Salzkotten saltworks

Graduation tower in Salzkotten, built in 1997 for the city's 750th anniversary

The Saline Salzkotten was probably founded in the 11th century Saline in North Rhine-Westphalia Salzkotten in the former Bishopric of Paderborn .

history

The saltworks in the Middle Ages under the administration of the Hardehausen monastery

The first mention of the salt water source at Salzkotten occurs in the sources from the year 1011 on the occasion of the donation of the county of Haholt by King Heinrich II to Bishop Meinwerk of Paderborn . The oldest documented reference to commercial salt production in Salzkotten goes back to 1160. This year, the bishop gave Bernhard I of Oesede the Cistercian monastery Hardehausen three Siedehütten in Salzkotten. For the year 1294 a Salzkottener Sälzerverein is documented, which already owned shares in the common salt water well of Salzkotten. From this point on, the number of salt works located in Salzkotten was always 24.

In the course of the 13th century, the bishops of Paderborn finally lost their actual ownership of the salt works through further donations of salt works, although Bishop Otto II and later Bishop Theodor von Ittern attempted to build their own salt works at the beginning of the 14th century However, this failed because of the bitter resistance of the Hardehausen monastery as the greatest salt lord of the time and led to the sovereign privilege that the bishops were not allowed to build a new salt works. The ownership structure of the Salzkottener Saline has been fragmented more and more over the centuries through numerous onward gifts and pledges. Ownership of the individual salt works was also extremely fragmented from the start. There were half and quarter salt works. In 1307, for example, the monastery of the clerical virgins in Wormeln bought a quarter of the salt works from the Salzkotten citizen Hagedorn, and in 1373 the same monastery received a second quarter as a gift from the priest Ludolph von Hagen, who had previously received a gift. For the year 1354 it is documented that the Salzkotten citizen Hermann, who had inherited half a salt works from his father Arnold, gave his share to the parish church Salzkotten. The other half of this salt works in turn belonged to the Benedictine monastery Gokirche in Paderborn . These landlords, who had the actual ownership rights, thus formed the dominium directum as the upper owner of the Salzkotten saltworks.

As in other salt pans, the shareholder structure in Salzkotten was very small. The ownership rights in Salzkotten related exclusively to the brine, while the technical equipment such as boiling pans and boiling huts were in the hands of the salt works or salters. The upper owners had thus passed on their shares to the Sälzer. The production of the salt was not carried out by the owners themselves, but by the salters, who were obliged to keep the buildings and equipment in good working order. In return for the right to extract salt, the salters had to deliver a certain amount of salt to the feudal lord each year and pay for the wine when they took over.

Association of the salters in the 16th century

Although the bishop no longer had his own share rights in the saltworks, he still retained considerable influence on the Salzkotten saltworks, on the one hand through his right to confirm the company constitution of the salters, and on the other through the economic policy interventions that directly affected the salt trade . The salters from Salzkotten formed a new guild in 1526 after their old documents had been destroyed by fire. As a rule, the newly established salters' associations received statutes from the responsible sovereign, which regulated their works constitution, the details of boiling rights and often their own jurisdiction . In this year of the re-establishment, Bishop Erich von Braunschweig-Grubenhagen confirmed the new statutes to the Sälzern von Salzkotten. The court, which met in the presence of the count and chaired by a foreman, negotiated cases involving violations of the statutes or other offenses in the salt works. The salters themselves, their servants, but also third parties came into question as defendants if they were guilty of various offenses against the salt pans. Both prison sentences and fines were imposed as punishments, half of which the episcopal sovereign was entitled to. At the head of the college was the aforementioned foreman, who was newly elected from the ranks of the Sälzer every year and who independently managed and supervised the entire operation. As a condition for membership in the college, the statutes stipulated that every Sälzer had to be born free and in wedlock and be a citizen and resident of the city of Salzkotten:

"Item and firstly: Whoever wants to become tom Saltcotten here and will, and if the older agreements with geneten andt wants to be broke, should be thom first here tom Saltcotten a citizen and live, real, right, free born, nobody's own, or jenig math to belong and good rumors ” .

