Stemmen

Stemmen, specifically Stemmen 58, is the ancestral home of the Junkermeiers in the district of Varenholz in Lippe, Germany.

History

The earliest written mention of Stemmen is in the year 1151, when both Stemmen and Erder are mentioned in the Herford property register. In 1488 there were 35 inhabitants at Stemmen. By 1590 the figure had risen to 301. In 1835 the population was up to 676, but by 1880 it was down to 606, and continued down to 567 in 1939. In 1948, after World War II, the population reached 943, of which 33.7 percent were refugees. In 1962 Stemmen had a population of 816, of which 751 were Evangelical Reformed in their religion.

Stemmen 58

When an ancestral home is referred to with the name of the town followed by a number, as in Stemmen 58, the number is not a street address. Rather, the homes in a village were numbered in the chronological order in which they were built. If a house was destroyed and then rebuilt, the new house retained the original number of the old house. Title to the house generally carried with it the ownership of a small tract of farm land within walking distance of the village. The land and the village house were inherited or conveyed as a unit. Often there would be several very small pieces of land, scattered around the area, which made up a family's unit of land. According to the custom in Lippe, the name of the combined property remained the same for centuries. When a man married the heiress to such property and moved onto her property to make it his home, he adopted the family name of her property, which had been named for its first recognized owner. The original family name of the property continued until the property was sold, at which time it generally, but not always, took the name of the new purchaser. Thus it is that Stephen Böke became Stephen Wiethaupt, or Stephen Böke-Wiethaupt, upon his marriage into the family at Stemmen 58.

Fire of 1908

Stemmen 58 was to remain the family home for many generations. In the summer of 1908, under the ownership of Christian Friedrich Konrad Junkermeier II, the original house caught on fire and was destroyed. Christian II had gone to Rinteln that day. His wife had cooked barley groats and plums for lunch. The meal was ready at 11:00 AM, so she took the children out for a walk. People yelled to her “Your house is on fire!” She had time to carry out the clothing from the closets. (She told these details to Rieke Fritzemeier, who retold them in a letter to Christian’s daughter, Henriette Junkermeier Fritzemeier). While the new house and barn were being rebuilt, the Junkermeier family lived on the Bökemeier farm. It was rebuilt the same year. The old home had been the traditional style, with the house and barn under the same roof. When it was rebuilt, the house and barn were built separately. A Junkermeier family still (1983) lives in Stemmen 58 (Anneliese, widow of Erich Junkermeier).

Gallery

19th-century Lippe; the village of Stemmen is in the district of Varenholz (northern district A on this map):