Zehntscheune (open-air museum Kommern)

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Archdiocese of Cologne 1638 map section

The last tithe barn of the Dietkirchen Abbey in Bonn , which was closed in 1802, is now an exhibition object in the LVR open-air museum in Kommern . The former storage room for the "tithe" was built in the end of the Electoral Cologne period in the Rhineland in 1734, when the end of its intended use, which resulted from the secularization , was not yet in sight. At the time of its demolition in 1973, when the empty barn on the site of the Sechtemer Ophof was demolished, it was - as can also be seen in photographs from that time - a building that was damaged by storms and left to decay. Before it was demolished and transported to the museum site in Kommern, the old farm building was measured by experts, drawn in many details and documented with photographs. Then, after careful restoration of the beams, it was initially stored in the LVR open-air museum in Kommern and then rebuilt after almost 10/11 years.

View of the rebuilt tithe barn on the edge of the "Eifel group" of the open-air exhibition

prehistory

Tithe barns

Tithes given by farmers to a landlord

The tithe barns or tithe barns were usually built by the tithe lords. The Sechtems tithe barn , built in 1734, was also a warehouse that was used to deliver and store the taxes in kind referred to as tithe , which had to be delivered from the leaseholds of a landlord. Such a structure - in the 18th century the building was the largest farm building in the Cologne area - was mostly erected on the feudal or monastery court of the manorial rule during the electoral period . Its function as a collection point, which was responsibly monitored and administered by the help of the main courtyard, ended - also for the tenant tenants in the Electorate of Cologne - with the new legislation ( secularization ) under French rule.

Ownership and location of the structure

A Sechtemer Stiftshof was mentioned as early as 1150, which later also included a tithe barn. This was evident from a document of leased in the Rücker commercials tithe were provided that Rigezo and Anr. de Ponte had held and now returned from these to the Dietkirchen monastery in Bonn. In addition to the extensive estates taken over from their predecessors, the Benedictine nuns , the later Dietkirchen canonical monastery increased its possessions. Gradually they owned properties on both sides of the Rhine. The focus of their possessions and tithe rights was on the foothills in the region between the slopes of the Ville and the Rhine.

Eichholz site

Eichholz Castle, the successor to the former Eichholz manor

Until the 14th century, the Eichholzer Hof owned by Dietkirchen (at that time the only property located there and belonging to the Urfeld parish) dominated with its tithe barn as a collection point for natural produce, which Dietkirchen tenants were obliged to deliver on an annual basis. Only when the Archbishop of Cologne, Walram, ordered a separation of property between the abbess and the convent to better secure the livelihood of the conventual women in monasteries and foundations, did a change come about. He awarded the abbess of the Bonn monastery the monastery courtyards in Urfeld, Eichholz and Widdig, except for the larger barn in Eichholz. This fell to the convent, which relocated it to Sechtem in order to use it there as a tithe barn. Another reason for this measure by Walrams for the material sharing of property and income between the convent and the management of the monastery is said to have been in this particular case the enormous increase in debts of the monastery under the abbess Sofia at that time.

Sechtemer predecessor buildings and location

After the mentions of 1150 - since that time the possession of the Sechtemer tithe for the Dietkirche is occupied and by Pope Calixt III. confirmed - as well as that of the deed for the Rottzehnten in Sechtem from 1279. 1341 (see above), and in the last mention of the 14th century from 1399, reference was again made to the Sechtemer Zehnt by listing the income from Sechtem possessions. The yields from Hof, Wachsung and Zehnt resulted in a total of 29 Malter wheat, 296 Malter rye and 200 Malter oats. In addition, there was the income from the sheep farm , whose wool sales brought in around 30 to 40 marks annually (around 3000 € today). The annual Sechtem wine tithing amounted to about four loads . These figures illustrate that an adequately spacious deposit was required.

  • Today's Mühlenbach, just before Sechtem and Ophof

  • Löschwasserteich fed by the Mühlenbach (called "Buehlen Poel" in the 15th century)

  • Today's Ophof, former monastery courtyard

In the years 1424 to 1438 there is again talk of a Sechtemer building in Dietkirchen. The Bonn canons had a house with a barn built on the so-called Bühlen Poel / Pohl (since 1820 on the Kümpel) in Sechtem. The tithe barn is said to have stood at this small courtyard complex on what would later become Kronprinzenstrasse (today Stefanstrasse) - often interrupted by destruction by storms or arson in many wars. According to a report from the 1430s, the early storage barn of the Bonn women's monastery there was damaged. A large flood, similar to that of the Magdalen flood , caused irreparable damage. The storm caused the water level of the nearby Mühlenbach , which at the time was still much more watery, to rise extremely and caused severe damage to the whole place. From 1433 to 1434, carpenter Heinrich von Heimerzheim is said to have required 26 carriages of carpenter wood to build a new tithe barn and received 55 marks from Dietkirchen. The total cost of this new barn appeared in the Dietkirchen account books with 200 marks, 3 shillings and 4 denarii . In 1438 the building received a new threshing floor.

