Probleme der Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Cost of living in German towns

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1689561912

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-101785

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Below, Georg von http://d-nb.info/gnd/118658085

Title:: Probleme der Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Edition:: 2., photomechanisch gedr. und durch ein ausführliches Vorw. erg. Aufl

Place of publication:: Tübingen

Publisher:: Mohr

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: XXIV, 710 S

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: VII. Die Entstehung des modernen Kapitalismus

Collection:: Economics Books

MÜLHAUSEN. 357 Excepting the industrial quarter known in French phrase as the “Old ‘ Cite,’ ” which will be more particularly described later, the streets run irregularly, and the houses of which they consist are irregularly built, buildings of various styles, sizes, and heights alternating with picturesque inconsequence. The usual material is brick faced with plaster, painted in different colours— slate, yellow, brown—though many of the old houses are of brick below with a hieing of slates above. The fronts are, as a rule, free from plastic ornament of any kind, and if the flat surface has originally been relieved with rough stencil work the colours soon wash and wear off, giving the appearance of shabbiness and neglect. The roofs of the houses, and often of small factories, are of red tiles. Wooden shutters for the windows are common, and the intense heat of summer explains at once their use and necessity, though few sights can be more inhospitable and desolate than a second-rate Mülhausen street in August at mid-day, when every window is screened behind heavy, impenetrable boards. High houses are the exception, and denote the enterprise of the modern builder ; houses of two or three stories or two stories and an attic are the rule. Hence it is that in dwellings of the better grades the working classes will seldom be found. In industrial towns, more distinctively German in character, a certain stratification of different classes of society is facilitated by the “ flat ” system ; middle-class families occupying the lower stories, and working-class families the cheaper tenements above. The small house system of Mülhausen does not fit in with this distribution of society, and the working population congregates together. Nevertheless, excepting still the Cité, it is impossible to speak of typical working-class houses in a town where almost every house is a type for itself. In one part of the town are found rows of dwellings a single story high ; in another houses of one, two and three stories are huddled together without plan or method ; while leaving a main street for a moment one may suddenly come across a quaint old building with wooden balcony running along several sides, and upper rooms approached by steps from the outside. The least salubrious parts of the town lie in the Nordfeld district. Here, together with much good property, the most pronounced, of the slums are found. The dilapidated appearance of much of the poorer property of the town is largely due to its cheap construction ; it is very unsubstantially built, and soon falls into decay. The old houses disappear but slowly, however, for they return a high interest in proportion to their cost, and, as is so often the case in large industrial towns, prove an attractive investment. The cost of building land in Mülhausen varies from 12 to 30 marks per square metre (equal to 10s. and 26s. per square yard), according to position, but in districts suitable for working-class dwellings land can as a rule be obtained for the lower figure ; sites in the immediate vicinity of business streets cost the higher price. It is a good feature of the housing arrangements of this town that “ back houses ” and “ side houses ” are comparatively rare ; hence there are few circumscribed courtyards, and no “ light shafts ” of the kind habitual in towns of larger population and higher land values. As yet space has not been too frugally husbanded, and seriously overcrowded areas do not exist. Amongst the most spacious of the tenements are those found in buildings which were originally small bleaching factories, in the days when the textures to be bleached were still hung from the windows and so exposed to the sun. More than one such disused workshop has been elevated to the dignity of a school. The following figures indicate the division of the population according to inhabited buildings and households, as shown by the censuses of 1900 and 1905 : — Total population ... No. of households... No. of inhabited buildings No. of households (i.e., tenements) per building No. of persons per household ... No. of persons per building 1900. 89,119 20,880 6,467 322 4-27 138 1905. 94,514 22,358 7,091 3-15 423 133

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