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From Fabian Schaar
Master stove builder Martin Streit from Obercunnersdorf remembers the six months in which he let his apprenticeship slip a little mischievously; and that too with his own father, he says with a twinkle in his eye. Back then, he was already on the verge of going to Canada to work - as evidenced by the landscape panorama and the maple flag on the van he now drives to his jobs as a stove fitter.
Times have changed, according to the motto: tiled stove instead of Canada. Master craftsman Streit and his apprentice traveled to Ostritz last week. Here, the pair refurbished a rustic tiled stove, moving it from one room to another. The two told SZ what appeals to them about their job - and why wood and coal stoves are back in fashion today.
Streit: "We rarely build anything for show"
The white tiled stove with its black metal flaps that Martin Streit and his apprentice have been working on over the past week is a real multifunctional appliance. It dates back to a time when induction hobs and Thermomix were still unheard of: in addition to the hotplates, the tiled stove has an oven and a warming compartment. There is even a built-in container in which water can be heated. This fell victim to the conversion work and has now been filled with sand. Instead, a tube has been added in which you could prepare dried fruit, for example. Martin Streit thinks so: Food even tastes better from a stove like this - if you know how to use it.
The family from Ostritz would definitely like to continue using the tiled buddy for cooking - alongside their normal stove. "We rarely build anything for show," says the stove builder. However, rustic kitchen stoves like the one in Ostritz are rather rare in the region. Martin Streit has also traveled to Bavaria, where such kitchen stoves are common. Before the Ostritz family moved in and turned the former kitchen into a children's room, an elderly woman had lived in the house. She used the stove well into old age, even when she was over ninety. Stove fitter Martin Streit can understand that, looking back to days gone by: "If you had something like that, you were already good." And even today, he often sees the sparkle in his customers' eyes when a stove is finished.
Family business with passion and goose feathers
Whether kitchen stove or storage stove: heating with coal or wood is back in fashion. Many families want to be more independent, for example from fluctuating gas prices. And they are prepared to pay for it: the family from Ostritz, for example, paid around 12,000 euros. A large storage stove can sometimes cost over 20,000 euros. In Ostritz, the metal parts of the stove also had to be remade. When Martin Streit talks about his work, he gets a little enthusiastic. A classic stove like this provides the healthiest warmth for almost 24 hours with one load of wood or coal. It's a different story with the widely used radiators: These would only swirl dry air even further.
Martin Streit was born with a passion for his profession: His family has been running Streit Ofenbau since 1922 - passed down from great-grandfather Alfred, to grandpa Heinz and finally to Martin Streit's father Christian. Even if his career path wasn't quite so straightforward: Martin Streit has been at the helm of the family business since 2016, two years after passing his master craftsman's examination. Today, he enthusiastically shows off his equipment as a stove fitter; the goose feathers, for example, with which you can get into every corner when cleaning the stove. Streit could certainly do with such enthusiasm: He can only dream of eight-hour days in his profession.
The apprentice also wants to make it to master craftsman
Martin Streit's apprentice's first name is just like his - but his surname is Burkhardt. The fact that the Streit family business might fall into other hands in the distant future doesn't seem to bother the master craftsman, on the contrary: "Without Martin, it would be thin on the ground," says Streit. And he has a special incentive: he was born into a family of craftsmen with many master craftsmen. He has been enthusiastic about the profession of stove builder ever since he started working for Streit during the vacations. He is now in his third year of training. His goal is to become a master craftsman. Martin believes that anyone who wants to become a stove fitter needs to be creative, be able to think spatially, have a strong will and, of course, be talented with their hands. Master craftsman Streit is pleased that his apprentice in Ostritz was once again able to show what he has learned. And he sums up what is important as a stove builder: "You have to want to do it."
