Heuerhäuser (tenant houses) are the residential buildings belonging to a farm for servants, particularly in the heathlands of northwest Germany up to East Frisia.
The servants (Heuerleute or Heuerlinge) were often the farmer's later-born sons, who had to leave the farm inheritance to their eldest brother. The Heuerhaus (tenant house) usually also included a piece of land, which was cultivated by the haymaker and whose proceeds belonged to him. This leasehold and additional manual labor often provided only a small income. Many men from these Heuerling families therefore regularly traveled to neighboring, wealthy Holland in the summer to mow grass or cut peat, or they hired themselves out as sailors on ships. When the USA actively recruited immigrants and workers in the early 19th century, it was primarily the former Hollandgänger (hunters) who built their own lives in the New World in the Oldenburg Münsterland and Osnabrück regions.
The Heuerhaus (tenant house) often resembled a small version of the farmhouse. There were usually no horse stables at the front of the house, but there was room for a cow on one side and a few pigs on the other. Especially in the Oldenburg Münsterland and the Lüneburg Heath, farmhands' houses were predominantly made of oak timber framing, lined with brick or clay, and resting on foundations of solid fieldstone. Since the farmhands usually did not own the house, and farmers generally used only cheap or recycled materials to build them and saved on repairs, living conditions in the cramped and cold houses were very basic. In parts of the area where farmhands were widespread, farmhands' houses were also called Kotten.