In further paragraphs of the regimental order of 1526, admission conditions, formulas , obligations of the members and criminal offenses as well as penalties were regulated. An important point of the statutes, which was responsible for the fact that not only the owner structure but also the operator structure remained fragmented, stipulated that a tome was only allowed to operate one salt works. The admission to the college took place after explicit and formal confirmation, the payment of an entrance fee, the performance of the citizen's oath in front of the foreman and the submission of a Meier letter and a so-called tractament.

In addition to the formal conditions of admission, there were economic ones: for a less wealthy citizen it was impossible to become a saltman, because the purchase of wine associated with the salt delivery, the high maintenance costs, the expenses for company expansion and reinvestment in the company depreciation as well as the annual taxes were all financial The possibilities of the poorer strata of the city far exceeded. On the other hand, the profits that flowed from the factories for the salters must have been very high, since the members of the board were among the richest and most respected citizens of Salzkotten and also openly showed this wealth in events in the pancake hut on the market square next to the pan forge , for example at salt festivals, theater evenings and dance events, to which the officers of the Paderborn garrison were later invited. As with the admission, the college could also decide on the permanent or also temporary exclusion of a saliner if he had committed serious violations of the statutes. The Salzkotten saltworks was thus a typical partnership saltworks. The exclusive right of use (dominum utile) lay with the 24 salt pans of the salt works. They were also solely authorized, based on an agreement with Bishop Heinrich IV of Saxony-Lauenburg, to trade in salt within the city of Salzkotten:

"In any case, the agreement can expressly mean that nobody should act or change the Saltzwerk, only the twenty-four sentences, therefore nobody has to sell Saltz in the place of Saltzcotter, or have it sold on his account, he is then the twenty-four seltzer one, that by booting or selling, that Saltz is not sold by the second hand ” .

Already in the 16th century the Sälzers were granted a monopoly right to trade in salt through episcopal intervention, at least for the city of Salzkotten , such a concession is not documented for the period of the Paderborn Monastery. While for the period up to the end of the 16th century the individual salters probably actually operated the boiling process and salt production themselves, it has been documented since 1610 that they also had their own employees. The dependent employees of the entire salt works consisted of 24 smelter and salt workers and 16 delicatessen workers. Joint employees of the college were the secretary , whose task it was to take minutes of the college meetings as well as to write the entire bookkeeping of the work, as well as the salt knife, who had to invite the individual salters to meetings in the boiling houses on behalf of the foreman Supervise and measure the salt on delivery.

In 1588 a sovereign tried again to break the privileges and monopoly of the salt lords and salters in salt production. The Paderborn prince-bishop Dietrich von Fürstenberg built a new salt works in the Sültsoid near Salzkotten, which he intended to operate on his own. While the salt lords stood by and did nothing this time, the people of Salz not only destroyed the entire building, but also went to the Imperial Court of Justice of Speyer , referring to their legal rights , before which a settlement between the sovereign and the college was not reached until 1610: the prince-bishop renounced on any entrepreneurial activity in the area of salt production and once again certified the salt workers the sole right to manage all brine springs in and around Salzkotten; In return, the people of Sälzer undertook to pay the sovereign a one-off sum of 500 Rhenish gold guilders .

Fall of the Salzkotten saltworks

Although the town of Salzkotten was largely destroyed during the Thirty Years' War , the salt works themselves were completely spared the consequences of the war. Only the Sälzer archive was lost during the sacking of Salzkotten by the Swedes . It is documented that the Salzkotten saltworks delivered to Arolsen in Waldeckschen at that time . The towns of Warburg , Brakel , Steinheim , Nieheim and parts of Ravensburg were also part of the salt works' sales market in the 17th century . For the year 1654 can also be for the Bishopric of Paderborn of the sovereign for the Saline essence in Salzkotten recorded the first engagement: To secure a paragraph protection for the domestic salt production of the heavily battered by the Thirty Years' War, the city, the Prince Bishop of Paderborn, issued Dietrich Adolf von der Recke , at the request of the Mayor of Salzkotten, a ban on the import of foreign salt and thus gave the Salzkotten Saltworks a salt monopoly for its own market. Since the Salzkotten salt met the needs of the bishopric in terms of quantity and quality, this measure was intended to ensure that the city recovered from the devastation of the war and that there was no flow of money abroad; these thoughts came from the spirit of mercantilist industrial policy.

