Chronicle of the house, Pilse 18

The name of the present Pilse 18 from 1605 to 1734 was “House of the wolves lift”, till 1754 Laurentii 31b named after St Laurentius Church, and from 1754 “House of the central hare vulture”, to be distinguished from the first big one and the last small one (Pilse 17 and 19), after the whole estate of Biereigenhof was divided into three lots. In 1569, the whole estate belonged to Jeremias Seltzer. Pilse 18 was consecutively the property of the woad merchants Hiob Stotternheim (1605) and Sebastian Kircher (1626), in 1642 of Professor and supreme council master Dr. Med Johann Rehefeldt – in 1647 devastated probably during 30 Year War, 1651 rebuilt – of his widow Katharine Rehefeldt, in 1693 of Hans Zeuner, in 1754 of the linen weaver Kaspar Otto, in 1762 of the lacemaker Johann Schreiber and in 1785 of his widow Sophie Rebekka, in 1794 of the wife of the lacemaker Johann Kahl, in 1804 of himself, in 1805 of short period of Karoline Gottliebe Tix, then of the carpenter Johann Dinckel and in 1816 of his widow Anna Magdalene born Wellendorf together with the children Christiane, Anna and Regine, of the carpenter masters Robert Bauer (1817) and Georg Wolfram (1818), in 1828 of the widow Susanne Hey born Bechler, in 1837 of the lock smith Friedrich Fischer and in 1852 of his wife Rosine born Hartmann, in 1865 of the lithographer Kirchner, in 1873 of the widow Anna Petsch born Gebser and in 1902 of the Laurentius Parish whose clergyman was the historian Jakob Feldkamm from 1887 to 1915, later cathedral provost of Erfurt (1915–1922) and director of the clerical court. All the house residents were from that time onwards vicars apart from five women who dwelled in this house at the beginning of 1945 as refugees coming from Cologne and from two housewives, a male nurse, a cabinet maker and a student from the Sixties to the Eighties. The vicars were Otto Reinecke (1903–1913), Heinrich Konze (1913–1917), Karl Leineweber (1917–1924), Doctor Reiner von Hähling (1924–1928), Josef Vogt (1928–1930, from 1930 to 1938 cathedral curate), Hermann Rohleder (1930–1935), Josef Schrimpf (1935–1938), who was under arrest on 6.11.1937, because he tried according to a lawyer report to undermine the politicians’ authority by spoiling the folk’s faith in them, after having preached on 31.10.1937 in the cathedral in front of round 1,200 people, “that the murderous actions led by the Russian State within Russia were also led in a similar manner in our country by our statemen, that the churches in our country were jeopardised by the state to be turned into museums and that youth should fight against that (...). signed Bick”. At that time the Laurentius parish priest also submitted to the state police a complaint on account of “sullied house”. Actually, after a parents meeting, the entrance door of the vicarage bore the writ smirched with black pitch “Death to the Storm Host!” The Storm Host consisted in several Catholic youth associations who were evermore persecuted by the powers since their pilgrimage to Rom and a Pope audience in Easter 1935. The Gestapo disbanded the Storm Host on 6.02.1939 which previously renamed itself Saint Michael Community. The other vicars were Robert Böning (1938–1944), Theodor Gronde (1947–1948), Edmund Döring (1948–1951), Erich Johne (1951), Gerhard Schwarz (1949–1955), Bernhard Wand (1950–1952), Herrmann-Joseph Häusler (1951–1962), Heinrich Küstner (1955–1959), Peter Jakob (1960–1961), Herrmann Bittner (1962), Herbert Greiner (1962–1964, later curate of Heuthen and Flinsberg, deceased in 2010, Friedhelm Wagner (1963-1967), Walter Rheinländer (1967-1971), Herbert Fuhlrott (1970), Franz Konradi (1971-1975), later spiritual guide for the adult people of the Eichsfeld area, and Harald Reichmann (1975-1977), who lived as a priest under the GDR-Regime in the forbidden zone in Giesa. The last vicars who dwelled in the Pilse 18 were Hartmut Gremler (1977-1980), later executive military decant, Martin Montag (1980-1983), later curate of Leinefeld-Worbis, brother of Reverend Montag at the Helios Hospital, Christoph Kuchinke (1983-1985), Wolfgang Ipolt (1985-1986), later Priest Seminary Dean in Erfurt, now bishop of Görlitz, Heribert Kiep (1989-1993), later curate in Heiligenstadt, Christian Gellrich (1993-1997), later cathedral curate in Erfurt and curate of Niederorschel, Ludger Dräger (1997-1999), later supreme court vicar in Erfurt, Egon Bierschenk (1999-2003), later curate of Diedorf, and the chaplain Timo Gothe (2003-2006), now diocesan youth vicar. St Laurentius Church was the first church in the GDR