Plaques display former names Houses in Sternstraße tell of their past

Bonn · Small plaques in the Bonner Sternstraße provide information about the former names of the adjacent buildings. The aim is to make the long history of Bonn’s city centre that is steeped in tradition, more visible.

 In Sternstraße, small plaques explain the history of the houses. Photo: Barbara Frommann.

In Sternstraße, small plaques explain the history of the houses. Photo: Barbara Frommann.

Foto: Barbara Frommann/BARBARA FROMMANN

The small inconspicuous plaques, which are attached to many house facades in the Sternstraße in Bonn city centre, are hardly noticeable between colourfully decorated shop windows, large shop signs and sales posters. They are so inconspicuous that many passers-by, when asked, react bemusedly with “Which signs?” But if you take the trouble to look up, you can read, in addition to a date, such querky things as "The big rattling seat", "The house of Liège" or "The sharpened nail".

It quickly becomes clear that the signs show the old names of the houses. The number indicates the year in which the house is first mentioned in traditional sources. The oldest (known) house on the street is the house “Zum Hirtz” (synonymous with “Zum Hirsch”, meaning “The deer”), which has the year 1341 written on its sign. The name plates are not that old, but already go back to when the Bonn Heritage and History Society put them up in 1989. In Bonn at that time, on the occasion of the 2,000th anniversary of the city, the city called on associations to perform an “historical deed”. The Historical Society took up this challenge by placing the signs with the house names. The aim was to make the long history of Bonn's inner city, which is full of tradition and is hardly recognisable today from the street, more visible.

The Historical Association probably chose Sternstraße for the project because despite being destroyed several times, it is most likely to have retained its old character. At least that is what Norbert Schloßmacher, the head of the Bonn City Archive, suspects. In the past, Sternstraße was mainly occupied by businesses and small traders. It was first mentioned in 1360 as “Pisternenstraße”, which is derived from the Latin word for bakery, “pistrina”. “Sternstraße” was initially only the short form until it became established as the name in the 18th century, according to Schloßmacher.

House names invite speculation

But why did the houses even have names? Schloßmacher also has an answer to this question: They are the predecessors of today's house numbers, which only became established at the end of the 18th century, explains the archivist. Similar to the emergence of surnames, they were created to be able to distinguish between individual people or houses. The names were not so official, but were more commonly used in the vernacular. For this reason they are only known today if they are mentioned by chance in sources. How the houses acquired their respective names is usually not clear from the documents.

Georg Cornelissen, linguist at the Institute for Regional Studies and Regional History of the Rhineland Regional Council, also confirms this problem: Unless it has been handed down in writing somewhere by chance or has been preserved in the memory of a family over the centuries, there is “absolutely no chance” today to find out anything more about the origin of the names.

The only remaining alternative is speculation: Once the names are mentioned, some people get carried away with possible creative explanations. For example, a passer-by suspects that for the “House of the beer tree”, there was probably a large tree on that spot where beer was brewed. In fact, he might not be completely wrong, because there is evidence that a brewer lived in the house in 1690. That Bavarian beer gardens were created in this way, as the passer-by jokingly adds, is probably debatable.

(Original text; Leonie von Wangenheim, translation John Chandler)

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