Dießen's "Schmuckkasterl" is House of the Year

Created: 05/11/2022, 08:49

By: Dieter Roettig

There was great joy when Matthis Rodach (left) and Nue Ammann (right) from the Dießen home club congratulated Birgit Meyer and Roland Seidl on the "House of the Year".

The jewel box with the red window shutters is "Am Kirchsteig 28".

© Roettig

Dießen – Since 1983, the Dießen local history association has been awarding the “House of the Year” award, together with an attractive bronze plaque.

It goes to the owners of older buildings that characterize the townscape, which they have refurbished and renovated in the spirit of monument preservation.

Particular attention is paid to the preservation of traditional elements such as windows, doors, roofing or plaster structures.

This year, Birgit Meyer and Roland Seidl can look forward to the appreciation of their many years of work for the house "Am Kirchsteig 28".

The goldsmith and the stand builder have owned the property in Dießen-St.

Georgen, the origin of which goes back to 1662 as "House No. 13".

"Taking over a house with several hundred years of history is really not an all-round carefree package," Roland Seidl recalled when receiving the award at the general meeting of the local history association in the neighboring "Wirtshaus am Kirchsteig".

Since moving in on October 1, 2005, the couple has done almost all of the renovation work themselves.

Wherever possible, the old has been preserved.

The floorboards on the upper floor were carefully removed and sanded down.

After the flocculation of the intermediate floor, they were laid again.

Roland Seidl researched historical handles for the new wooden windows and found what he was looking for in a demolished house in Dresden.

Since no wall in such an old house is exact and straight, Birgit and Roland smoothed out all corners and edges with one hand.

Under several layers of wall paint, they discovered the cylinder pattern of the ceiling that was common in the century before last, which they had painted in colors true to the original.

A new heating system and bathrooms completed the renovation work.

In the former grocery store on the ground floor there is now a holiday apartment, the bedroom of which is opposite in the old dentist's practice.

Changeable history

The tailor Christoph Aicher lived and worked for around twenty years in the house built around 1662 with the name "Großschneider", which as the so-called "Sölde" belonged to Dießen Koster.

From 1700 the tenants of the farm changed until 1769 when Anton Scheuerl, a professional hunter who worked for the monastery, moved in.

And so the second house name "Oberjäger" became common.

With the secularization in 1802, the manorial monastery property fell to the Bavarian state.

The tenants of the Sölde could now acquire them for a fee.

Today it is no longer possible to determine who the first owners were.

However, it is documented that around 1900 the merchant couple Johann and Maria Lampl opened a shop on the right-hand side of the ground floor.

For 60 years, the grocery store, which was later run by Lampl's daughters Maria and Amelie, served the residents of St. Georgen with groceries and drugstore goods.

A dentist practiced in the left part of the ground floor until the 1960s.

In 2005, the trade fair builder Roland Seidl, who lives in Dießen, discovered the house on a walk when Maria Lampl's heirs were loudly clearing it out.

We got talking, became friends and finally the heirs sold the dilapidated jewel to son and father Seidl.

Goldsmith Birgit Meyer rightly dubbed the pretty house the way it looks today: "Schmuckkasterl".