A house is never just a house. In the 20th century, the single-family home was the collective dream of a society that had to literally rebuild itself after the Second World War. There was a lack of living space, money and food, and labor anyway. Only land was cheap. Municipalities in Germany generously allocated areas for house construction, and building societies helped with the financing. Those who still could not afford it took out a so-called muscle mortgage and committed themselves to supporting the construction of a house in a residential area for a certain number of hours with their own labor. When you had paid for the hours, you got a house.
65 percent of Germans still dream of living in a single-family home. But:
