The German Heating Oven and the
Smoke-Free Parlor
Arthur Lawton
Note: Because this article is illustrated by many photographs, we decided to make them viewable right at the point they are mentioned in the article. Each time you encounter a reference to a figure, click on the reference, and a window will pop out with a photo and a caption. Enjoy! (The photo that starts the article is the only exception.)
Figure 1. Kleinbauernhaus, Frankisches Freilandmuseum. Photo by the author.
(Figure 2) Swiss folklorist Richard Weiss described roof and fire as the most basic elements of domestic economy in German speaking areas. “A stable has a roof, but a roof that exhibits smoke shows the building is inhabited by people.” The areas for managing fire in the house was the domain of the women in the German household. (Figure 3) Jeremias Gotthelf, a Swiss writing in 1797 said
It is also actually the elder rightful housewife mistress of the fire and the fire her servant, she is the priestess of the household, she keeps it, and she brews up the house blessing on her hearth.1
Attaining fire right admitted the minor to participation in community rights and responsibilities that placed great emphasis on fire management. Supervision over a minor ended when he “managed his own fire.” Effective fire management balanced protection of fire from wind and rain with protection of house and dwellers from fire was based on four elements: to protect the fire itself; to prevent its spread; to protect the roof from sparks; to transmit smoke from the dwelling.2 (Figure 4), Fire and wood rights regulated wood’s use, limiting forest depletion and preventing disastrous community conflagrations. One hearth granted a single fire right as noted in this 18th century request for a construction permit from the Nürnberger Forstamt.
AO1775. Georg Heberlein of Endenberg …begs permission to be allowed to furnish (his new house) with a second room, however, without fire right.3
Restrictions on multiple hearths and maximally efficient burning due to restricted fuel availability contributed to the spatial connection of hearth and heating oven and to its centered placement in the floor plan (Figure 5) well distant from the low hanging thatched roof,4 as well as to various kinds of arrangement to transmit the smoke out of the dwelling area.
(Figure 6) Attic smoke was long considered desirable to discourage vermin in the thatch and to dry and preserve produce. The early open hearth was frequently at (Figure ) floor-level under a flat canopy (Rauchfang) that intercepted sparks rising toward the thatch roof. Smoke removal was a necessary conceptual shift leading to the smoke-free parlor. Spark protection and smoke removal led ultimately (Figure 8) to the Rauchkanal, the fully enclosed flue. A Kamin was a fireplace that channeled smoke to the exterior through the enclosed flue.
The pottery kiln, smelting oven, bake oven and heating oven are fully enclosed fire locations that divide by function into heat retainers and heat radiators. (Figure 9) The bake oven retains its heat in a brick shell encased in masonry to maintain correct baking temperature. The heating oven radiates heat quickly and efficiently in all directions, for which cast iron plate and flat tile serve best. (Figure 10) Either five or six cast iron plates bolted together for a stove that efficiently radiates heat in all directions. Smaller tiles mortared together serve the same purpose in forming an oven. This tile was reproduced at Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, using tile molds dating to the eighteenth century. Stone and brick masonry are used in the heating oven (Figure 11) only for the oven foundation and the Hell, the collar where oven meets the wall behind the oven through which passes the Feuerloch, the stoking passageway. Located in the Stube, or parlor, a tile oven is seen here as restored in the Almoshof Schwedenhaus at the Frankisches Freilandmuseum, an early German house type. here with arched alcove and container for warming food and water. (Figure 12) Such a masonry foundation and collar remains on the second floor of the Saron building at the Ephrata Cloister in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. (Figure 13) In figure 13 from the collection of the Frankisches Freilandmuseum in Bad Windsheim is the only photograph of an original cast iron Heizofen with a tile Aufsatz of which I am aware. At the back end it rests on a masonry foundation similar to that seen in the Ephrata example.
