Graues Haus (Oestrich-Winkel)

The Grey house with the address Graugasse 8 is a Romanesque house in Winkel in the Rheingau. The today surrounded by vineyards building is located south of town on the Rhine and is separated from it since the 1950s by the federal highway 42. It was probably built in the second half of the 11th century and thus can be counted among the oldest Romanesque civil architecture in Germany.

History

An exact dating of the emergence of the building is problematic. Dendrochronological studies of the roof timbers show that these were defeated by 1075/78. Further, the construction spoils of the 9th - 11th Century used probably from the Imperial Palace in Ingelheim.

Older theories that the building is already allocated to the 9th century in its entirety, and served as living and dying house of the archbishop and scholar Rhabanus Maurus, are now considered obsolete. In contrast, in the present research outweighs the opinion that the Gray house was built as a family residence of Greiffenclau family, whose pedigree can be traced back to the year 1097. It served her up to the year 1330 as a residence, then as a house for employees of Castle Vollrads.

Over the centuries, the building remained virtually unchanged, only in the 17th century arose before the south side of an outbuilding. After a fire in 1964, the Grey house by the then owner Erwein Count Matuschka Greiffenclau was assessed using the State of Hesse, Rheingau - Taunus district and the community angle 1966/67, rebuilt in its old form.