Last new building

Although a seamless transition is not documented - on one of the barn's gate bars, it says "AN (NO) 1734 D 26 Maei" to previous buildings, the scientific investigations carried out during the restoration in Kommern showed that parts of the oak beams from the year of construction 1734 were not new, it was found that the well-preserved materials from a previous building had been used again and even repeatedly. Parts of the structure made of oak, including beams, posts, struts and rafters could be dated to the 15th or 16th centuries (probably through dendrochronological findings). Other recent components were made from softwood.

Location of the open-air museum in Kommern

Storage, planning

A decade passed before the financial means for the reconstruction were secured and the plans for the construction and future use of the structure were clarified. This use envisaged building a basement under the building in order to use the space gained as a depot without changing the historical exterior of the tithe barn. The building, which was then faithfully rebuilt in its basic form on the grounds of the LVR open-air museum in Kommern, corresponded to the dimensions of the year of demolition when the owner at the time, Josef Bollig-Commer, offered the old building to the Rhenish open-air museum for reconstruction. Today the building is considered to be the largest preserved farm building from the 18th century in the Cologne region.

Building description

  • front

  • Dormer window and gate detail

  • Rear gable hip, extension

  • Back with an icy extinguishing water pond

The barn is 48 meters long, 13 meters wide and reaches a height of almost 10 meters. The original half-hip roof made of straw - it was replaced by a thatched roof - spanned a hall of approx. 500 square meters, with the roof being towed all around and ending approx. 1.50 meters above the ground.

Roofing work with thatch

The building has two towering gates on the gable or eaves side, which end under a dormer-like gable protruding from the thatched roof. Thus, highly loaded carts could be pushed into the barn for unloading. On its elongated front, the overall windowless building has three filled compartments between the roof and the base. The roof is hilted on the gable ends. Since the terrain is slightly sloping towards the rear, the base heights change and thus also the number of vertical compartments. So there are five more compartments under the front gable hip and apparently only two at the back, above the pond. The rear gable, averted from the view of the visitor, has the same number of compartments as its opposite counterpart. On this "invisible" side, the building was given a small annex, which does not correspond to the original, in which the technology for operating the building is to be housed.

A picture of the museum information shows the before and after the building. After this SW-recording the fillings of visible compartments were probably only from a clay / straw mixture on Stakhölzern , which were then limed and have been prepared in Kommern new in the traditional way again. The interior of the former farm building, which stood on a brick plinth, was divided into several areas. The tithe barn had two threshing pens (for threshing and cleaning the grain) and had three banses for storing the delivered natural produce.

The management of the open-air museum had chosen an addition to the "Eifel construction group" as the location for the restored barn, where it now stood next to the historic building of the Straßfeld Schultheissenshaus, which had formerly also stood next to a tithe barn. The rebuilt building was equipped with a modern lightning protection system, but in order to do justice to the original representation, it received an artificially created extinguishing water pond on its back , which in Sechtem was ideally fed by a stream. Overall, the barn has been giving visitors an impression of several aspects (including tithe creatures, handicrafts) that were commonplace in feudal times since 1984 .

literature

  • Josef Dietz,: Topography of the city of Bonn from the Middle Ages to the end of the electoral era , in Bonn history sheets. Yearbook of the Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein, Volume XVI, 1962
  • Heinz Vorzepf: Sechtem village chronicle ,
    • Volume 2: Church and School through the Ages. 2001.
    • Volume 3: History of our homeland, castles and farms. 2008.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Josef Dietz in: Topography of the City of Bonn from the Middle Ages to the End of the Electoral Period , p. 124, (Diet. U 41)
  2. ^ Heinz Vorzepf: Burgen und Höfe, section 1648 - 1794 (=  Sechtemer Dorfchronik . Volume 3 ). Bornheim 2016, p. 340/341 (typesetting and printing: alka mediengestaltung GmbH).
  3. ^ Heinz Vorzepf: Burgen und Höfe, section 1648 - 1794 (=  Sechtemer Dorfchronik . Volume 3 ). Bornheim 2016, p. 340/341 (typesetting and printing: alka mediengestaltung GmbH).
  4. ^ Heinz Vorzepf: Burgen und Höfe, section 1648 - 1794 (=  Sechtemer Dorfchronik . Volume 3 ). Bornheim 2016, p. 341 (typesetting and printing: alka mediengestaltung GmbH).
  5. ↑ Heinz Vorzepf: Burgen und Höfe, section Ophof / Zehntscheune (=  Sechtemer village chronicle . Volume 3 ). Bornheim 2016, p. 340 ff . (Typesetting and printing: alka mediengestaltung GmbH).
  6. ↑ Heinz Vorzepf: Burgen und Höfe, section Ophof / Zehntscheune (=  Sechtemer village chronicle . Volume 3 ). Bornheim 2016, p. 340 ff . (Typesetting and printing: alka mediengestaltung GmbH).
  7. ↑ Object information in the open-air museum

Web links

Commons : Rheinisches Freilichtmuseum Kommern  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Commons : Ophof  - collection of images, videos and audio files