Richard Weiss in Hauser und Landschaften der Schweiz supported Bruno Schier’s contention that parlor oven and parlor originated where (Figure 14) the Eastern European cooking hearth on the right and equipped with a partially enclosed cooking oven met the Western European open cooking hearth on the left. In the center picture, separating the Eastern hearth function from its oven function by a dividing wall results in Bruno Schier’s Middle European Zweifeuerhaus, the two-fire house with smoke free parlor, the rauchlose Stube. 5
(Figure 15) The separating wall seen here in a Swiss floor plan illustrates Weiss’s central fireplace 3 room floor plan in which the single log pen as conceptual whole is subdivided into smaller units rather than a small unit with added elements. The oven connects to the hearth through the Feuerloch, the fire-stoking hole. Hearth and oven constitute the centered focal point around which the plan clusters, as Weiss says, “like a mother who is surrounded by her children.”6
(Figure 16) Reconstructed at the 1719 Hans Herr House, this back-loaded Heizofen is turned so its mouth opens through the back wall of the cooking hearth. A Swiss Rhaeto-Romanic riddle asked, “What woman stands in the parlor and has her mouth outside the parlor?” the answer being the parlor oven, standing in the parlor but fed from the kitchen by the housewife. The 1719 Herr House reconstruction represents the very early frontier development period of Lancaster County and fits well with Weiss’s observation that “All told, the decorative tile oven has a special priority in the well-propertied farm house of the Midlands, while in the Alpine area the simple fore-runner (of decorative tile ovens) must still suffice, mostly a stone masonry cube that on the parlor side is plastered white and often encircled by a wooden frame.7 The appropriate Heizofen material in a prosperous in-town Stadt Hof or rural Bauernhof was cast iron plate or decorative tile. In Heizofen restoration the basis for a decision on material and form should include socio-economic considerations, the historical period interpreted and relative ethno-cultural considerations.
The heating oven emerging from the 13th century was one of 3 heating modes in pre-modern Germanic homes; animal heat, the cooking hearth and the enclosed heating oven. (Figure 17) In this 15th to 16th century German house-plan we see animal stalls at right and rear of the central through passageway, the Tenne or Hausgang. To the left the hearth is located in the Küche, the kitchen, and the Heizofen is in the Stube, the parlor. (Figure 18) This Hallenhaus in Westphalia displays a linear arrangement where the previous example is rectilinear in its geometrical organization.8 It likewise serves the tradition of animals and humans dwelling under the same roof. It shows all three modes of heating. To the left and right in the foreground are the animal stalls and in the center area is the Tenne, in this case serving as the threshing floor. The far end contains dwelling rooms for the family at the center of which is (Figure 19) the floor level hearth (Flurherd). cooking takes place at floor level and this is essentially the kitchen area of the house. Often there is a low sink of carved stone by the exterior door at the far wall that drains through the wall to the outside. hanging over the hearth is the Rauchfang, the spark-catcher that intercepts sparks rising from the hearth as the smoke ascends to the attic area where grain and meats such as hams and sausages are hung to cure in the smoke. Smoke inhibited rodents and vermin as it assisted in drying and preserving the grain. Low in the wall to the right is the black rectangular front plate of a cast (Figure 20) iron chest or box oven (eisenguss Kastenofen). Behind the wall and to the right are the smoke-free dwelling rooms. This Kastenofen is immediately behind the partition to hear a smoke-free room and is located in this case to the side of the floor hearth rather than at its back, and is stoked directly through the front plate rather than through the Feuerloch at the back of the hearth. This arrangement is somewhat unusual in that there is no mechanism for the smoke to return from the fire box other than to seep up the somewhat stained wall above the front plate of the stove. Note the characteristic carved stone pedestal on which the oven rests, and the raised decorative design that also serves to increase the heat radiating surface.
Heating oven development took two directions based on material. One led to the eisenguss Kastenofen, the cast iron chest oven, and the other to the Kachelofen, the tile oven. (Figure 21) The original means for transmitting heat from cooking hearth to the parlor is the Takenplatte, the earliest extant piece dating to the 15th century, but surely used a century or so earlier. It is the familiar fire-back, repurposed to radiate heat in two directions. It was set into an opening in the wall at the back of the hearth between kitchen and parlor enabling it to radiate heat into the parlor. (Figure 22) Sometimes called Doppelplatten, double plates, they could function also as (Figure 23) Kaminplatten, the familiar fire-back seen here at the back of a floor level hearth.
