371 – Day Labourer's House from Detligen/Radelfingen Berne, 1760

The house belonged to poor day labourers, called “Tauner”. Their farm was small: Little land, perhaps a cow, a few sheep or goats. Compared to the luxury of the big flower garden of the house from Ostermundigen across the way, the vegetable plot of this house from Detligen clearly betrays the situation of its occupants.

Livestock and land form the wealth and prestige of a farmer and he displays them with pride. The labourer family possessed only a fraction of that, although they did have rights to a garden and pastures on the commons. Smallholders often worked for days at a time on the land of rich farmers for mean wages. In order to survive, children, women and grandparents had to pursue all kinds of work. In the village of Detligen, 15 kilometres (9 miles) west of Berne, there were 15 day labourer and farmer families in 1808.

The last occupants of the house in the 1950’s were an old married couple, indebted farmers, and, at the start of the 1960’s, the invalid basket weaver Fritz Schori. The dilapidated house was re-erected in the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum in 1975.