which organised already in 1978 oecumenical prayer meetings for peace. In October 1989, 70 people started demonstrations at Laurentius Church’s and ended them at St Andrew Church just in front of the district administration of the State Secret Police. Out of them came the Thursday demonstrations in Erfurt which turned thousands people into heroes of the peaceful revolution. In August 2006, I finally moved in as a renter. On 5.06.2007, on Bonifatius’ Day, I became landlord. In 2008, I founded the publishing house “MannaScript” and the holiday flat “Villa Anna” named after my daughter’s name. Now because of the holiday flat on the ground floor of the Pilse 18, a lot of guests from all around the world cross regularly the threshold of the old house, be it from Kenya, Senegal, Brazil, Mexico, Vietnam and the USA, or from Portugal, Italy, France, Austria, Russia, Schwitzerland and of course also from all regions of Germany. In the tradition of the vicarage, my friend Giuseppe Pulcinelli, a priest from Rom and Professor Doctor in Divinity at the Latran-University was in August 2012 as a guest here where he also celebrated Mass for the soul of our common friend Ruth Henschke from Carolinenstift, Pilse 9, who died a few days earlier. In the street Pilse, they found out a hunter fireplace of Neolithic peasants, thanks to the accurate laying of stones as a fireplace. The “House of the wolves lift” received its name probably because of the relief in order to describe a mushroom shaped hill, what the name of the street later confirmed, for Pilse comes from the German word Pilz for mushroom. The archeological discovery of 2006 between the streets Kaufmännerstrasse and Pilse indicates the oldest hunter fireplace in Germany dating back to 4500 before Christ – with toe bones of stags and deers, molars of harts, a pig jaw as well as two jaw fragments of predators (probably dogs, wolves and foxes) and a rib which showed the trace of an arrowhead at its inner side. The whole rest was found in the previous water meadows of Gera River. The hunters used to wait in the night till the game came to drink at the riverside. The hunters could do their work easily from this strategical lift because the area of the Pilse was higher at the curve of the large stream. During the excavations were found out wonderful, green ceramics probably belonging to a wealthy man, which represent the evangelist John, a minstrel and a court lady. At that time, the Pilse was called “Bulzam”, what sounds like the Greek-Latine “boletus” and the French “bolet” (a kind of mushrooms). Even though the houses of the street were identified together with Laurentius and a number, the name of the street “Pilse” is to be recognised in this root “Buleza” or “Pilz” (mushroom). Even a vineyard there bore the name of “Buleza” in 1378. I imagine that stones of the cellars could date back to 1243/1247, when an anonymous writer in Erfurt, probably Gilles from Rom, wrote his handbook upon courtly love. Yet, blazes devastated in 1472 huge parts of the town; when considering the vaulting cellar and its door with Late Gothik ogive, we can rather deduce that the cellar of Pilse 18 was built at the beginning of the 16th Century – that is at the time of Martin Luther’s study of Law in 1501 and of Divinity in 1505, one century bebore the first mention of the house unter the name of “House of the wolves lift”. In 1605, woad merchants and learned people used to live this house of the wolves lift; it was a period of destitution due to the woad crisis, the religion wars and the pest plague. Big woad merchant houses were not built any longer. Yet, the previous director of the Erfurt university, Kai Brodersen, and my new neighbour, Pilse 19, let the beams analyse by the Bamberg university in order to know the age of the wood; “the result, wrote he, is that the beams of the house Pilse 19 (probably of my house, too) come from trees which were timbered between 1724 and 1728, whereas the roof beams date back to 1424, after having been used again.” Between houses of the GRD-time falling in ruins and new flats of reunified Germany, three church towers loom from the well-towered town Erfurt, “Erfordia turrita”: northward at the little market square Wenigemarkt St Gilles Church, where Franks and Slavics used to meet on the Via Regia, the Royal Way between Paris and Kiev; southward St Laurentius Church, westward the Preachers’ Church. The Rom of Thuringia had 90 church and closter towers. At the Wide Stream of Gera River lies Junkersand 2, my first domicile in Erfurt in 1999, where Johann Sebastian Bach’s parents dwelled.