Kempten - Many people are familiar with the Schusterhäusle in Lenzfried.
But who built it, why is it falling into disrepair and what does Johann Leichtle have to do with it?
If you walk from the Lenzfrieder Church past the Leichtle Castle to the elevated reservoir near Hinterholz on the narrow tarred road, you will see some remains of buildings on a small hill and framed by trees.
If you walk a bit on the footpath that leads directly to the Lenzfrieder mountain ridge and which the golf club had partially expanded, you can take a closer look at this dilapidated structure.
However, since it is on private property and is in danger of collapsing, access is strictly forbidden, because it is foreseeable that the few remaining walls will soon collapse.
From this point you can also enjoy a beautiful view over parts of Kempten Sankt-Mang and the imposing mountains of the Oberallgäu.
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Pathetic remains: the ruins of the shoemaker's house.
© Vachenauer
Many walkers will know that these parts of the wall are the former Lenzfrieder Schusterhäusle. But the story behind it and, above all, where the name Schusterhäusle comes from, is likely to be largely unknown. Associated with this shoemaker's house, which is part of the local history of Lenzfried, is the name Johann Leichtle, owner of the former monastery brewery in Kempten. We also owe Leichtle the planting of the row of trees still visible today on the Lenzfrieder ridge from the Schusterhäusle to the quarry near Hinterholz.
Only a few meters further west of the current ruins of the Schusterhäusles was the Eggen castle, which the Kempten citizen Mathäus Seuter (also Seütten or Seutter) had built as a summer residence in 1574.
Years ago there was a memorial plaque on these remains of stone with a badly legible text, which reminded of this castle and its builder.
Today there is no more to be seen of it.
The history of the Schloss Eggen will be dealt with in one of the next issues.
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The Eggen castle on a map by an unknown master from 1559. The Kempten citizen Mathäus Seuter (also Seütten or Seutter) had it built as a summer residence in 1574.
The shoemaker's house stood a few meters away.
© Archive Singer
When the castle was built, Seuter also had the two estates with ancillary buildings erected there.
The predecessor of the so-called shoemaker's house may also have been built.
In 1601, the hospital in the Free Imperial City of Kempten owned an estate here, with the income from this being used to supply the hospital, i.e. a kind of social institution.
In 1621 the sources mentioned a city-kemptic and a monastery-kemptic property with a total of four buildings.
Two of these buildings were linked to a shoemaker's justice.
This shoemaker's privilege was important in the monastery area in those times because one was only allowed to practice a shoemaker's trade with this right.
According to this, the former shoemaker's house as the farm or servants' house of the Schloss Eggen has belonged to the district of Eggen for centuries.
The shoemaker's house
More information about today's Schusterhäusle can be found in the 19th century.
They are written down in a sales document dated September 19, 1811, which is contained in the chronicle of the Lenzfried family estate of the Leichtle family.
From this we learn that the owner of the building in question, which belonged to the former Eggen castle, was the retired royal Bavarian Colonel Ernst August Freiherr von Uechtriz.
The sales deed also states that this Ernst August Freiherr von Uechtriz for himself and his heirs to Joseph Wassermann “Mechler” and his brother Anton Wassermann von Schelldorf, parish St. Mang, a “Hubers” standing by the linden tree near Gute Eggen (= Owner of half a farm) with all rights and the associated land for 150 guilders in cash.
This building had a shoemaker's justice and was at number four at the time.
According to the description, the property had the following special features, all of which are noted in the sales contract.
Its location is described as follows: Towards morning (east) and evening (west) it comes up against the fields belonging to the property of the Eggen estate, around noon (south) against a wall belonging to the master shoemaker Mang Mayer and around midnight (north) he separates communal way.
In the past, people used the position of the sun as a starting point for the designation of the cardinal points.
The east (sunrise) was called “morning”, the west (sunset) “evening”, the south (highest position of the sun) “noon” and the north “midnight”.
The fields to the west of the property, which were located on the front Lenzfrieder Holz (forest), were called "zum Höllenschuster" at that time.
Where does the name "Hell Cobbler" come from?