In fact, essential elements of the German form of mercantilism , cameralism , are to be rediscovered here: The sovereign intervention is not limited to fiscal goals, such as avoiding the outflow of own funds into neighboring German states, but also pursues two other purposes with the monopoly decree. Since the diocese's own production met the needs of the diocese, the aim was to process all raw materials in the country itself and to achieve economic independence in a closed economic system. On the other hand, the measure clearly served the basic idea of economic policy: to increase general prosperity, in the concrete case to increase the welfare of the city of Salzkotten, which was damaged during the war.

The prince-bishop's monopoly for the Sälzer could not be maintained for two reasons. On the one hand, due to its much lower price, foreign salt still reached the prince-bishopric. In particular, the salt from a salt works in the Oberwald district, which was inferior but much cheaper, made the Salzkottener Sälzers harder due to tough competition. On the other hand, the Salzkotten salt works was not able to continuously supply the more distant towns in the Oberwald district, Warburg, Brakel, Steinheim and Nienheim, with a sufficient amount of salt from its own production. Repeated bans and interventions by the sovereign, but this time with the simultaneous request to the Salzkottener Salzer to remedy the misallocation in the Oberwald district, were the result. But even this ordinance was not suitable to remedy the deficiencies in supply and the breach of the Paderborn salt monopoly. In the opinion of the author, there are two main reasons for this. On the one hand, the economic policy of the Paderborn sovereign, manifested in the monopoly decree, was lacking in consistency: Although the Prince-Bishop dictated the isolation of the sales market of the Salzkotten Saltworks for the reasons mentioned above and ordered a supply of all parts of his territory, at the same time he left the sales-related obstacles and the The price-regulating competitive situation, which was due to the incomplete infrastructure of his country and the technical backwardness of the Salzkotten salt works, was disregarded. The towns in the Oberwald district to be supplied were far away and there was a lack of good transport routes to get there. There was no prince-bishop's infrastructure policy to remedy this situation and to accompany the Paderborn salt trade policy - at least the sources are silent about it.

The technical backwardness resulted on the one hand from the operating constitution of the Salzkotten salt works and on the other hand from the lack of investment support from the sovereign. The works council had three basic barriers to large investments . First of all, the group of business owners (shareholders) was not identical to the group of operators (Sälzer). The various factors of production were therefore in different hands: the brine with the shareholders , the operating resources with the salt workers. Uniform management, which came to joint investment decisions, is hardly to be expected in Salzkotten as early as the 17th century due to the number of shareholders and the number of salters organized as partners. In addition, a corporate function that was essential for successful business activity was also in the third hand: The sovereign essentially specified the entrepreneurial function of sales through his salt trading policy. In view of such a works constitution structure, there was probably no investment incentive, such as the one that had given the Unna-based entrepreneurs von Buttel, von Rödinghausen and von Büren by taking advantage of economic phases. A second major reason for the lack of future-oriented investments was probably the restriction of the shareholder's rights of disposal. The shareholder's right of disposal over the salt works was de facto restricted over the course of time because the operating investments of the Sälzer did not become the property of the owner. In the event of the death of a saliner, this meant that the value of the facilities had to be paid to the heirs before a remake could even take place. Although the Meier was obliged throughout his life to keep the boiling systems in good, usable condition, technical innovations such as new graduation and leakage works, which he had paid for, remained legally his property.

Such a treatment of the company's own capital and a continuous outflow of money meant for the Salzkotten saltworks and a continuous financial weakening of the owners. The provision in the statutes of the Salzkotten salters' association that no salter was entitled to lease the further share that became vacant due to death as long as any Meierstätt heirs were present, in addition to the above-mentioned fragmentation of the owner structure, becomes a constantly advancing fragmentation of the operator structure have led. Archbishop Heinrich IV of Sachsen-Lauenburg had contractually stipulated this bad habit , which previously existed only as a common law , in the collegiate statutes, according to which the heirs could be co-sponsored against an appropriate payment.

