Greth: Überlingen’s Municipal Grain Warehouse and Trading House
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 3.9
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Economic
- Remains
- Warehouse
On this page13 sections
History
Greth is a municipal warehouse and trading house in Überlingen, Germany, whose history reaches back to the late fourteenth century. It served the city’s grain trade when Überlingen was an imperial free city, a self-governing city of the Holy Roman Empire answerable directly to the emperor rather than to a territorial prince. The building connected commerce on Lake Überlingen with routes from Swabia toward Constance and Switzerland, and its present form reflects a major rebuilding in 1788.
Medieval origins and municipal trade
Settlement on the property existed during the High Middle Ages. Oak posts in the eastern part of the building were dated by dendrochronology, the study of tree rings, to 1382. This places the history of the building’s medieval predecessor in the late fourteenth century. The first written reference to Greth is the Gredordnung of 1421, a municipal regulation governing customs and trade.
Greth combined storage with customs collection, weighing, and the supervision of sales. Buyers and sellers paid the town one penny, known as Grethgeld, for every sack of grain sold. In return, the municipality guaranteed the quality of the grain. The 1421 regulation also dealt with taxes on wine, honey, wax, iron, copper, wool, cloth, yarn, and other goods, although the trading house later became principally associated with grain.
The town’s position supported this commercial role. Roads from Stockach, Pfullendorf, and Meersburg met in Überlingen, linking the lakeside landing place with inland markets. A bell in the northern gable announced the beginning of the trading day. During the high point of the grain trade in the sixteenth century, as many as 100 people worked at Greth, including Greth masters who supervised the trading house, market inspectors, brokers, grain measurers, and laborers.
Public functions and the 1788 rebuilding
Greth also served civic purposes. Citizens took their oath there, public announcements were made in the building, and other gatherings took place in its halls. In 1555 it was described as a dance house. A ten-metre-long image of Saint George and a winged dragon, painted in 1539, is associated with the building’s use as a hall. The connection between the dragon image and the hall’s function remains unestablished.
The medieval structure was a three-storey stone building with a high roof and stepped gables. Its two large ground-floor gates opened toward the ship landing place. A separate late-medieval Greth gate stood east of the building, at the entrance to what is now Löwengasse toward the Hofstatt. Images from the seventeenth century show the earlier building before the later reconstruction.
In 1787, the roof of a new extension to the old Greth collapsed. On 7 February 1788, the town council decided to remodel or rebuild the warehouse under Franz Anton Bagnato, an architect and master builder serving the Teutonic Order, a medieval religious and military order that retained estates and institutions in parts of the German-speaking lands. The construction contract followed in early March, and the present building was completed in October 1788 after about six months.
Bagnato’s design continued the commercial organization of Greth in a larger building. The Mainau Greth handled bread grain, while the Mittel-, Haber-, and Schmalzgreth served the wider food trade. The design was modeled on the Kornhaus in Rorschach, built between 1746 and 1749 by Bagnato’s father, Johann Caspar Bagnato.
Decline of the grain market and later uses
Überlingen retained an important grain market until the middle of the nineteenth century. Competition from modern harbor facilities at Ludwigshafen and Friedrichshafen weakened its position. Friedrichshafen’s railway connection around 1850 and the later rail-ferry service to Romanshorn accelerated the collapse of Überlingen’s grain trade. The town subsequently turned to tourism as a new source of revenue.
As grain commerce declined, the two large grain halls acquired new municipal uses. They successively accommodated equipment belonging to the volunteer fire brigade and the municipal works depot, municipal storage, and the tourist administration. The Leopold-Sophien Library occupied the upper floor from 1920. After the library was divided in 1937, the city library was also housed there.
Greth was entered as a cultural monument under Baden building regulations in 1936 and 1937. The city library, Leopold-Sophien Library, and tourist office later moved elsewhere, allowing a comprehensive renovation to begin in September 1997. Completed in November 1998, the work adapted the building for commercial, gastronomic, and cinema uses while preserving important historic fabric. Greth now functions as a commercial building containing shops, restaurants, and a cinema.
Remains
Building setting and medieval core
Greth stands between the lakeside promenade and landing place and the Hofstatt. Its large scale and three-level hipped roof dominate the historic lakeside frontage. A hipped roof slopes down on all sides, unlike a roof ending in vertical gables. The present late-Baroque to early-Classical building incorporates the medieval core and expanded the earlier stepped-gable structure.
Matthäus Merian’s bird’s-eye view of 1640 or 1643 and a siege image from 1670 depict the medieval Greth as a tower-like, three-storey stone building with a high roof and stepped gables. The stepped gable rose in successive horizontal stages. Two large gates at ground level faced the ship landing place, while the late-medieval Greth gate stood east of the building at the approach to the Hofstatt. In Überlingen, the medieval form was particularly comparable to the Steinhaus and Petershauser Hof.
The 1788 commercial structure
Exterior and entrances
The 1788 rebuilding doubled the medieval stepped-gable building and placed it beneath a massive hipped roof 13 metres high. The exterior was designed without brightly colored Baroque decoration. It was originally white-coated, with architectural trim in a stone-like color. The ground floor had two grain halls, each with four large gates. Lake-facing gates served ships, while gates opening toward the Hofstatt served carts. On the town side, two emphasized and decorated entrances led to internal spiral staircases.
Grain halls and upper levels
The eastern hall covers about 350 square metres and has been converted into a market hall. The western hall is approximately the same size and contains a restaurant and a shop. The first floor accommodates a larger retail space, offices, and another restaurant. Administrative offices, the Greth master’s residence, and additional rooms for Greth staff originally occupied the upper floor, while the three levels within the hipped roof served as grain-storage floors. Those attic levels now contain a cinema with three auditoriums.
Interior fabric and surviving details
Structural and decorative fabric
The wooden interior construction and roof framework were repaired during the 1997 to 1998 renovation. Steel beams were partly added to reduce structural loads. Medieval to Baroque wall and ceiling plaster was preserved wherever possible. Moisture-damaged plaster in the halls was renewed, and this work led to the rediscovery of the 1539 Saint George and dragon motif.
Fittings, roof tiles, and bell
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fittings remain in the building, including doors, gates, plank floors, windows, and tiled stoves. The roof’s many thousands of handmade beaver-tail tiles were preserved and supplemented with matching old tiles. Beaver-tail tiles are flat roof tiles with rounded ends, traditionally laid in overlapping courses.
The renovation did not repeat the yellow and reddish-brown facade treatment applied in the 1950s. Instead, it returned to the historical 1788 scheme, using a white ground color, light-grey architectural details, and blue shutters. The Greth bell is displayed in the cinema lounge in front of an oval window in the north gable. Its inscription says that Leonhart Rosenlecher cast it in Constance in 1655.
Circulation and adjoining structures
Despite Greth’s dimensions, its internal circulation is organized around one central stairway and one lift, both reached from the main entrance at the landing place. The neighboring municipal gallery, Fauler Pelz, provides an additional escape stair. A bridge connects that stair to Greth from the first attic level across Löwengasse.
