In Imperial Prussia, anyone could build their house in the area without restrictions or anything like that, as long as they owned the land. This is exactly what the doctor Dr. Niemann did in 1908, after he had bought part of the meadow land in Holzminden's Hasselbachtal from the Holzminden farmers. The doctor's heirs sold the refuge to the forestry administration - it served as accommodation for forest workers for a while. From 1947 to 1955, the seven-member family of local author Hannes Blieschies lived here. The author describes this time wonderfully vividly, with charm and wit, in the chapter "Niemann's Villa" of his book "In the Solling Forests", although the chapter is only an excerpt from the book "Forest Years - a Youth in the Solling" - this childhood and youth in the "Villa" clearly had a lasting (in a positive sense) impact on Mr. Blieschies.
As can be read, the large balustrade gives the house a unique character. Mr. Blieschies compares it to a farmhouse in the Black Forest. You can see that the little house is actually very small and only gains an apparent size, or at least a real grandeur, through the balustrade. In any case, it is hard to imagine how seven people lived together and next to each other in the few small rooms for eight years.
Due to the lack of an electricity connection, the Blieschies family had to live by the light of the kerosene lamp. The smell of kerosene permeated all the furnishings, and even the school lunch seemed to taste of the "booze". The residents' repeated requests for an electricity connection were always rejected by the forestry administration, with the comment that Goethe had also written his Faust by candlelight.
The water supply was ensured by a hydraulic ram with a strike valve, the latter hammering through the valley like the heartbeat of the villa, but much to the father's chagrin, it kept stopping.
Even the lack of heating on the upper floor and the outhouse outside did not stop our local author from closing his chapter on Niemann's villa with a glowing statement about the "paradise" in the Solling Forest, which was the envy of many of his schoolmates who had to cope in the city and the difficult post-war conditions.