ZWICKAU. 
487 
at the back are somewhat smaller. The height from floor to ceiling is in every 
case 9J feet. Thus every tenement is well supplied not only with daylight but 
with all needful facilities for ventilation as well. That the latter are fully appre 
ciated seems doubtful, for here, as in the inner town, the air is oppressive, 
though this may to some extent be due to the absence of flushing tanks in the 
closets, of which there are three (drained into cesspools) on each landing. No 
cellar space is provided, and the tenants have to store their fuel and potatoes in 
sheds situated in the yard at the back of the building, where there is also a 
wash-house for the use of the tenants in common. 
As regards the housing conditions available for the more prosperous of the 
working classes of Zwickau, the Reichenbacherstrasse in the south-east may be 
taken as typical. This road, like the Pöhlauerstrasse, runs through a district in 
which a number of coal mines are being worked, and, at the time of the writer’s 
visit, comprised 138 houses with a total of 2,845 inhabitants, including, besides 
coal-miners, a considerable number of operatives working in a neighbouring- 
earthenware factory. Most of the houses are of recent construction and built in 
blocks of two or three, rising direct from the footway without any intervening 
forecourt, while a considerable space intervenes between block and block. The 
entrance is usually at the back where there are gardens and a view of open country, 
the character of which is in a state of transition from the rural to the suburban. 
Most of the houses are four stories high and contain two families on each floor, 
each having a three-roorned tenement. The fact that each flat has a vestibule 
of its own, shut off from the general landing, is considered a mark of superiority, 
and this arrangement has, amongst others, the practical advantage of prevent 
ing the penetration into the rooms of objectionable effluvia from the landings, 
on each of which are two closets (without flushing tanks). The rooms are 
of fair dimensions and amply provided with windows to admit light and 
air. The water supply is in the kitchen. The garret let with each tenement 
is in these houses too small to be used otherwise than as a lumber room. 
Each tenant of a flat has a locked compartment in the cellar space and is 
entitled to use the loft for drying laundry. The yard at the back of each house 
contains a wash-house for the tenants in common. The three-roomed flats are 
let for 180 marks per annum or, say, 3s. W. per week, which may be taken 
as the rent most frequently paid for what is locally regarded as a superior 
modern three-roomed dwelling suitable for a working-class tenant. Many 
tenants of this class, it will be understood, occupy three-roomed dwellings 
superior to these and pay rents up to 4s. 3d. per week for the accommodation. 
Similarly, at the other end of the scale are many families living in three-roomed 
tenements inferior to those in the Pöhlauerstrasse described above and paying 
rents as low as Is. 2d. per week. Thus, of 974 three-roomed dwellings of 
which the rents were ascertained for purposes of the present inquiry, 194 were 
being let at rents lower than those of the somewhat inferior houses in the 
Pöhlauerstrasse (2s. 4d. per week), while 139 were being let at rents higher 
than those of the somewhat superior houses in the Reichenbacherstrasse (3s. 6d. 
per week). For 641 or 66 per cent., therefore, of all the working-class 
dwellings of three rooms covered by this inquiry the rents ranged from 2s. 4d. 
to 3s. 6d. per week. Within these limits the largest group were let at a rent of 
2s. 11 d. per week, which figure may be taken as fairly representing the rent of 
an average three-roomed tenement in Zwickau. 
Predominant Rents of Working-Class Dwellings. 
Number of Rooms per Tenement. 
Two rooms ... 
Three rooms 
Predominant Weekly Rent. 
2s. to 2s. id. 
2s. id. to 3s. 6(7. 
These rents, it will be seen, are very low ; rents at Berlin being taken as 
equal to 100, those at Zwickau would be represented by the figure 38,