House from Holzhausen

Built: 1727
Dismantled: 1979
Reassembled: 1997-1998

This simple two-storey box frame construction was probably built in 1727, as the inscription attests. The fact that a widow commissioned the building deserves special attention:

ANNA ELISABETH HARTMENNIN / WIDOW HATH BUILT THIS HOUSE/ TRUST IN GOD ALONE FOR / PEOPLE CAN HELP YOU NONE ANO 1727 / DEN IIJVI

The couple planned the building when they were still both alive. Whether Hartmann Rühl saw the beginning of the building work is unclear. The inscription gives the year 1727, and the dendrochronological examination has determined 1725 to have been the years when the timber was cut. Originally, the couple were no paupers. Anna Elisabeth Rühl, née Brettgauer, was the daughter of a reeve, a leader of the village. She married Hartmann Rühl in 1711. His profession when he died was given as soldier (grenadier in the service of the King of Prussia). However, after his death there was no longer a source of income, so that the widow had to take on several mortgages to complete the project. Impoverishment followed rapidly. In 1737, the widow still owned three ackers (about 75 hectares) of land to sustain herself. On her death, the only property she left her daughter Anna Margaretha were the house and its plot, but no land for farming. The house continued to be passed on down the generations in the family until 1892. But none of its owners, small craftsmen and farm labourers, ever managed to pay off the debt.