Dry dwellers
During the period of industrialization, people who lived in newly constructed buildings whose walls had not yet completely dried out were referred to as dry tenants (also known as dry tenants ) .
In contrast to cement mortar , the cheaper lime mortar, which was still dominant in house building at that time, releases more water when it hardens, so that a house built with such mortar typically needed three months before it was habitable - during this time it was free or closed Lower rent was given to "dry residents" who heated the house just by their presence and also contributed to the faster hardening of the mortar with the carbon dioxide from their breathing air, until it was finally dry enough that it could be rented out regularly.
Since the new urban working class suffered from a permanent lack of housing and excessive rents during the period of industrialization , "dry living " was an alternative to homelessness . However, the humidity of the houses also had a negative impact on the health of the residents, which also happened every three months Had to change apartments. In addition, the potential dry-dwelling residents generally had no furniture to furnish the apartments, and usually no heating either.
The painter Otto Nagel describes the dry dwellers in his work about the “Milljöh” artist Heinrich Zille : “ The Rabitzwand celebrated triumphs. The term "vertigo buildings" for houses built from more rubble than stones became a common expression. The category of “dry dwellers” arose, people who were ready to move into the still wet buildings in order to accelerate the drying process by their housing, and at the same time ruin their health. These tenants, along with the poorest of the poor, were mostly the same people who had built those houses; the weather had made them unemployed and lived as dry tenants during this unemployment period. "
Even Hans Fallada mentioned in his 1953 novel "A man wants up" the situation of Trockenwohnern in Berlin's new housing developments around the turn of the 20th century.
See also
literature
- Otto Nagel: H. Zille . Publication by the German Academy of the Arts. Henschelverlag Berlin, 1970.
- Gerhard A. Ritter / Klaus Tenfelde: Workers in the German Empire 1871–1914 . Bonn, 1992. p. 594.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Otto Nagel: H. Zille . Henschelverlag Berlin, 1970, p. 146 ff.