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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308 LEIPZIG. doorway which gives admission to each front house, and is large enough to permit the passage of a fire-engine from the street to the back houses if necessary. Passing from the consideration of the tenement houses to that of the tenements themselves, there is found to be little if any variation of type. In respect to the number of rooms of which their dwellings most frequently consist, the working classes of Leipzig are more favourably situated than those of any of the other large cities included in the present inquiry, except Bremen, which occupies among German towns the unique position of having the one- family house as distinguished from the tenement system of housing. Among all the towns visited, in which the tenement system of housing prevails, Leipzig is the only one in which working-class families were found to be most frequently occupying so many as four rooms. The evidence in support of this figure is partly statistical and partly based on local expert opinion. It may be well to note here that the official housing statistics hitherto published by the Municipal Statistical Office afford no safe basis for conclusions as to the number of rooms which usually constitute a dwelling, for in these, as in the corresponding statistics of most other German municipalities, the heatable room only has been treated as the unit of housing accommodation, and other habitable rooms have been neglected. In the housing census undertaken in Leipzig in December, 1905, however, all habitable rooms have been counted, and the examination of the whole of the schedules for two typical working-class districts, kindly undertaken for the purposes of this report by Professor Dr. Hasse, the director of the Statistical Office showed the following results :— Number of Rooms in Dwelling. District Schleussig (Western Suburb). Number of Working- class Dwellings. District Neuschönefeld (Eastern Suburb). Number of Working- class Dwellings. Both Districts together. Number of Working- class Dwellings. One room Two rooms Three rooms Four rooms Five rooms Six rooms Total 8 30 159 333 84 11 625 20 20 272 341 47 4 28 50 531 674 131 15 704 1,429 It is seen from the above that of the 1,429 typical working-class dwellings dealt with, 074 (the largest group) consisted of four rooms. It is important to add that in all the tenements to which this Table relates the whole of the rooms were occupied exclusively by the family, none being let to lodgers. The preponderance of the four-roomed tenement as a working-class dwelling is also shown by returns furnished for purposes of the present inquiry by 195 workmen’s families, stating, inter alia, the number of rooms occupied. Of these 195 families 120 were renting four-roomed and only 58 three-roomed tenements. Though limited in scope the data obtained through these two independent channels afford adequate confirmation of the opinions previously expressed by representative workpeople, and by an official of over 30 years’ experience of housing conditions in Leipzig, as to the predominance of the four-roomed tenement. Each of the four or five storeys of any working-class tenement house contains, as a rule, either (a) three tenements of 4 rooms each ; (6) two tenements of 4 rooms and one of 3 rooms, or (c) two tenements of 4 rooms. A feature common to all modern houses, working-class or other, is the provision of a separate vestibule or corridor for each tenement—a convenience to which great importance is attached. It would seem, however, as if, in a three- or four-roomed dwelling, an unduly large proportion of the total available space is sacrificed for the sake of this outward sign of " gentility,” with the result that the kitchen and one of the bedrooms are invariably very small. The height of the rooms is usually three metres, or about 10 feet.

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