According to UNESCO, the first proven thatched roofs existed as early as 4000 BC: on pile dwellings on Lake Constance. Today, thatched roofs can be found mainly in northern Germany near the coast, where reeds, popularly called "thatch" in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein and "Rohr" in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, once grew naturally in moors. In 2014, the German UNESCO Commission declared the thatched roofing trade an intangible cultural heritage. "Thatched roofs probably account for a low single-digit percentage amount in relation to the totality of all German buildings," says Bernd Redecker, supervisor of the Reet expert committee in the Central Association of the German Roofing Trade. He estimates the number of thatched roofing at around 150.

Old farmhouses and mills are traditionally covered with thatch. Increasingly, tourist resorts are relying on natural building materials to attract guests, says Tom Hiss, Managing Director of Hiss Reet GmbH from Bad Oldesloe in Schleswig-Holstein. Hiss is the oldest company selling thatch in Germany and is the market leader with a share of 40 percent. "We are partners of the roofers and supply the building material," says Hiss, who heads the company in the sixth generation.

In 1833, the navigator Matthias Hiss founded the company. Agricultural products such as grain were traded on the Baltic Sea. "Since the 1920s, thatch was included," says Hiss. Until the eighties, only thatch, which grew in Germany, was sold. According to the managing director, a "wrongly implemented nature conservation" and the associated administrative difficulties in the thatched harvest have put an end to this. "In recent decades, nature conservation has been implemented purely dogmatically according to the motto of leaving nature to its own devices, regardless of whether it makes sense or not," says Hiss. "So the harvest time until the end of February was handled very rigidly. Even if everything was still under ice and snow at the end of February and the harvest could have continued well without nesting birds, the farmers had to stop harvesting."

15 percent of the demand for thatch is still growing locally

The company Hiss began to harvest thatch, first in Hungary, then in Turkey and from the nineties in Romania. "About 15 percent of the demand for thatch in Germany still grows locally, so we are importers," reports Hiss. However, in the sense of nature conservation, there are more and more efforts today to put moors in Germany under water again and to grow reeds in them. "In the meantime, it has been found that the management of reed beds is good for the climate. Both the moors and later the thatched roof serve as CO2 reservoirs," explains Hiss.

It owns production companies in Mersin in Turkey with around 30 employees and in the Danube Delta in Romania with around 50 employees. The thatch is harvested, cleaned and bundled before being shipped to Germany, Holland, Denmark, England and Ireland. According to the managing director, the export quota is around 40 percent; Denmark is the largest sales market.