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Kramer widow`s accomodation
Historically furnished widow‘s accomodation of the Kramer administration.
Kreyenkamp 10, 20459 Hamburg
phone ++49·(0)40·3750 1988
Underground station Rödingsmarkt or Stadthausbrücke
tue – sun 10 am - 5 pm
In winter (up to March, 29) only open on sat and sun
The Kramer office apartments located in immediate proximity to the
great Michaelis church, Krayenkamp 10/11, are the last well preserved
examples of a former typical residential area of Hamburg from the 17th
century. Both rows of houses divided by a narrow passage served as apartments
for old people until 1968.
A far-reaching restoration was necessary due to static shifting of the
buildings which were caused by structural changes in the surrounding
area. In June 1974 the constructions were completed under decisive participation
of the Institution for Protection of Historical Monuments. Since then,
Walter Mensch, the owner of a gallery and the main tenant has given
the courtyard a new use with further shops and a coffee bar. One of
the old widow‘s apartments is preserved in its original state
and provided with complete furnishing from the period around 1850/60
by the Museum of Hamburg History. On the one hand, in this way, big-city,
middle-class life of the past (of which there are few examples in museums)
is documented, but on the other, the museum has to explain the history
of the Kramer apartment administration.
In the year 1375 smaller retailers who owned a stand or a shop in the
city and traded principally with spices, silk fabrics and ironware,
joined forces in the Kramer institute and gave this guild-like organization
statute.
The guild sign of the small shopkeeper (Kramer, later Krämer),
called grocers, shows both of their most important measuring instruments:
the small scales and the yardstick. This sign can be found on a panel
in the courtyard, and in the reception room of the apartments both of
the instruments can be seen as originals from around 1800.
In 1676 the prosperous trade association had erected free apartments
for each of the 20 widows of their late fellow clergymen on ground aquired
by them which had previously been an ornamental pleasure garden close
to the Michaelis church. To admit a new grocer, it was in the interest
of the guild to accomodate the widows from the shops in apartments for
old people. A panel in the 1676 building also shows an inscription of
the foundation on a wall of the house in the yard.
During the building of the courtyard, both houses which were already
situated on the garden property were left. These are the houses A as
well as M and N. Due to the type of half-timbering with the strong protrusions
(protruding from the upper floor above each of the lower floors) and
the ornamentally engraved Knaggen (Consoles, which arrange the protrusions
between the stands) one can see that these are older buildings. With
the dendrochronology (determination of time through the rings in the
wood) the age of a building was determined around 1620. At this time
the Neustadt had just been included into the ring of fortification of
the city.
In both of the older houses in the courtyard the exposed ceiling paintings
from the 17th century point to the original elegant, upper class property.
The house on the street through which the gateway leads to the courtyard,
was only erected around 1700 when the Krayenkamp received an early road.
It did not really belong to the Kramer widow apartments, but was also
rented for living purposes. The town houses in the courtyard built in
1676 were all of the same style: Two apartments stood symmetrically
next to each other. As the apartments in the museum still indicate today,
they existed of an entrance hall in the basement, from where a narrow
staircase leads upstairs to a small room with a window towards the courtyard
and a small kitchen to the rear with an original open stove under a
chimney hood. The kitchen only received daylight through the inner window
leading to the room. Running water was only connected to the apartments
shortly before 1900, before that, there were wells in the courtyard.
The upper floor is taken up entirely by a living-room. Next to the chimney
with a connected cast-iron oven is a bedstead, which is in a woodensurround,
an alcove. Another staircase leads to the attic, which has a hatch with
a window facing the yard, through which, in the past, the fuel, wood
and peat could be taken in. Oven, window, alcove and stair posts are
reused from the old material which was found. The rest of the furniture
and the utensils from today´s apartments are from old grocer households
or rather, chosen accordingly from items of the museums. The completed
furnishing gives an accurate impression from both the spatial and technical
limitations of living more than a hundred years ago as well as of a
cosiness, peace and of a secure, mature existence. Although not only
poor people lived here, members of a middle class who formed a large
part of the rural population at the time also did.
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