The Bouwberg House

Bouwbergstraat 78, Brunssum

Oil painting of the Bouwberg cottage by Henk Bloebaum, 2011 — 'Vakwerkhuisje in Brunssum' — oil painting (50 × 40 cm) by Henk Bloebaum, January 24, 2011. Source: henkbloebaum.nl.

A Home Built in Exile

In the late 1860s, with the Franco-Prussian War on the horizon, Prussian military conscription was tightening its grip across the German states. Among those who fled was Gerard Schmalschläger (1845–1901), who crossed the border into the Dutch province of Limburg and settled on the Bouwberg hill in Brunssum.

Around 1870, Gerard built a small cottage from wood, straw, and clay along the forest path on the Bouwberg. The half-timbered house — one room deep, with whitewashed panels between dark oak beams — was finished by 1871, when he moved in with his family.

Local oral tradition remembers the builder as “Mathias” — a name that appears in community sources as Mathias Smalschläger or Schmalsläger. Research strongly suggests this was Gerard’s Rufname (call name), a common practice in 19th-century Germany where a person’s daily name differed from the first baptismal name recorded in civil documents. The timelines match exactly: Gerard married Maria Hubertina Notermans in Aachen in January 1869, and their first child was born in Brunssum in 1871 — the same year the cottage was completed. No other Schmalschläger patriarch appears in any Brunssum civil record. The variant spellings may have been deliberate, helping a fugitive from Prussian conscription stay hidden in his new Dutch homeland.

The Builder: Gerard Schmalschläger

Gerard had worked for the Count of Amstenrade, a local nobleman, and received oak beams as payment — the very timbers that would form the skeleton of his new home. The rest of the wood came from the same source.

Born on January 28, 1845 in Waldbrühl — a village near Waldbröl in the Oberbergischer Kreis, the ancestral homeland of the Schmalschläger family — Gerard was 24 years old when he married and 25 when he fled to Brunssum: precisely the age targeted by Prussian military conscription for the Franco-Prussian War.

Once settled on the Bouwberg, Gerard built a life from the trades common to rural Limburg’s itinerant merchants:

Rags and scrap metal — collected on daily rounds with a dog cart
Brushes and brooms — handcrafted from horse tails and pig hair, sold as far as Belgium
Bread and vlaaien — traditional Limburgish fruit pies, baked in his own bakhuis (bake house)

His wife Maria Hubertina and their children gathered firewood from the surrounding forests to fuel the open hearth and the bake house. It was a modest but self-sufficient existence on the edge of the Brunssum woods. Gerard died in Brunssum on March 13, 1901, at the age of 56.

The Schmalschläger family in front of their half-timbered cottage on the Bouwberg, circa 1910s — The Schmalschläger family at the Bouwberg cottage — one of the earliest known photographs of the Dutch branch.

The Cottage

The house at Bouwbergstraat 78 is a vakwerkbouw — a half-timbered construction technique with a history stretching back over 600 years in South Limburg. The method uses a load-bearing frame of oak beams, with the spaces between filled with a mixture of straw, clay, and loam, then whitewashed.

This building tradition, shared with the adjacent German Rhineland and Belgian Limburg, once dotted the landscape of southern Limburg. By the 20th century, most of these modest dwellings had been demolished or replaced. The Bouwberg cottage is one of the few surviving examples of this type of humble worker’s dwelling.

Known locally as het huisje van Duppessjurger — named after the Duppesjurger, Limburgish dialect for a door-to-door pottery peddler. One of the Schmalschlägers who lived here earned his living selling earthenware pots from house to house, and the nickname stuck to the cottage itself.

Historic postcard showing the Bouwberg cottage and road in Brunssum — A historic postcard captioned 'Brunssum Bouwberg' showing the half-timbered cottage along the road.

Unfortunately, the cottage has fallen into serious disrepair in recent years. Despite its protected status, structural damage is now extensive.

Current Condition →

A Rijksmonument

On February 21, 1967, the cottage was designated as a Rijksmonument — a nationally protected heritage site under Dutch law. It is registered as monument #11259.

The official description reads:

“Eenvoudig doch gaaf vakwerkhuis.”

“Simple yet well-preserved half-timbered house.”

The designation recognizes the building as a rare surviving example of the half-timbered dwellings that once characterized the Bouwberg and Oeloven neighborhoods of Brunssum. Its protected status ensures that the structure and its historical character are preserved for future generations.

The Family Continues

The cottage is the founding home of the entire Dutch Schmalschläger branch. Gerard and Maria Hubertina Notermans raised their family here, and their descendants remained associated with the Bouwberg address well into the 20th century.

Dutch Branch — LimburgSchmalschläger Family Tree

The last Schmalschläger to live in the cottage was Harry Schmalschläger. From this Bouwberg homestead, the family spread across Limburg and beyond — a story that began with a fugitive’s cottage built from oak beams and forest clay.

Location

Bouwbergstraat 78, Brunssum — the cottage sits in the Oeloven/Bouwberg neighborhood, in the southeastern corner of the Netherlands. The area lies between the Brunssummerheide nature reserve and the Schinveldse Bossen forests — a landscape of heath, woodland, and rolling hills that has changed little since Gerard first built his home here.