{{noref, date=June 2016 Maashaus (german: Maßhaus) is a spacious room taking the whole front part of a ground floor of a multi-storied

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

town house. This room was used mainly for serving beer, or other kinds of trade and craft. It was not heated. It also worked to link together other parts of the house, since it held a staircase to the first floor above ground (where the owner lived) and to the basement, an archway or similar passage to the courtyard and so on. The ceiling was almost always

vaulted In architecture, a vault (French ''voûte'', from Italian ''volta'') is a self-supporting arched form, usually of stone or brick, serving to cover a space with a ceiling or roof. As in building an arch, a temporary support is needed while ring ...

and was often supported by an asymmetrically placed central

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

. It was separated from the street or the arcade by a wall with a doorway and one or more windows.

Origins

Maashauses started to appear in the 13th century as a manifestation of the trend to sequester the living quarters of a burgers' house to the first floor. What used to be a main living room of the house, the so-called smoke abode, kept only its public, trade and craft functions, which remained on the ground floor, because they required the proximity of the cellar, the courtyard and especially the street entrance. The trade activities involved mainly the aforementioned serving of beer, which is related to the

brewing right In Medieval times, the brewing right or ''gruit right'' was one of the privileges granted by the land owner or territorial ruler. Sometimes this right was linked to a plot or a house, called a "beer court"; sometimes the right was held by a heredi ...

s (in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

a vast majority of burgers' houses were granted this right), but other trade and crafts were performed there also.

Maashauses in Bohemia

In the 19th century most maashauses were converted to private shops. Later, they were being renovated in many historic cities as part of restoration activities in the socialist period. To this day, maashauses are found in many buildings in the centers of Česky Krumlov,

Slavonice Slavonice (; german: Zlabings) is a town in Jindřichův Hradec District in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 2,300 inhabitants. The town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument reservation ...

and so on. After 1989 many maashauses were again employed for retail or by pubs and restaurants.

Etymology

Maß ' (pronounced ) or ' ( Swiss spelling, elsewhere used for dialectal ) is the German word describing the amount of beer in a regulation mug, in modern times exactly . The same word is also often used as an abbreviation for ', the handled drinki ...

“ is an old unit of volume (approximately equivalent to 1.4 l), used for measuring mainly

beer Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from ce ...

, ''haus'' means a "house“ in German, but in the past it could also stand for the main living room of a house. Therefore, maashaus could be translated as a "beer house". Rooms Architecture articles needing attention Cultural history Brewing Renaissance architecture