(Figure 24) Forming the five-plate Kastenofen is essentially a matter of bolting together five such plates for an oven or six plates for a freestanding stove, the difference between the two in my mind being that an oven is immovably affixed to the wall and a stove is free-standing and movable. Thus the five plate stove consists of two side plates, a front plate and a top and a bottom plate. Adding a sixth pate at the back formed a free standing stove that became widespread upon the commercial development of rolled metal stove pipe. Fitted over the corners and secured by bolt and wing-nut is the mechanism that holds the stove securely together. (Figure 25) The bolt and a wing-nut together compress a thin inner strip and a bowed outer strip to hold the corner tightly together. European stove corners differ slightly though not in over-all principle from the Colonial stoves, thus making it possible to determine whether a stove is imported or of domestic origin.
(Figure 26a) This 1764 Wurttemburg example in a private collection in Neustadt rests its front end on a carved stone pedestal. (Figure 26b) Sitting on top of the Heizofen is the Aufsatz, a secondary box. Aufsatz is the noun form of the verb Aufsetzen, meaning “to sit upon”. This one stands separated from the wall with a side door, the interior shown in the center picture. (Figure 26c) At right I’ve pulled the Aufsatz aside, showing the oven top plate opening giving direct heat access to the Aufsatz bottom plate. In this case combustion gas had to return to the hearth and flue through the Feuerloch, or stoke-hole in the back wall of the hearth. (Figure 27a) What determined use of cast iron or tile is not clear, as both materials were often used in combination. In figure 27a is an iron stove with tile Aufsatz, (Figure 27b) In figure 27b is an iron stove with an iron Aufsatz. Both forms are often used in combination, one form not predating the other since both probably originated in the 13th and 14th centuries. By the latter part of the eighteenth century the stone supporting pedestal is disappearing, to be replaced with two cast iron legs.
The earliest tile oven illustration I know of is (Figure 28) a Würzburg January calendar illustration dated ca. 1255 AD. This illustration shows an oven whose surface is covered with circular indentations that serve to better radiate heat. This man is drinking from a cup like those inserted in the walls of the oven before which he sits. He warms his feet over a basin containing hot embers. The oven appears to be composed of a stack of chambers. His cup (Figure 29) is identical to one excavated by the Frankisches Freilandmuseum at Bad Windsheim while preparing for their restoration of the 1410 Mattinger Haus. These cups, placed into the side walls, dramatically increase the radiated heat. Here the Frankishces Freilandmuseum reconstructed a (Figure 30) kuppelförmigen Ofen, a cupola shaped oven. They placed Becherkacheln, tiles shaped like the drinking cup or (Becher) like those they excavated at the Ochsenfelderhaus into the mortar oven walls.
Additional material excavated at the Mattingerhaus at Matting an der Donau begins to show a transition in tile form. For added radiating efficiency the cup-shaped Becherkacheln dating to the 13th and 14th centuries were reshaped (Figure 31a) into the four cornered (Schlusselkacheln), dish-shaped tile standard for the fifteenth into the early 16th century. (Figure 31b) Later these were again reshaped into flat, square Medallionkacheln, medallion. The advantage of the recessed and ridged shapes is their increased heat-radiating surface.9
Over time the form of the tile oven developed from the cupola oven to the tower oven (Figure 32) seen in this 1525 wood cut by Hans Sachs. This is essentially an extension in size of the shape seen in the 13th century calendar illustration, but now composed of flat medallion tiles rather than cup shaped or bowl shaped tiles. The basic form was stable from the late fourteenth into the early seventeenth century though it varied some in details of shape. This evolution from cup to bowl to flat tile marks the transition from an oven whose mortar walls hold in place heat radiating cups to an oven of flat tile walls held together by mortared joints.
(Figure 33) The tower oven as it transitions through various shapes from rounded cupola oven to rectilinear oven with flat tile walls is seen in late fifteenth to early seventeenth century illustrations. The oven form consists of a cubical fire chest and a tower-like Aufsatz. At upper left is a rectilinear 1482 Nürnberg two part oven of square flat tiles with masonry foundation alcoves. The 1488 Münich oven at upper center left is completely round with dish tiles. The 1493 Basel oven, upper center right and sitting on elaborate feet is rectangular with round tower. Likewise is the 1524 Spinnstube oven at upper right, though its mortar foundation has alcoves. The ca.1525 oven at lower left is standing in a corner on four feet but precise form is difficult to decipher. The 1567 oven, lower center, seems entirely rounded and the rectangular chest shape (Figure 34) of the 1595 Illdorf oven at lower right is rounded at one end with a fully rounded tower of square d ish tiles.
