Lehnhaus Berntges

Further down the Vogtsgasse is the half-timbered house number 2. The house was still plastered in 1920, but dates back in its basic structure to approx. 1550, which is visible through the house symbol of the Salzfass‘ family set in stone in the wall of the house. Shortly after 1700 the trader Johann Theodor Berntges had it constructed as a service building. He was the great-grandson of Peter Berntges, the builder of the „Sternenburg“. The marriage of the son, Heinrich Theodor Berntges, to Isabella Pfefferkorn, initiated the connection of the two famous Unkel families Berntges/Eschenbrender. The daughter Maria Catharina Berntges married the trader Franz Vogts, after whom the street is named. Franz Vogts rescued the town from its terrible debts after lootings by both the French and the Habsburg occupants after 1792.

He vastly reconstructed the „Lehnhaus Berntges“ around 1800 and added a brickwork base floor and enlarged it with a big annex. The beautiful half-timbered house shows a partly protruding upper floor on the eaves side. Vogts had a tobacco factory, a distillery and wholesale grocery. In 1844 the Aachen factory owner Victor Haan bought this estate and numerous vineyards at auction. After World War I the prosecutor Max Hattingen bought the property and had the house fully refurbished for various families, amongst others, Gustav Großjean, who had his cobbler‘s workshop here. In 1967 Karl and Christel Korf bought the building and began a complete conversion of the building into a guesthouse.