The magnificent and spacious merchant's house was built in 1664 by Friedrich Dickmann, a wine merchant from Soest, and his wife Elisabeth Hanxleden on the Hellweg, the important military and trade route. Around the early 19th century, the large entrance gate was replaced by a small residential door. The two former gate uprights were moved closer and thus became door uprights, on which the following house inscription has been preserved: F D Anno 1664 E H. This records the initials of the builder and the year of construction.
The builder must have been wealthy and confident, as he built such an elaborate house in the period after the Thirty Years' War, which was still characterized by several armed conflicts in Geseke. After his death, the house was occupied by his son Dr. iur. utriusque Friedrich Dickmann. When he became electoral judge of the Geseke court in 1703, he resigned from the Geseke town council.
After the house had changed hands in the 18th century, the Rotgeri family finally came into possession of the house through marriage and ran the farm from here. At the urging of the local history association, the town of Geseke acquired the building in 1951, which had retained its character as a bourgeois merchant's house and much of its furnishings despite many changes.
The Dickmann House, with its room layout and interior furnishings, is a listed building. It represents the type of upscale bourgeois house with an elaborate hall at the rear end above a half sunken, vaulted cellar. The wealthier merchants in the towns of southern and eastern Westfalen also retained this bourgeois form of the three-aisled Low German hall house with the high longitudinal roof in the central nave until well into the 18th century. According to the building structure, it is a four-column building. A low storey rises above the so-called four-storey box, which was originally used as a storage room and is therefore called a granary. Before the house was rebuilt, if you entered through the wagon-wide and wagon-high entrance gate, you would find yourself in a 4 m wide and 5 m high entrance hall. To the front right was the parlor, which was enlarged towards the street by the utility room, which no longer exists today. The utlucht was windowed on three sides and provided a constant view of the street.
The culture of the middle and lower classes of the population - the peasants, craftsmen and farmers - is documented in the Hellweg Museum by a considerable number of exhibits. A good overview is provided by two rooms on the top floor, one of which is dedicated to agriculture and the other to crafts. The agricultural room is divided into the sections of arable farming, animal husbandry, flax processing, domestic economy and transportation equipment. The arrangement of the objects in the farming section corresponds to the activities carried out during the farming year: wooden plow, Egge, sowing tub, sickles, scythes, drag rakes, flails, tub mill, etc.
There are five more or less complete workshops in the craft room: Basket maker, blacksmith, clog maker, saddler and cooper. The rooms also contain an old Geseke town scale, a wooden lathe, a rope wheel and a display case with artistic locksmith's work.
