Cost of living in German towns

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 866449027

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-93831

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Cost of living in German towns

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stat. Off.

Year of publication:: 1908

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (LXI, 548 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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60 ASCHAFFENBURG. of interest. Several firms conduct pension funds independently of the insurance law for the benefit of old workpeople. After 25 years of service employees become entitled to pensions of 25s. a month, and after 30 years of service to 30s., while widows also receive grants, and allowances are made to orphans under certain conditions. The workpeople pay contributions from an early age, and the employers add a third or a half on their own account. One firm has a savings and loan bank which all workpeople are required to join. The weekly deposit is 30 pfennige (3¿c?.), which is deducted from the wages, and the firm adds two-thirds of this amount in every case. Loans may be con tracted to the extent of the deposit, to a maximum of £5, and they are repay able at from Is. to 4s. per week, interest of 3 per cent, being charged. At some factories, canteens are kept, at which wholesome food may be bought at cost price, or where food brought from home may be warmed for dinner. Housing and Rents. In Aschaffenburg proper, disregarding the suburb of Damm, there is no distinctively industrial quarter. There are districts in which professional and commercial families specially live, but the working classes are found wherever rents are within their means, and not in any one quarter. Only the district known as Damm, which is now incorporated in the municipality of Aschaffenburg, is exclusively industrial in character. The great majority of working-class households live in tenements or one- family houses of three rooms and a kitchen. The Aschaffenburg kitchen is almost invariably very small and incapable of use either as a living or a bed room. One-room tenements are so rare as to be of no account, while tenements of four rooms are entirely beyond the means of most working people. Ho classification of the dwellings of the tow» exists, but of the 1,002 tenements contained in the 257 houses built during the years 1901 to 1905, 13'6 per cent, were of two rooms and kitchen, and 59'0 per cent, were of three rooms and kitchen. The division was as follows :— Year. No of houses built. No. of Tenements. Two rooms and kitchen. 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 24 39 65 44 85 Total 1901-5 257 14 17 31 19 56 Three rooms and kitchen. 54 83 135 117 202 137 591 728 =.72*7 per cent. Four rooms and kitchen. Five to seven rooms and kitchen. 12 20 54 30 60 176 6 15 34 19 24 98 274=27*3 per cent. Total. 86 135 254 185 342 1,002 These figures, of course, cover dwellings of every class. More definite testimony is borne to the predominant size of working-class dwellings by the enumeration of the rents of 340 separate tenements made for the purpose of this report and determined chiefly by visitation. Only one of these tenements* con sisted of a single room ; 44, or 12 9 per cent., consisted of two rooms with kitchen ; 275, or 80‘9 per cent., of three rooms with kitchen, and 20, or 6"0 per cent., of four rooms with kitchen. There are no basement dwellings, but attic dwellings are very common. An ancient town, Aschaffenburg has its full portion of neglected, dilapi dated and otherwise out-of-date property. There are narrow Gassen or alleys m which the sun is rarely seen, and the houses are rickety without and decayed within ; below, two contiguous blocks may be two feet apart, and above, at the eaves, they may touch, apparently depending upon each other for support. In such old streets the houses are often built round small courtyards not more than 12 feet square. They make picturesque

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