October 2014
Kathy and I went with my colleague Lisa Keim to the town of Spalt, in Franken, on Sunday. The weather was beautiful, and the normally sleepy town was full of people for the harvest festival. The first thing you notice about Spalt is all the tall gable ends on the buildings.
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| 5-story roof above a beautiful garden. |
The multiple floors under the roofs are living quarters today, but once they were full of hops. Back then, there were slats running the length of the roof in order to let air circulate through the hops, as seen in the photo below.
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| Hops barn with horizontal ventilation slats still visible |
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| Home, hops barn, and animal barn (all in one) |
Today, the ventilation slats are usually filled in. But we found an interesting exception, shown in the photo below, where a single horizontal slat is still visible. This hops barn was part of a complex including a regular animal barn butted up against the right side (see the large barn door and the hay-mow window above it), and the living quarters butted up against the left. The orange color is typical in town.
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| Diebsturm |
Hops was a very valuable crop in the middle ages. Growing them was allowed only by special permit, and only in designated plots. (This made sense, because the plants take so many nutrients out of the soil, that you could ruin a field by resituating the plot in it.) There was a special prison, called the Diebsturm (thief's tower) where workers were sent who pocketed any of the precious flowers.
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| Oberer Torturm |
The high value of the hops drying in the buildings in town made it necessary to build a fortress wall. Much of the medieval wall still exists, like at the Upper Gate Tower (Oberer Torturm).
The city wall has houses built up against it, of course. What is unusual in Spalt is that the tall, thin construction was applied to houses on the walls as well. The result is a house that hangs out over the wall, and continues upward, as seen at the Schlenzger Haus.
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Schlenzger-Haus
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The Little Customs House (Zollhäuschen) was needed for the trade, and the building still stands at the northern gate to the town.
The wealth of the citizens made it worthwhile to build a large granary (Kornhaus) to collect the taxes: a 10% tithe. Farmers brought ten percent of their harvest to the town's granary.
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| Zollhäusche |
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| Kornhaus for farmers' tithes |
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| St. Emmeram |
There is no sense in growing hops if you don't brew beer, and beer-making goes way back in Spalt. In the 800s there was once a Benedictine monastery called St. Salvator, with a church built in the Carolingian style on the site of today's church in Spalt. Undoubtedly, the monks brewed
beer. In the 1100s, a romanesque church called St. Emmeram was built on the site. Parts of that architecture are still visible in the church today, although the interior is largely baroque.
The brewery makes Spalter Bier, and we tried two kinds. One was a helles (light in color), which has a very nice hopsy flavor. The other is called "Saumarkt Bier", and it is a really good darker beer that Kathy is drinking at lunch as seen in the photo. Saumarkt is a funny name which means "Sow market", and Lisa says it refers to the day when the pigs are butchered. On that day, there is a big feast with a lot of food that could not be preserved and had to be eaten fresh, such as liver, blood sausage, other internal organs and parts like the snout and cheeks. Such rich food required a more robust beer and is the inspiration for "Saumarkt Bier".
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| Richard and Kathy in Spalt |
Below are photos of more of the towers on the old city wall.
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| Oberer Torturm |
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| Drechslerturm |
Below are some more photos of converted hops barns in town.
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| Mühlreisighaus |
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| open artist's studio |
