The UHB, dealers or the industry in the media

A report in the current Monumente issue of December 2022, the magazine of the German Foundation for Monument Protection. Especially step 8 describes the sense of doing in an impressive way. Worth reading!

Our member Historische Baustoffe Ostalb with two large articles in the Geislinger Zeitung from 19.10.2022 and the Schwäbische Zeitung from 10.11.2022. Both articles can be viewed or downloaded as PDF files.

Our member Martin Häberle can be seen with his company Historische Baustoffe Ostalb on Wednesday, 21.9.2022 at 18.15 in the SWR. For the series made in Südwest the SWR accompanied him with a camera…

SWR visited our member Jürgen Zmelty and produced a 30-minute report on the sustainability of historic building materials.

In painstaking handwork, Mr. and Mrs. Prenzel from the company "Historische Baustoffe Prenzel" together with their team remove old buildings. Of the salvaged building materials, almost 60% can be reused. Whether historic plain tiles, windows, beams, doors or clinker bricks - they give all these building materials a second life through salvage and resale. It is important to Prenzels that builders as well as architects should generally consider recycling more. Only in this way can new buildings be designed more ecologically in the future.

Building materials dealer Gerd Bose and his son Nico take care of the dismantling of old buildings. In the process, they collect building materials, some of which are several hundred years old. You have to live with small defects or "quirks". But that is simply part of the old material. Especially now, in times of raw material scarcity, it is worth thinking about reuse. Moreover, reuse also saves CO2, because bricks, for example, do not have to be re-fired.

Sabine & Alexander Prenzel have their large building materials warehouse in 27336 Rethem, about 30 km from the Lüneburger Heide. As building material hunters, they search for, collect and sell historical materials such as wall stones, half-timbered beams, beaver tails, iron windows, doors, etc. together in elaborate manual work. In the NDR documentary bay Nora Stoewer, they organise the dismantling of an old three-storey farmhouse.

It is a small but convinced fan community: renovators and builders who use historic building materials in their projects. A certain fascination emanates from building materials and building elements that have already been used once. The motive is often to preserve history. Specialized dealers sell the corresponding goods.

Lübeck is known for its brick architecture. Because of the beautiful facades, tourists come to visit the Hanseatic city, which has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site for a good 30 years. Mathias Jürgensen, who has his exhibition warehouse about 1.5 hours away from Lübeck, deals in old bricks. The bricks are removed, cleaned and palletized in elaborate manual work. In the process, each brick is a piece of building culture. Around 100,000 bricks of different types - all from Schleswig Holstein - are stored in his brick yard.

"Off-the-peg" houses as well as individually planned houses experience an individualization and their personal charm through historical building elements. This is an option that many a house builder likes to fall back on. "In a mix of styles, new and old face each other in a complementary way and enhance the other," describes Elias - 1st board member of the Entrepreneur Association Historical Building Materials e.V. - this architectural and emotionalizing stylistic device.