What does “Fachwerkhaus” mean in German?

A Fachwerkhaus is the timber-framed house you picture when you picture an old German town: dark exposed beams with plaster or brick filling the gaps between them. The word spells out the look. Here Fach isn’t the “school subject” or “drawer” you meet first — it means a compartment or panel, and Werk is structure or framework. So the whole thing is a “compartment-framework house”: the name is just the building method.

On its own, Fachwerk names the technique — the load-bearing wooden lattice with masonry infill. Once you hear Fach as “compartment,” related words fall into line: a Schließfach is a locker, a Postfach a post-office box. The clip’s star is a house in Eisenach barely over two metres wide, so narrow that locals nicknamed it das Handtuch — “the towel.”