In addition, in the 17th century, following the settlement before the Reich Chamber of Commerce in Speyer in 1610, Theodors von Fürstenberg's approval to the Sälzer to make changes to the salt works, if these contributed to the optimization of production, contributed significantly to the dissolution of one clear dividing line between shareholders and operators and above that to a further fragmentation of the shareholder structure. Before 1610, all ownership of the salt works had so far been at least exclusively in the hands of the salt lords, but now facilities had been built, some of which also belonged to the salt workers themselves. As a result, no one could take over a salt works who did not take over the shares of their predecessor in the innovations. Finally, after the Thirty Years' War, a third level was added in addition to the previous shareholder and operator levels, which made the management of the plants even more inconsistent: the statute laid down in earlier privileges, according to which only residents of Salzkotten could become Sälzer, was canceled. The reason for this was that many Sälzer no longer lived in the city, as many houses had been destroyed when Salzkotten was destroyed in 1633 and there was no living space. As a result, many tome, covered by a prince-bishop's decree, were represented by the so-called salt scribes, who were obliged to manage the salt works economically and technically. Although the Salzers still had to take the citizen's oath, this was not the case with their salt scribes, who also had a seat and vote in the Salzer College, while the Salzers themselves only had to appear once a year at the college's general meeting. In view of such structures as the juxtaposition and opposition of salt owners (shareholders), salters (shareholders and de jure operators) and salt writers ( de facto operators), it is obvious that the Salzkotten saltworks from the beginning of the 18th century to the 30s was a single torso. A concentration of rights to ownership and management of the saltworks, as was the case with the Unnaer saltworks, was therefore not possible in Salzkotten. The 24 small companies turned out to be disadvantageous for the introduction of technical innovations, especially grenadier and lickworks, which meant a larger investment that could only be raised by the salters.

In the middle and at the end of the 17th century , the Salzkotten saltworks were technically a good hundred years behind compared to other saltworks in Germany, especially compared to the Zahnschen saltworks near Unna . The construction of a straw and wood-fired leak factory is ultimately only documented for the year 1681. There was no heating at all with the much cheaper fuel hard coal . There is therefore a certain justification for assuming the shyness of the individual salters, salt scribes and financially burdened shareholders as well as their disagreement as the reason for the technical backwardness of Salzkotten. It can also be assumed that the backwardness of the technical methods of the settlement, the use of expensive fuels and the inconsistency of the operational management meant cost disadvantages, which meant that the Salzkotten saltworks was unable to compete with other saltworks solely on the basis of price. The lack of an investment-promoting or at least protecting prince-bishop's policy did the rest.

Works constitution and management

initial situation

In the 18th century, not much changed in the described conditions of the works constitution and management of the Salzkotten salt works. Salzkotten remained a purely partnership-based salt works until the end of the century. At the beginning of the 18th century, 18 of the 24 shares mentioned were now in clerical and 6 in secular hands: Hardehausen Monastery (7 shares), Abdinghof Monastery (2 shares), Busdorf chapter (2 shares), Jesuit college (2 shares), monastery Willebadessen (1 share), Brenkhausen Monastery (1 share), Gehrden Monastery (1 share), Gaukirche Paderborn (1 share), Paderborn Cathedral Chapter (1 share), Count of Westphalia (4 shares), Prince of Waldeck (1 share) and The von Spiegel family in Klingenberg (1 share). The Sälzer Ordinance from 1700 even provided that the number of 24 could not be reduced. Nonetheless, the list of shareholders described above makes it clear that ownership was already concentrated more and more and in an increasingly unequal distribution among individual wealthy shareholders. The prince-bishop himself did not own any shares at that time. The proportional ownership continued to refer only to the brine springs and not to systems and equipment. There was still the coexistence of shareholders, salters and salt scribes. Above all, the salters' college organized the production and sales relationships and had the - not always achieved - goal of ensuring economic equilibrium between the individual members. The salters continued to operate their own boiling pans and negotiated the salt obtained on their own account and at their own risk with the traveling salt traders, the so-called salt entrepreneurs. Article 31 of the new Sälzerordnung of 1700 regulated this sale in detail:

“Regarding the sale itself, we also seriously decree, and we want the sale to begin only outside the first pancake, and from each of the same salters 50 mollen one hundred mollen saltzes are continued, but outside the order no saltz sold, but the buyers as well as the sellers should be instructed to behave according to this order with the sellers and dump "

As a result, this meant that the sale of salt was transferred to the next hut when the salt sales quota of the previous hut was exhausted. If there was no longer enough salt in a pancake hut that was allowed to sell in the order in which it was sold, the sale continued to the next pancake hut in that order. The Salzer to whom this happened was only allowed to resume sales when the order was up to him again. So there were strict sales and marketing rules that made a really free and unrestricted sales economy for the individual salters quite impossible. This also had an impact on the actual production process. So it was the job of the salt knife to monitor future production limits. He made sure that no sälzer produced too much salt and directed the sales, which were determined by order.

At the same time, at the beginning of the 18th century, all salters still had to struggle with foreign competition and the foreign salt that was urging the country despite the import ban. The ban was repeatedly violated for the reasons mentioned above, so that the Sälzer often had reason to complain to their sovereign about it, in particular about the fact that large quantities of cheaper salt were imported and sold in the Dringenberg-Gehrden Oberamt. In 1739, the then sovereign, Prince-Bishop Clemens August I of Bavaria, was once again forced to reaffirm the import ban under severe threat of punishment and under threat of confiscation of any foreign salt. In a second step, he ordered the establishment of sales outlets in all cities and larger communities in order to deal with the problem of the problematic Oberwald district as early as the 17th century. The numerous repetitions of this sovereign act of mercantilist-cameralist economic policy from the years 1752, 1763, 1768 and 1769, in which the salt trade monopoly granted since 1654 and the importation of foreign salt are shown that neither he nor his successors ever seriously succeeded in this is criminalized.

Management and modernization under Clemens August I of Bavaria

A change in Salzkottener Saline beings only began around 1750 a, as the sovereign Clemens August , who is also Bishop of Munster was and where the construction of the cathedral 'rule Saltworks Societät and the development and expansion of Saline Godsend had operated, 2 - 4 and finally acquired 6 shares in the saltworks and thus became a shareholder and Sälzer himself. First of all, the new sovereign set about modernizing the salt works, in which he was involved, in order to increase the yield in line with a cameralistic fiscal policy. Clemens August - called "Seigneur de Cinq Eglises" because he was not only Bishop of Paderborn and Munster, but also Elector and Archbishop of Cologne as well as Bishop of Osnabrück and Hildesheim - always endeavored in his government activities to have an effective administrative organization Promotion of trade and commerce in order to increase the state welfare and thus its own income. The baroque prince of the church was dependent on high income due to his fivefold need for representation and also had his Paderborn court chamber operate a trade, commercial and fiscal policy based on the principle of plus-making that was so typical of the 18th century.

Impressed by the modernization summed up in 1750 and the entire College Salzer's plan, the brine using a pumping station on the grading to lift and no longer, as before, to throw the brine through the delicious servants with shovels on the thorny walls. It therefore commissioned the art master Christian Meermann, who came from Werl , to convert the graduation systems and build a pumping station operated by a water wheel. Meermann built a water art to raise the brine on the new building, which, although operated with pumps, only transmitted a limited power, which meant that the use of culinary servants, who were responsible for the supply of the brine during grading, was still necessary, although not more with shovels, but with hand pumps. This technical innovation also brought about an innovation in work organization, which forced the people of Sälzer to run the business together. But the shortcomings of the new Meermann building and disputes among the Sälzers about the distribution of the brine resulted in the joint operation being given up again in the following years and the return to the fact that each Sälzer managed the operation of his own lickworks. This decision meant an enormous step backwards from an economic point of view, because with it the less rational small businesses existed again.