How this name Höllenschuster came about cannot be inferred from the sales contract. A possible cautious explanation may arise from the area on which this building stood and which is specified in more detail in the sales contract. According to this description, it was a "stone crevice" (stone crevices are small crevices) and rocky soil, which is likely to have been sandstone deposits from the time of the glacier. Remnants of these stone deposits, which served as a quarry from Roman times to the Middle Ages, among other things for the construction of the city wall, can still be seen in the vicinity of today's stone ruins of the shoemaker's house.
Hell bottom was often used to refer to poor soil quality and this could be an indication of the stony soil conditions around the building. Perhaps the existing crevices, of which it was believed that they could reach far into unfathomable depths, have led people to choose the name "Hell". And since cobblers have worked on this property for a long time, this is perhaps how the name infernal cobblers came about.
In the deed of purchase of Baron von Uechtriz from 1811, the buyers, the Wassermann brothers, registered their "sister child (= niece) of Clara Wassermann", wife of the shoemaker Xaver Färber, as future heiress.
However, the following condition was stipulated in the sales contract: "However, the shoemaker (dyer) should never be entitled to dispose of this house (i.e. to freely dispose of it) or to be able to remarry on it."
Another contractual clause regulated water rights.
In it, the seller grants the buyers and their descendants the right to jointly use the well located behind the barn in Eggen, lined with brook cats (natural stones).
Even before the inheritance occurred, the Färber family, who had several children, received this property from Anton Wassermann on August 8, 1817.
The son of Xaver Färber, Joseph Anton Färber, also a shoemaker, bought the jointly inherited Schusterhäusle and “accessories” for 472 guilders from his siblings on October 22nd, 1836.
But just seven years after the purchase, Joseph Anton Färber ran into financial problems.
Help in need
Thereupon Johann Leichtle, owner of the monastery brewery of Kempten, and Xaver Kienle from Mariaberg stood up for Färber as guarantors in a meeting of creditors on October 18, 1843.
When the original shoemaker's house fell victim to the flames on May 2, 1845, Johann Leichtle acquired this fire place including fire insurance for 1,369 gulden from "JA Färber Schuhmacher" for 1,369 guilders, as can be read in the chronicle of the Lenzfried family's estate 700 guilders with all rights and benefits and complaints including the associated forest and shoemaker justice.
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Johann Leichtle bought the Brandstatt.
© Archive Susanne Leichtle
The owner of the monastery brewery Johann Leichtle then had the two-and-a-half-story shoemaker's house built on the site of the burned-down house at the former Eggen castle, with its neo-Gothic stepped gable reminiscent of a medieval castle.
From the vernacular
Leichtle leased this newly built house, which was then numbered 5 1/2, on September 22, 1846, including the surrounding fields, to the previous owner, the shoemaker Joseph Anton Färber, in return for an annual “compensation” of 30 guilders.
In the chronicle of the Lenzfried family estate of the Leichtle family, we also find the explanation why the vernacular calls the newly built house the “Schusterhäusle”. The name was created during this time because the surrounding fields led to the name of the shoemaker and because the shoemaker Anton Josef Färber had lived in the house since September 22, 1846, but also because there was a shoemaker's justice on the house.
In 1854 the property consisted of eight daily work fields, a garden and a small acre.
The shoemaker dyer also got the surrounding fields from Johann Leichtle for lease.
After Färber's death, his widow lived on the lower floor, but she later came to the Lenzfrieder poor house and died there.
In the bottom room, which had its own entrance on the east side, Farber's sister Anna had the so-called right to an angle (the right to an elderly person).
After the Färbers, a certain Klotz from Ursulasried lived in the house with his family.
He had three daughters;
one was a nun, a second later married a Haggenmüller von Felben and the third daughter married a man from Betzigau, who was also called Klotz.
Now the upper floor, consisting of three rooms, has been reserved for the Leichtle family. The painter Mayer lived on the lower floor and, as can be read in the Leichtle family chronicle, according to the old and blind Hansjörg Dietrich, who lived in the neighborhood all his life, he is said to have painted the ceiling paintings in the parish church of Lenzfried. Because in 1884, during a comprehensive renovation of the church, the decoration of the church, which is visible today, was carried out in Italian baroque and with stucco. The aforementioned painter Mayer could also have been involved in this work. It remains uncertain whether this was a descendant of the monastery master builder Hans Mayer, who was involved in the reconstruction of the Lenzfried parish church at the end of the 17th century.
