Zimmerer / Zimmerin (Carpenter — structural)

Structural timber: roofs, frames and, increasingly, whole buildings. An Anlage A trade riding the Holzbau boom as timber construction expands for carbon reasons — and the one trade in this repo that still sends its journeymen on the road for three years and a day.
Official title Zimmerer / Zimmerin
Protected title No — but Anlage A: self-employment needs the Meister
Category skilled-trades (Bauhauptgewerbe)
Typical qualification Duale Ausbildung, 3 years, Stufenausbildung
Examining body Handwerkskammer
Regulated Self-employment only
Last reviewed 2026-09

Zimmerer is not Tischler

The distinction is obvious in German and invisible in English, where both are “carpenter”, and it sends people to the wrong Ausbildung.

Zimmerer Tischler/Schreiner
Works on Structure — roofs, frames, load-bearing timber Fit-out — furniture, doors, windows, interiors
Where On site, outdoors, at height In a workshop, then installing
Tariff world Bauhauptgewerbe — BRTV-Bau, SOKA-BAU Ausbau / joinery agreements
Scale Buildings Rooms and objects
Both Anlage A; Meister for self-employment Anlage A; Meister for self-employment

If the work holds the building up, it is Zimmerer. If it goes inside the building, it is Tischler.

Because Zimmerer are Bauhauptgewerbe, everything in The Bauhauptgewerbe applies: SOKA-BAU holiday that travels between employers, the AEntG minimum wage, the working-time account, and a funded winter.

What the job involves

  • Dachstühle — designing, cutting and raising roof structures, still the trade’s core
  • Holzrahmen- und Holztafelbau — timber-frame walls and floors, increasingly prefabricated
  • Brettsperrholz (CLT) — cross-laminated panels for multi-storey structures, craned into place. The technology behind the Holzbau boom
  • Abbund — the cutting of structural timber, now largely CNC in an Abbundzentrum from a 3D model. A large part of modern Zimmerer work is digital
  • Sanierung — repairing historic Fachwerk and roof structures, the highest-craft end of the trade
  • Bauwerksabdichtung, Dämmung, Fassaden in timber, and often the roof covering where the firm does both
  • Holzschutz — constructive and chemical, and the building-physics knowledge behind it

The mix has shifted hard toward prefabrication: cut precisely in a hall, assemble fast on site. That is easier on the body and harder on the drawing.

The Walz

Zimmerer maintain the Wanderjahre — the journeyman years — more than any other German trade. A Geselle goes auf die Walz: three years and a day travelling, working for board and lodging, forbidden to come within a set distance of home, in the black corduroy Kluft that is still a recognised sight in German towns.

It is voluntary, a minority pursuit, and genuinely practised. For a foreign reader it is worth knowing for two reasons: you will meet people who have done it, and it signals something real about the trade’s culture — mobility, craft pride, and a status among the Handwerk trades that the pay alone does not explain.

Pay

Market estimate, positioned against the Bau tariff. The AEntG Bau-Mindestlohn is the floor; it is perishable and is not quoted here.

Stage Gross/month
Geselle, entry €3,100 – €3,700
Experienced €3,600 – €4,400
Vorarbeiter / Polier €4,200 – €5,200
Meister, employed €4,400 – €5,600
Abbund / CAD-Konstruktion (Holzbautechniker) €4,000 – €5,200

Plus the Bauhauptgewerbe additions: away-site Auslösung, the 13th month, and SOKA-BAU’s holiday and supplementary pension. Minus the winter months on Saison-Kurzarbeitergeld.

Construction apprenticeship pay is the highest in Germany, and Zimmerer sits inside that — see Ausbildung.

Demand and outlook

The strongest structural story of any trade in this repo.

Timber construction is expanding because concrete and steel are carbon-intensive and timber stores carbon. That is not a fashion; it is policy. Building codes have been changed — the Landesbauordnungen progressively raised the building classes in which timber structures are permitted, opening multi-storey and public buildings to a material previously restricted to houses. Public procurement increasingly favours it.

The consequences for the trade:

  • Multi-storey timber is now built in German cities, and it needs Zimmerer who can work from engineered models
  • Prefabrication moves work into halls, extends the season and reduces weather exposure
  • The skills premium has moved toward CAD, Abbund programming and building physics alongside the traditional craft
  • Renovation and Aufstockung — adding storeys to existing buildings in lightweight timber — is a large and growing niche in cities that cannot expand outward

The general construction weakness applies here too, and firms are small. But of the six Bauhaupt trades in this repo, this is the one whose long-run direction is clearly upward.

Foreign candidates

  1. To work: no recognition required.
  2. For the visa: yes — Handwerkskammer equivalence for §18a.
  3. To run a business: the Meisterbrief, or the alternatives in the Meister file.
  4. Language: B1–B2. Site coordination, crane signalling, structural drawings and safety briefings.
  5. Visa: §18a, §16a, or §26(2) BeschV.
  6. Timber-frame practice differs by country. German building physics — vapour control, airtightness, Holzschutz — is where equivalence assessments usually find the gap, and it is worth studying before an interview as well as before an assessment.

Pitfalls

  • You are in the Bauhauptgewerbe. SOKA-BAU, the working-time account and the winter all apply; claim the holiday balance if you leave.
  • Working at height without proper protection is the trade’s main killer, exactly as in roofing.
  • The digital half is not optional any more. A Zimmerer who cannot read and work from a 3D model is limited to the site end of the trade.
  • Small firms, variable quality. A good Holzbau firm is an excellent employer; a poor one is a back injury and a winter of Kurzarbeit.
  • The Walz is a serious commitment, not a gap year, and it has rules.

Sources

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