, which was once equipped with a large fireplace, is only partially preserved today. It was once the largest and most important room in the house, where people cooked and worked. The rear part of the house is occupied by a hall with a basement. Such halls were an integral part of the larger town houses of the Middle Ages and the early modern period in northwest Germany and were not only used as living and sleeping rooms for the landlord and his wife, but also for representative occasions.
Trivia
- The current headquarters of Dr. Oetker GmbH and the corresponding holding company are now 600 m from Haus Müller.
- A memorial plaque on the west side of the house reminds of the story.
See also
literature
- Ludwig Klahorst: The Bielefeld bourgeois architecture. The building history of the Bielefeld house and the abstraction of its spatial and physical shape. Bielefeld 1919, pages 21–22, Figure 7
- Barbara Seifen: On the modernization of a late Gothic town house in Bielefeld. In: Preservation of monuments in Westphalia-Lippe. Issue 1/1995, Münster, pages 23–29
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martin Enderle: Paths through the air. Bridges in Bielefeld. Bielefeld 2001, page 11
- ^ Neue Westfälische: Müller house also damaged. Retrieved April 4, 2014 .
- ↑ So still with Bernd Hey: Historical walks through Bielefeld. Bielefeld 1990. Page 21. The year can be found in the central axis of the street facade in the area of the cornice between the wall anchors.
- ↑ Barbara Seifen: On the modernization of a late Gothic town house in Bielefeld. In: Preservation of monuments in Westphalia-Lippe. Issue 1/1995, Münster, page 23
Coordinates: 52 ° 1 ′ 10.3 " N , 8 ° 31 ′ 40.8" E