Then a shoemaker named Tänzel moved into the house and a woman Glucker from Ursulasried moved into the lower apartment.
Mrs. Glucker was temporarily employed by Mr. Rädler, the leaseholder of the castle property, as a housekeeper.
Ms. Glucker later moved to Weixler's house at number 5 in Eggen.
Josepha Haggenmüller and her mother, the “foster brother” Theodor Berti, who worked in the blacksmith's gravel pit, moved into the lower apartment, which has now become vacant.
When the mother died, her daughter, who had been working in the factory until then, moved to the economist Zwiesler, who lived in Tiefenbacher Ösch and worked there as a maid and later moved her residence to Seggers.
Then Ludofika Zeller moved into the lower floor of the shoemaker's house.
After the person known as "Ludofik" moved away, Adolf Leichtle had another room set up in the timber extension on the first floor.
In April 1898, Amalie Keck, the wife of the boy’s school teacher Keck, who died in February, moved into the whole house with her sisters Lena and Babette until the beginning of the 20th century.
The later Messmer FH Knoll, painter and photographer in Wiggensbach, also lived with them.
In the period after the First World War, Ms. Leichtle was forced to build a wooden extension in the north of the house and to build another apartment on the first floor, which Miss Auguste Albrecht, a former pastor's cook from Lauben, moved into in 1920.
Again and again shoemakers
After her death on June 28, 1927, the shoemaker Hans Urban moved into this emergency shelter on the first floor of the house on August 1, 1927. When he died of "consumption" in 1937, his widow lived in the apartment for another year. Then in 1938 the shoemaker's house was redesigned. The apartment on the first floor received electric light, its own toilet, a laundry room and new window frames.
On October 1, 1938, Karl Uhl and his wife, who worked as a machine foreman at the Nikolaus company, came to the apartment on the 1st floor.
The various air raids that took place in Munich during the war caused Mrs. Uhl's parents to move to Lenzfried, where they lived together in the Schusterhäusle.
During an inspection in 1942, the chimney sweep responsible complained about the chimneys in the Schusterhäusle because they no longer met the fire protection requirements of the time.
Then a bricklayer was hired and building materials were ordered to remedy the defects.
The bricklayer is not coming, the house is falling into disrepair
However, since the bricklayer died before the order was completed, the necessary repair work did not take place and the building material that had already been delivered was used for other purposes. Because of this, a protracted dispute arose with the responsible authorities, with the result that the chimneys in question were demolished on June 8, 1942.
The three "Keck" sisters lived in the lower rooms.
Amalie Keck, who lived in the Schusterhäusle for 54 years, practiced her profession as a handicraft teacher in Kottern and Leubas and on August 31, 1952 she moved to what was then the Marienanstalt in Rosenau.
In the spring of 1953, rooms in the Schusterhäusle were occupied with refugees.
In addition, in the chronicle of the Lenzfried castle estate of the Leichtle family, one can read: The refugee was supposed to work for the community and had his wife come from the eastern zone.
“She was hardworking, but he wasn't.
Soon the woman returned to the eastern zone. ”On November 1, 1956, new tenants moved into the Schusterhäusle, on June 8, 1957 all chimneys were broken off and on November 1, 1957 the last tenants moved out.
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The shoemaker's house with a wood extension in the north and a temporary fireplace.
© Repro: Vachenauer / Source: Leichtle family
A tree and the city council finish the house
Nevertheless, the Schusterhäusle remained in its former form until 1968.
A single man (name known to the author) lived, or rather lived, in the house until 1968, even though the building no longer had a fireplace.
As you can see in a photo, he installed a makeshift fireplace upstairs to be able to heat the apartment.
But when a falling tree damaged the roof of the shoemaker's house, it visibly fell into disrepair.
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The shoemaker's house after the damage.
© City Archives
All attempts to restore the house failed.
As can be seen from the press at the time, the Kempten city council refused the owner, Susanne Leichtle, the right to build the Schusterhäusle in 1995 and later, although a water connection and, since 1981, a sewer connection had been available.
Today there are only a few remains of the wall of the former shoemaker's house, but they are falling into disrepair.
