Settlement Plans

by Hans Kopp
 

The planners of the German settlements had very specific objectives in mind. They designed most of the towns in a north-east/south-west grid with its streets running mostly straight from one end of the town to the other end and in many cases had the appearance of a chessboard. The layouts of the towns resembled in many ways towns in “The Palatinate” (Rheinpfalz) and Alsace.      In the beginning there were basically two types of homes, the standard smaller home and the larger farmhouse called “Langenhaus” (laid out in an “I” shape) and the “Winkelhaus” (laid out in a “L” shape). They were built side-by-side with the doors and windows facing on the inside facing south. The farmhouses, the type of home we owned, had the appearance of two capital “L’s” standing above each other, as most of the farm houses of my home town were constructed. The vertical leg of the upper “L” accommodated the living quarters, starting with the master bedroom facing the street, used often as the guest room (Paradi Zimmer), followed by a smaller bedroom adjacent for the children, a living room, a kitchen/dining room combination, and a storage room. Below these rooms you could find the cellar. The base of the upper “L” starting from the left, accommodated a hay barn, followed by a large wagon port and two rooms used as either a second residence or as workrooms. In the loft above these facilities was the storage for the grains, such as wheat, oats and corn. The neighboring houses were connected with a seven to eight foot high wall, provided with a door and a gate for the wagons to enter and exit. This gave the houses viewed from the street a closed appearance and the necessary privacy inside. The rectangular frontcourt formed by this enclosure accommodated the vegetable and flower gardens. It also had several fruit trees and a drinking water well (Brunnen) which was provided with a counterweighted crossbeam (Schwenkel), and therefore was called “Schwelkelbrunnen.” It also included a rainwater-collecting pit to collect and store rainwater used for washing clothes. The lower “L” housed the stables for the horses, cattle, sheep and pigs. The backcourt created by the lower “L” provided running room for the poultry and animals as well as the outhouse. It also contained a manure pile that was used as fertilizer for the fields instituted in these regions first by the Danube Swabians.
The walls of the houses were built with the only material available to the pioneers at that time, soil that was bound with straw and rammed. The walls were plastered with stucco and painted white with a chalk based paint. Roofs were made of lumber and covered with reed, which was replaced in later years with firebrick shingles. The soil was taken from the center of the courts of the houses and later refilled with soil from the “Grundloch”, a pond created at the end of the street for that purpose. All the farmland pastures, vineyards, and forests planted by the pioneers were situated around the town. In the later years, many of these homes were redesigned and rebuilt to keep pace with the times. Larger farms called “Salasch”, spread over larger acreage and had the farmhouses on those spreads. We can compare the “Salasch” with the farms in the United States.		See: Building & Maintenance Images
An original settlement house in the Sathmar region build about 1720-1730 and was still occupied in 1944.
A house with a pointed gable in the Banat area with open front gate giving us a typical look at the front court. Unusual is the location of the Hambar at the front, the typical storage barn for the feed corn on the cob.
A street in Engelsbrunn, Banat with the typical pointed gable houses.
A street in Petri, Sathmar with the typical pointed gable houses.
A house in Hajosch, Banat with the typical rounded gable. Unusual are the small buildings the front. Important in this picture is the stork nest on the chimney a very common site in the region which was a natural habitat for the stork. The reasons for the stork to build their nest on the chimneys; easy take off, safety from predators and perhaps the wormed of  the smoke rising from the chimney.
A typical house with a round gable in Billed, Banat.  Notice the raised portal leading to the typical “Gang” an outer hallway and a series of columns leading to the rooms. Rooms usually were accessible from the inside by a door as well, but room also could be separated since most of the time three generation did live in a house, the grandparent, parents and children and at times the great grand parents.
A street in Batsch-Sentiwan, Batschka with typical rounded gables with U-shaped houses mixed in. Also notice the electric poles. Electricity was installed during the 20’s and 30’s of the 20th century.
Guttenbrunn, Banat a typical view of the U-shaped homes.
An aerial view of Kernei, Batschka giving us a perspective of close settlements during that time when the towns were build in 1760-1780.
The Kreuzgasse (Cross Street) in Batschsentiwan, Batschka taken from the church steeple. This view gives us the typical maze of U-shaped houses built during the 19th century. Notice the Schwenkelbrunnen the typical water well providing the water for the people and animals living in the house. Also of interest is this street historically. On March 15 1945 the last of the citizens about 35000 mostly children to age 14, pregnant women, grandmothers and the old left of a population of 6,300 where marched out of the town at gunpoint after being expelled from their homes. One of the children was the nine year old Hans Kopp with his grandmother while both his parents were deported to Russia on Christmas 1944.

Excerpts from the book “The Last Generation Forgotten and Left to Die” by Hans Kopp,
with additions for the study of the history of the Donauschwaben, their heritage, customs and social mores.
All Rights reserved. ISBN No. 0-9701109-0-1. Copyright 1999 and 2006
Reproduction of this material for resale is prohibited by law.
Special permission is granted to the “Donauschwaben Village Helping Hands Project"
to published on their webpage as “An Illustrated History of the Donauschwaben”

[Published at www.dvhh.org, 15 Nov 2006]