(Figure 35)The Illendorf oven was also reconstructed at Bad Windsheim with a mortared foundation and square dish tiles. The reconstructed tower is cut away on one side (Figure 36) to show the mortar wall, the dish shaped tiles and the interior whose conical tower top is constructed of flat wedge shaped red tile. From the Küche side (Figure 37) we see the raised hearth below the high spark-catching hood (Rauchfang) and the smoke-blackened Feuerloch or firing hole.
(Figure 38) The two part rectilinear oven in this 1633 Nürnberg Bürgerhaus is constructed of large medallion tiles with outlining cornice tiles. Whether in cast iron or tile the fully rectilinear oven seems best classified as a Kastenofen, or chest oven. The tile cube at the top seems to be an Aufsatz sitting as it does on top of the main fire box. Unusual in this case is the position of the Kachelofen, separated as it is from the cooking heart that appears in the Küche through the doorway in the background.
(Figure 39) All the socially and architecturally contextual elements of the Kastenofen are in place in this 16th century view of a festival meal by Lorentz Fries. The Rauchlose Stube is heated by the geschlossene Heizofen mit Aufsatz (enclosed heating oven with Aufsatz) adjoined to back wall of the raised Flurherd in the kitchen, stoked through the Feuerlochs, the smoke and ashes retained in the Küche. The rear end of the oven is supported on a masonrry footing along the wall. The large oven is supported at its front end not by a carved stone pedestal, but rather by five cast iron legs, the fifth leg being in the center of the oven. There are three cornices, two on the fire box and one on the top of the Aufsatz, above which is an arched architectural element that gives elegance to the whole. The cooking hearth in the Küche is no different from the onr seen previously in the 1367 Hofstettin house. the rounded glass in the windows and the hearth arrangement with its Rauchfang and arched aclcove suggest the house was probably a hundred or more years old at the time of this illustraton from the mid-sixteenth century.
(Figure 40) This eighteenth century tile excavated by the Frankisches Freilandmuseum displays the characteristic green glaze and the ridged surface serving both decorative purpose and increased heat-radiating surface. Raised flanges on the reverse side are hand molded onto the flat tile surface to provide rigidity and mortaring surface.
(Figure 41) Inside the ca. 1770 Moravian tile stove at the Miksch House at Old Salem, North Carolina, we see medallion tiles mortared together at their raised side-flanges. Old Salem in North Carolina has experimented with producing such tiles.
(Figure 42a and Figure 42b) Clay pressed or rolled onto the mold forms the recessed tile-face. When the face is sufficiently dried, the raised flange is hand formed around the edges.
(Figure 43) For a corner tile, two faces are made and then joined by hand at right angles before the flanging is added.
(Figure 44) John Cosens Ogden, writing in 1799 of a trip to Bethlehem and Nazareth, Pa., described such stoves as follows.
In the public buildings and most other houses, we find German stoves made of tile, which are in general use. Some are totally formed of tile and others are part of cast iron and part of tile. . . . The tiles upon the top are so placed as to form a species of flue, in perpendicular and horizontal forms, which retains the heat while it circulates longer, and heats a room more pleasantly and more durably than sheet iron.10
Cosens was describing the eisenguss Kastenofen sometimes with a tile Aufsatz that he described as “a species of flue, in perpendicular and horizontal forms.”
(Figure 45) I suggest the advance from one-part cupola oven to two-part tower oven remained in force through the nineteenth century either as the cast iron chest oven with Aufsatz, (Figure 46) or the chest shaped tile oven with Aufastz, whether the latter was tile or cast iron.
(Figure 47) The evidence remaining to us in the architectural fabric is limited and usually inconclusive. The evidence in the Stube of the 1736 henrich Antes house in Montgomery County, pennsylvania does not clarify whether it was a cast iron oven with an Aufsatz or some form of tile tower oven. The height of the smoke return and perhaps some soot lines suggest but do not dtate clearly. The decision was made to recreate a five plate eisenguss kastenofen using the decorative design on a plate found about a mile or so away. How the Aufsatz is to be constructed, whether in tile or in brick, seems not yet to be resolved. Documentation of the socio-econonomic status of Henrich Antes indicates an upper class background in Freinsheim, Germany and exceptional financial resources in Pennsylvania by 1736. The Antes ethnocultural context was that of financially secure Bürgerfamily in a Rhein-Pfalz Kleinstadt.After fifty years of German settlement in southeastern Pennsylvania the Philadelphia area was sophisticated as a market source and the area was technologically capable. The completed installation in Henrich Antes’ house should articulate this degree of scale, decorative quality and functionality.
