by the Ernhaus whose main characteristic was a separation of living quarters from the livestock sheds. Present-day situation The Low German house is still found in great numbers in the countryside. Most of the existing buildings have, however, changed over the course of the centuries as modifications have been carried out. Those farmhouses that have survived in their original form are mainly to be found in open-air museums like the Detmold_Open-air_Museum (Westfälisches Freilichtmuseum Detmold) in Detmold and the Cloppenburg Museum Village (Museumsdorf Cloppenburg). The latter has set itself the task of uncovering rural historic buildings in Lower Saxony and documenting the most important examples accurately. For the state of Schleswig-Holstein the Schleswig-Holstein Open Air Museum (Schleswig-Holsteinisches Freilichtmuseum) in Kiel-Molfsee is the most important one with its large collection of Fachhallenhäuser and the like. Several of these buildings may also be found at the Kiekeberg Open Air Museum (Freilichtmuseum am Kiekeberg) and the Volksdorf Museum Village (Museumsdorf Volksdorf) in Hamburg; Examples from the eastern part of the Hallenhaus region are displayed in the Schwerin-Mueß Open Air Museum (Freilichtmuseum Schwerin-Mueß). At the end of the 20th century old timber-framed houses, including the Low German house, were seen as increasingly valuable. As part of a renewed interest in the past, many buildings were restored and returned to residential use. In various towns and villages, such as Wolfsburg-Kästorf, Isernhagen and Dinklage, new timber-framed homes were built during the 1990s, whose architecture is reminiscent of the historic Hallenhäuser. The oldest still in use farm in North and Western Europe is the Armenhoef in the south of the Netherlands. See also Hösseringen Museum Village, particularly the museum house :Commons:Category:Kötnerhaus von1596 Vernacular architecture References Sources Richard Andree: Braunschweiger Volkskunde. Braunschweig 1901. Karl Baumgarten: Das deutsche Bauernhaus, eine Einführung in seine Geschichte vom 9. bis zum 19. Jh. Berlin 1980, Karl Baumgarten: Das Bauernhaus in Mecklenburg. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1965, 1970 (Neuaufl. u. d. Titel „Hallenhäuser in Mecklenburg“.) Karl Baumgarten: Landschaft und Bauernhaus in Mecklenburg. Berlin 1995, Konrad Bedal: Ländliche Ständerbauten des 15. bis 17. Jahrhunderts in Holstein und im südlichen Schleswig. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1977, Frank Braun, Manfred Schenkenberg: Ländliche Fachwerkbauten des 17. bis 19. Jahrhunderts im Kreis Herzogtum Lauenburg. Wachholtz, Neumünster 2001, Carl Ingwer Johannsen: Das Niederdeutsche Hallenhaus und seine Nebengebäude im Landkreis Lüchow-Dannenberg. Dissertation. Braunschweig 1973. Horst Lehrke: Das niedersächsische Bauernhaus in Waldeck (Beiträge zur Volkskunde Hessens, Band 8). 2. Auflage, Marburg 1967 Werner Lindner: Das niedersächsische