Zopfhuesli
by Michelle Meenawong
Title
Zopfhuesli
Artist
Michelle Meenawong
Medium
Photograph - Metal Print
Description
Day Labourer's House
from Leutwil, Argovia, 1803
The last occupant of the “Zopfhüsli”, Adolf Gloor, died in 1964. The house was empty when taken over by the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum. The tiny rooms give an idea of how low expectations were in earlier times.
The house from Leutwil is as much a multipurpose building as the imposing and much larger one from Oberentfelden across the way. The building types are similar, they both are thatched roof houses. The forerunner of this building in the hamlet “im Zopf” burned down on 10 August 1802, together with six other buildings. By the following year carpenters had already put up a new house and painted their tools and the date on the barn door.
No Money to Modernise
Heinrich Aeschenbach, “der Schmidheiri”, is recorded as the owner. The rooms are small and low-ceilinged – Schmidheiri was by no means a rich man. Members of the Gloor family have lived here nearly without interruption since 1819. They lived in modest circumstances, there was no money for modernisation. What was painful for them is luck for us: the house was not disfigured and the original condition survived as a time capsule.
Simple Standards
Gloor spent his life as a common man, in summer helping with the haying, in winter in the woods. He was a smallholder and had tree nurseries and garden plots.
A very grateful thank you to the following groups for featuring this picture
No Place Like Home
07/14/2018
Images That Excite You
07/29/2018
Uploaded
April 27th, 2018
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