by Kurt Asche

The late medieval Frisian stone house, a fortified dwelling built of bricks, is a speciality of the Weser-Ems coastal region. It was built around the middle of the 14th century in the territories of the Frisian "chieftains" between the Ijsselmeer and the Lower Weser. It can be characterised as a mostly single-storey brick building on a rectangular ground plan with a pitched roof, in individual cases it also appears as a tower house. As an upscale form of housing and as a building type, it was initially the prerogative of the lower nobility, but from the 15th century it was also adapted by representatives of the territorial lords, the towns and the church. Politically and socially, it was a symbol of power and an instrument of rule - an aura that it did not lose even after its change of function in later centuries.

The late medieval stone house on the North Sea coast is generally understood to be a massive brick building that combined military protection and prestigious living. It can be assumed that the area of distribution of this type of house is roughly identical with the dominions of the Frisian "chieftains" between the Ijsselmeer and the Lower Weser. As the residence of the "Hovetlinge" or "Capitales" of the 14th and 15th centuries, the stone house essentially had the characteristics of a castle; it had a rampart and moat, so it was both a "fortress" and the residence of a small potentate, usually with a limited sphere of influence.

Genetically related to the Frisian stone house is the "stonework" of the towns of the hinterland, which usually appears as a massive two-storey house built of natural stone or brick and has a vaulted cellar and heated rooms with a fireplace on the ground and upper floors. Its predecessor was the Mediterranean tower house, which is particularly well known in Tuscany and in Anagni near Rome. In contrast, the stone house of the North Sea coast can be defined as a mostly single-storey, brick-built residential building with a gabled roof on a rectangular floor plan. The term "longhouse" has become established for this. In some cases, it could be up to three storeys high above a squat rectangle, giving it the character of a tower house. Only a few of these tower houses have survived, and there are no surviving examples of such houses in the area between the Jade and Weser rivers. The single-storey stone house was often combined with a later addition, the so-called Gulf Barn, under one roof or integrated into a larger farmstead. However, the outward appearance was that of a farmhouse, not a castle. This was impressively illustrated by the stone house at Sanderbusch Manor with its Renaissance gable and crenellated staggered roof. It was owned by Karl Jaspers' grandfather around 1850 and was only demolished in 1972. Today, only the old trees in the park of the Sanderbusch State Hospital are a reminder of the once extensive grounds, complete with rampart and moat, which Lübbe Eiben, the nephew of the Jever chancellor Remmer von Seediek, had built in 1551.

The connection between many stone houses and the large farms of the marshes seems to provide an indication of the origin of the inhabitants: in fact, the stone house was initially a residence for powerful and wealthy landlords who had emerged from the upper class of the medieval, republican "terrae", the rural communities. Elected in the 13th century as consules, as "Redjeven" or judges, they emancipated themselves around the middle of the 14th century to become chieftains, i.e. dynasts with hereditary rights. Their families were originally free peasants and not nobles. They usually attained the status of "chieftains" and "lords" through military conflicts, but also through the general consensus of their followers.

The farming origins of the first chieftain families can still be seen today in a number of large "square buildings" in the East Frisian Rheiderland, which are also known as farm castles. These farmer's castles consist of a clearly recognisable residential building with a gable and gabled roof, the actual stone house, a short intermediate building with a cross corridor and a large, subsequently added gulley barn with a side entrance. The "Upkamer", the slightly elevated living room with the fireplace, which is also known as the hall, is the most important structural feature. Our cross-section of the stone house at Sander-Seedeich near Wilhelmshaven illustrates this vividly; it also shows the vaulted semi-basement under the upkamer. The floor plan shows a chimney that once served the upkamer, kitchen and smokehouse. The original chimney from 1550 has been preserved in this stone house to this day.

Upkamer with chimney and semi-basement are not only a feature of the Frisian stone house, they were also found in urban dwellings on the North Sea coast, for example in Emden, Groningen or in harbours and market towns between the Ems and Weser rivers. The kitchen, known in Low German as a "Kellerköke", was usually located in the cellar of the town house. In this way, two or three fireplaces could be connected to a common chimney. Such a vertical connection of several heatable rooms through a common flue is advantageous in terms of both thermal engineering and construction. For centuries, it was limited to aristocratic residences and urban buildings with massive chimneys, and it is the antithesis of the ground-level, open hearth of the so-called Low German hall house, which was widespread in the Lower Saxon hinterland. In contrast, the coastal stone house in combination with the Gulf barn was the cause of the special development of the Frisian farmhouse with its clear separation of living and working areas.

This raises the question of the origin and priority of this "invention". It has not yet been clarified whether the stone house of the coastal marshes described here was inspired by the progressive, urban house of Frisian merchants and long-distance traders, or whether the innovations mentioned were introduced by the chieftains as the inhabitants of the tower and stone houses. It seems that the heated hall as a higher form of living is more likely to be derived from medieval castle construction - just as the residential tower has a predecessor in the "donjon" of the early castle - while the vertical arrangement of kitchen and upkamer may have been developed as a bourgeois innovation in the coastal towns, not least as a result of the high groundwater level and the tight building on the narrow plots. Without being able to determine the innovative contribution of the nobility or bourgeoisie to this process, it must be recognised that the stone house and the urban town house have integrated important structural principles and constructive innovations since the middle of the 16th century at the latest. In this form they form a speciality within the architecture of the North Sea coastal marshes.

The term "stone house" was expanded in the 16th century to include not only the house types described above, but increasingly also buildings with a civic function. These are the detached residences and administrative residences of manorial and count's officials, rentmasters, chancellors and judges, as well as the two-storey parsonages mostly found in market towns and parish villages. These relatively small buildings, which often resemble the aforementioned longhouses in terms of shape and volume, bear no resemblance to the defensive purpose of their medieval predecessors, and most of the surviving buildings only date from the 16th and 17th centuries. Examples include the parsonages in Sande, Schortens and Langwarden, the "Rechthuis" in Bellingwolde in the Netherlands and the "Rentei" of Chancellor Remmer von Seediek in Jever, which is only documented in a drawing. The stone house of the former Count of Oldenburg's Maihausen estate near Hooksiel, which was built around 1600 and restored to its former glory five years ago, also belongs in this context. In the vicarage at Langwarden, which was given its upper storey in the 16th century and which C. Woebcken erroneously interpreted as a chapel, several Gothic window blinds have been preserved on both sides of the chimney.

This probably oldest residential building between the Weser and Ems rivers, whose building materials of tuff and sandstone date back to the 13th century, is more likely to have served as the home of a cleric than as a chapel. Inside, the medieval and early modern masonry is covered by a thick layer of plaster, and it will only be possible to reliably date this building, which is important for the history of regional architecture, once it has been uncovered. The drawing of the east gable of Langwarden represents a reconstruction analogous to the gable and window shapes of late Gothic houses in Deventer, Emden and Stapelmoor.

The list makes it clear that the construction of an unfortified stone house with a residential or administrative function, as it has been handed down from the middle of the 15th to the 17th century, also presupposed corresponding secular or ecclesiastical clients or an exposed, official position. It is therefore not surprising that the special quality and aura of power and dominion that characterised the early castles and chieftain's residences was transferred to the later official and clerical stone houses. Even in the 16th and 17th centuries, these still remained the architectural symbol of a social upper class or an expression of an official, sovereign function.

The author
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Kurt Asche, private lecturer in architectural history and monument conservation at Faculty 2, studied art history, archaeology, architecture and urban and regional planning in Bonn, Braunschweig, Karlsruhe and Toronto. He worked as an architect in Canada (1958 - 1962) and elsewhere. In 1964, he became a lecturer in architectural history at the Oldenburg University of Applied Sciences. His doctorate at the Technical University of Karlsruhe in 1977 was followed by his habilitation at the University of Oldenburg in 1984. Asche was an academy scholarship holder of the Volkswagenwerk Foundation and a visiting scholar of the Canadian government at the University of Toronto in 1989.