294
KÖNIGSHÜTTE.
occupation by the miner’s family alone. In the course of time, however, they
have passed into other hands and been converted into double tenement houses.
As a type this class of tenement is rapidly disappearing, and the great majority
oí the working-classes now live in three or four-storied tenement houses built
to accommodate three or four families on each floor. Such houses are entered
direct from the footway without any intervening fore-court, and a part of the
yard-space at the back is, as a rule, occupied by a side wing of the main
building, so that this space is directly overlooked by windows from two sides
of the house.
No official inquiry as to house rents such as was undertaken in all the
greater cities of Germany in December, 1905, took place in Königshütte.
Nevertheless, owing to the courtesy of Dr. Stolle, the Chief Burgomaster, it
has been possible, with the co-operation of the local police, to ascertain the
rents of 1,091 working-class tenements situated in different parts of the town.
Of these tenements 159 consisted of a single room, 682 of two rooms, and 250
of three rooms. The predominant rents paid for the tenements of each kind
in August, 1906, were found to be as follows :—
Predominant Rents of Working-class Dwellings.
Number of Rooms per Tenement.
Predominant Weekly Rent.
One room
Two rooms
Three rooms
l.s. 2d. to Is. 5d.
2s. 2d. „ 2s. 9d.
3s, 3d. „ 4s. Id.
From this it will be seen that rent in Königshütte is low. Taking rents in
Berlin as 100, the corresponding index number for Königshütte is 47.
Some idea of the nature of the accommodation afforded by typical tworoomed
and three-roonied working-class tenements, i.e. by tenements let at rents
falling within the limits of 2s. 4d. to 2s. 9d. per week for the former and os. 6d.
to 4s. Id. per week for the latter, may be obtained from the following examples
of tenements visited for the purpose of this report.
Example 1.—Two-roomed tenements in the Schützenstrasse. These are
contained in blocks of three storied houses, each house with a frontage of
63 feet and a depth of 37 feet, and having three windows on either side of the
main entrance both at the front and the back. Two of the three windows
belong in each case to the living room (which is also the bedroom) and one to
the kitchen of one of the tenements, of which there are four on each floor, two
in front and two at the back of the house.
The larger room in each of these tenements measures 18^ by 15 feet, and
the smaller room (the kitchen) 18.¿ by 9 feet. The height from floor to ceiling
is in each case 9J- feet. The water supply is on the landing and the closets
(without flushing tank) in the yard at the back of the house, in the proportion
of one to every four families. To each tenement belongs a lumber room (too
small to be used as a bedroom) on the top floor, where part of the space is also
available for drying laundry. Apart from the defective closet accommodation
and the absence of a vestibule these tenements are lacking in facilities for proper
ventilation, being subject in this respect to the same disadvantages as back-to-back
houses for, as both of the rooms of each tenement are either in the front or at
the back of .the house no through ventilation is possible. The rent is 10 marks
per month, or 2s. 4d. per week.
Example 2.—A better type of two-roomed tenement is now being supplied
in increasing numbers, especially in the northern extension of the town, (e.g., in
the Kreutzstrasse) at rents of 12 to 14 marks per month, or 2s. 9d. to 3s. 3d.
per week, the lower rent being charged on the third and the higher rent
on the first floor. The houses containing these tenements are four-storied
with a frontage of 70 feet, a depth of 40 feet, and the usual central main
entrance communicating between the street and the yard at the back. On each
floor are 10 rooms occupied by four families, of whom two have two rooms each
