German court orders demolition of house for being 36cm too high

Telegraph

13-05-2025

German authorities have ordered the demolition of a Bavarian house because the roof is 36 centimetres too high.
Jens Riediger, the house's tenant, says he was devastated after local officials claimed the roof and other irregularities were serious violations of building regulations.
The Bavarian Administrative Court in Munich warned that its ruling is 'binding and final', ending a four-year court battle between the developers and local authorities.
The house is one of three such cases under demolition orders in Upper Bavaria, despite the region suffering from a housing shortage, according to local media.
Mr Riediger, a 57-year-old engineer, was bitterly disappointed by the decision. He told Germany's Bild newspaper: 'Living space worth millions of euros is going to be destroyed. And this only because the roof is 36cm too high, and because a garage was built instead of a Carport [roofed shelter] and the ground was filled in.'
The Bavarian resident of Wolfratshausen, south of Munich, also claimed there are other houses in the village with taller roofs than his home.
His family has got some time to find a new place to live, with the demolition crew not set to arrive until spring 2026.
'We'll have moved out by then. We now live in 180 square meters, it will not be easy to find a house like that for the same rent,' he told Bild.
The row over the height of the building's roof has dragged on since 2021, when the developers offered to remedy the problem by removing the property's regulatory defects.
The offer was reportedly rejected by the local court, which instead looked into the possibility of turning the building into a women's shelter, an idea that was also abandoned.
A spokesman for Wolfratshausen's district office defended the decision in a statement to Bild, arguing that the house had many serious defects.
'The significant deviations [from planning regulations] consisted of embankments, higher walls, roofs with different pitches and the construction of a garage instead of a Carport,' they said.
It is not the first time that a German house has fallen foul of planning rules that some might view as draconian.
In 2014, a German pensioner was ordered to tear down her home because it had been built in 1939 without planning permission, due to the chaos of the Second World War breaking out.
The pensioner resisted the ruling and launched a long court battle, which ended in victory after local officials backed down on the demolition order.