A Remembrance of the Past; Building for the Future." ~ Eve Eckert Koehler
Remembering Our Danube Swabian Ancestors
The Living Quarters
of
the German Settlers
by Dr. Viktor Pratscher
Translated by Brad Schwebler
The dwellings of the German settlers were exactly
the same as that of the Hungarian colonists in Feketitsch. One house was
just like another. The very strong walls over 2 feet thick were thicker
below than above. Everything was pounded from earth which was dug up next
to the house. On such a house there was a large spacious room facing the
street (inside it was easily 16 × 14 feet), with a little simple window, - with
4 panes - facing the street and the same kind of window facing the yard.
The room facing the yard was a large 12 × 14 feet with a window facing the yard.
Between these two rooms one would find a 14 × 11 feet large kitchen with an
entrance door from the yard. This door was divided in the middle into two
equal parts, forming half a door above and half below. From the kitchen a
one-winged wooden door led into the room and this was opposite one just like it
in the chamber. The kitchen was provided with an open chimney which rested
on an enormous vault which took up the rear half of the kitchen (plafonds?).
Through this chimney one has an open view of the sky. Under the chimney -
in the middle - there is an open stove and under this is the baking oven.
The cover, called the (Plafon?), is made of clay-covered boards in the whole
house and rests on 4 inch strong diagonal beams which lay 2½ feet from one
another on enormous crossbeams. These crossbeams were 6-7 inches thick and
stretched the length of the whole building. Between the crossbeams and the
(Plafon) a large recess was formed since the diagonal beams were thick.
This niche served as a storage space for some books and papers. In the
room behind the door there is a little tile oven which rested between the walls
and on 2 footboards and was heated from the kitchen.
The roof was covered with thatch which were
layered on top of each other but not stacked. The gable was also made of
thatch which was then smeared with clay on the outside. The (roof chair?)
together with the beams were all made from wood which was split with the ax,
which gave no promises at the time. The colonist was a farmer so the
buildings included a 13 × 14 foot large stable and a 14 × 6 large open barn.
In the barn one found the floor stairs (Bodensteige?). The stable had a
door just like the kitchen. The walls were 7 feet high and essentially
wider below than above so one could see with their eyes open that the walls were
not perpendicular. At the demolition of such homes in Feketitsch huge
(Kotsteinen?) mudstones? were found inside the walls which are called "Emperor
Josef Kotsteinen" by us today. According to tradition these fell into a
wheelbarrow, so they are also called "wheelbarrow Kotsteinen." On the
outside a 50-60 cm higher earth wall was put on the whole building. The
terrain of the street and the yard were about a half foot higher than the
trampled floors of the rooms. Inside everything was whitewashed, but
outside frequently there was only a hand width white strip painted around the
windows and doors. There was no corridor, only a two foot wide canopy.
The extent of the yards was different in each community, so that in Sekitsch it
was 600 square fathoms, in Torscha 750 square fathoms, but in Feketitsch it was
only 300 square fathoms. The yards were soon surrounded by thatched fences
but the street front was cordoned off with boards (palisades).
Settlement House No. 128
The doors
were held together with wooden bolts.
The genuine
farmhouse of today is the longhouse just described with a corridor on which a
square row of columns rest. In some cases the courtroom was not followed
by the "Kammerche" (small room), but by another separate kitchen and room;
wherever possible a cellar is put underneath the house so that the cellar neck
came to stand at the Kammerche.
Old German farmhouse of the 1870's.
House No. 310.
Owner: Jakob Weißmann Sr.
(Judge 1903 to 1911 and 1927 to 1933) and wife Theresia nee Bellmann.
The same farmhouse seen from inside.
Before the walkway one finds a one meter
smaller strip with fruit trees,
vines or roses, and flowers.
On the other side of the plastered entrance way
there is a 4 to 6 fathom wide fenced in vegetable garden. Often there was
a summer kitchen here or the outside container of the above mentioned house.
Before the stable is the yard with a (Tschardak? - corn trellis standing
crosswise and with a fence separated into two parts. Diagonal construction
is peculiar to the farmers of Feketitsch and this construction always adjoins a
longhouse in the yard. The diagonal buildings are also different, so for
example Adam Bittlingmayer and Anton Scheer have a dry entrance in the middle,
Adam Ludmann had a dry entrance on the side, and Philipp Weber and Christian
Gerber have no dry entrance.
Cabinetmaker Karl Spangus has compiled a graphic
illustration of the whole community of today's Feketitsch where the differences
in terrain are portrayed with plaster but the homes were depicted with the
appropriate little wooden blocks. One work their master praised.
The house of the small homeowner and the
businessman consisted of a room and a kitchen, for the most part also a yard
room with a corridor. From the corridor there is also often a detached
anteroom, kitchen or dining room. The stable is under a small roof.
A two fathom long Tschardak and a pig stall under it is in almost every yard.
The yard is often only half of a lot of 150 square fathoms, yet whenever
possible there is a detached vegetable garden.
There are no villas in Feketitsch. The
largest private buildings of the Germans are: Jakob Gutwein's two steam mills,
Joseph Schmidt's guesthouse, and Johann Schwebler's lumber trade, as well as the
above mentioned diagonal buildings. The smallest dwelling about the enormous
progress made in science that are still deep dark secrets to us today. It
is the witness of such a world view which we cannot grasp today.
It is still worth mentioning that the Germans did
not prefer the corner homes. So where Germans live far and wide on the
street, of the four corner homes at the street crossing there is not a single
German home. On the main street this is not the case. Although the
streets never had official German names, the following street names were
generally used by the Germans: Hauptgasse (Main Street), Neue (New) or
Jammergasse (Misery Street), Äußerste Reihe (Outermost Row), Kirchengasse
(Church Street), Apothekegasse (Pharmacy Street), Herrengasse (Gentlemen
Street), Postgasse (Post Office Street), Deutschländergasse (German Street), and
Friedhofgasse (Cemetery Street). A genuine German quarter was over in the
Bara situated in the "Banat." Formerly there was also a "rich corner" but
this title is no longer used today because unfortunately they have lost their
right to use it. 12*
From the migration of the Germans we have the
exact results of the first official census - in the year 1857 - which was
punctually tabulated this year per decree.
In
1857 there were 162 German homes with 619 Evangelicals, 377 Reformed = 996
In
1936 there were 419 German homes with 1314 Evangelicals, 549 Reformed
+ 15 Catholics, 8 Baptists, and 8 Nazarenes
= 1894
besides these there are in foreign lands 87 Evangelicals, 32 Reformed