(Figure 48) Hidden within the Antes house Feuerwand, the fire wall backing the hearth and dividing the house in half up through the second floor, is an inner flue parallel to the main hearth flue serving the first and second floor Heizofen, an arrangement seen to date nowhere else. Restoration staff at the Frankisches Freilandmuseum were unfamiliar with this arrangement.
(Figure 49) The height of the smoke return in the Antes wall fits well with Freckmann and Kissling’s side view of the Kastenofen, the rectilinear chest oven though in this case they indicate only a single flue. There are issues that are not well understood regarding the behavior of rising and falling smoke in the Rauchkanal, the flue through the roof to the exterior. For example, if there is not an updraft from fire on the main hearth, will smoke that has cooled in the Aufsatz rise or fall on the way to the roof? What was the purpose of a separate flue in the Antes house relative to the rising and falling of smoke? What is the effect of a high smoke return versus a low smoke return? How to manage the Heizfeuer in a rauchlose Stube can best be determined by experimentation with actual installations in various arrangements.
(Figure 50) The invention of rolled metal stove pipe very late in the eighteenth century enabled the two part unit to stand free of the wall, no longer an oven but now a free standing stove, thus beginning an independent evolution toward the heating stove and the cook stove.
(Figure 51a and Figure 51d) Seen in nineteenth century stoves on display at the LWL (Landschaftsverband Westphalen-Lippe Freilichtmuseum), Detmold, Westphalia, the two-part idea of the tower oven lived on, however, well into the 20th century as the wood or coal fired post oven for heating.
(Figure 51b and Figure 51c) and in the cook-stove with a baking oven . . .
(Figure 52) . . . but that is a narrative for another time.
Endnotes
1 Jeremias Gotthelf. Werke. 7 (Geld und Geist), 309 – 310.
2 Weiss, 14-15.
3 Rudolf Helm, Das Bauernhaus im Alt-Nürnberger Gebiet, Nürnberg: Verlag der Buchhandlung Emil jakob, 1978, 26.
4 Weiss, 104. “The fire...was maintained ...in a fire pit safely out of danger to the roof under whose ridge the hearth as found in the middle of the house.”
5 Weiss, p. 128. See also his drawings for the developmental evolution of fire and smoke arrangements on page 105, especially number five, Feuerplatte in Verbindung mit Stubenofen.
6 Weiss, 167 and illustration 47 on p. 135
7 Weiss, 129-130
8 For the distinction between linear and rectilinear plan generation, see Arthur lawton, The Plan-Net as a Geometry for Analysis of Pre-Modern Architectural Design and Layout Diss. Ann Arbor: ProQuest L.I.C.2013. 181-184 and chapter 5, 122-179. .
9 For a well-illustrated discussion of oven tiles see Konrad Bedel and Hermann Heidrich, Bauernhäuser aus dem Mittelalter, Bad Windsheim: Frankisches Freilandmuseum, 1997, 49-54.
10 John Cosens Ogden, An Excursion into Bethlehem & Nazareth in Pennsylvania in the Year 1799: With a Succinct History of the Society of United Brethren, Commonly Called Moravians, Philadelphia: Charles Cist, 1805. 29-30.
Contributor Biography
Following a Master’s degree in Musicology, Arthur Lawton received a Ph.D. in Folklore, specializing in material culture, in 2013. He lives in South Georgia and works primarily on Early Modern German acculturation in Southeastern Pennsylvania, focusing on the life of Johann Henrich Antes and his role in Moravian settlement and activities in the first half of the eighteenth century. Art is presently translating the written records; church book, day-book and double-entry accounting book for the Moravian’s Friedrichstown Children’s Boarding School, housed on the Antes Plantation from April 1745 to August 1750. Having owned a handcraft bakery for many years, Art has been known to bake a lot of good stuff.
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