The outbreak of the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) made any technical or commercial development of the Salzkotten saltworks impossible. Like the city itself, the saltworks was also badly affected by the effects of the war. In the course of the numerous billeting of enemy and allied troops of the Paderborn sovereign, numerous salt works were destroyed. Among other things, the Sälzer archive was broken into again and the files stolen. The transport of the fuel necessary for the settlement did not take place because the carts for the wood supply to the bakeries of the troops and for fortification work at Lippstadt were withdrawn. The salt works as well as the horses in the service of the salt works were forcibly recruited for military tasks.

Management and modernization under Wilhelm Anton von der Asseburg

In addition to peace, the year 1763 also brought a new sovereign. Prince-Bishop Wilhelm Anton von der Asseburg , who took over the salt works from his deceased predecessor Clemens August, was, like his Bavarian predecessor, committed to the repair and modernization of the salt works. He too intended to increase his fiscal income. As sovereign, Wilhelm Anton was penetrated by the endeavor to rebuild his badly battered territory. Personally, he had the characteristics of thrift, hard work and a sense of social responsibility. He had a basic knowledge of economic policy and was strongly influenced by the economic and social policy ideas of cameralism . In a kind of government inauguration program, his memorandum on the Paderborn state administration from 1763, the new bishop developed in twenty chapters the most important points and reform proposals of a mercantilist-cameralist economic policy for the bishopric of Paderborn. For the local trade and thus also for the Salzkotten saltworks, Wilhelm Anton envisaged successful state trade subsidies through direct investments in the existing facilities. At the same time he announced a far-reaching infrastructure policy, the declared aim of which was to achieve a quick improvement of the highways in the Hochstift.

Even before he took office in 1763, Wilhelm Anton von der Asseburg had tried in vain to persuade the Salzkotten saltworkers' college to improve the expansion of the salt works, but failed because of the resistance of individual salters and the disagreement of the college. Since the new sovereign was a saltman, but not a saltworks expert, he secured the help of the Salzkotten priest Philipp Korte in the modernization of the Salzkotten saltworks. Although he was initially not an expert in the field of salt production, the Prince-Bishop sent the technically trained Korte on extensive trips to the southern German salt pans and the Salzkammergut in 1763 , so that he could acquire the knowledge necessary for successful salt production there and on its benefits for the was able to check domestic salt production. After his return, Korte presented plans for new graduation towers , pumps and a new artificial wheel . If in the meantime the co-trades and co-shareholders of the Prince-Bishop Sälzer Wilhelm Anton had opposed any of his attempts to involve them in the investments to modernize all the plants, Korte succeeded in convincing the other Sälzer and shareholders of the advantages of the technical innovations. In addition to persuasion, Korte also managed the renovation and expansion of the new facilities. In 1765, a new water-wheel-driven pumping station was built on the Heder for the episcopal graduation houses, which made the work of the Leckerknechte finally superfluous. From a technical point of view, the water wheels produced six and the other 12 hp. In addition, Korte had a new graduation house built and took care of the renovation of the existing settlements. In the period between 1768 and 1780, four salt pans were created with a total of twelve pans for 24 salt pans, with the remaining salters and shareholders now participating in the investment costs. At the suggestion of the prince-bishop, who informed his expert in a letter in 1770 that he wanted the introduction of technically improved boiling pans, Korte also developed this technical innovation: he deviated from the combination of boiling and preheating pans that had generally existed until 1790, which had large quantities of the In the late 18th century, fuel consumed wood, which had risen sharply in price, and had new pans made, each with a uniform base size of 25 × 15 feet and all provided with a pan jacket. However, these pans turned out to be technically faulty, so that one had to return to the old type of furnace. Overall, the uniform management, as it finally came about in Salzkotten in the second half of the 18th century under Philipp Korte, led to a significantly higher profitability and productivity of the Salzkotten saltworks, as the investments made were able to trigger a considerable boost in rationalization . This lasted until the end of the 18th century . As early as 1768, the people of Sälzer suggested that the bishop reaffirm the import ban, since it was now actually in a position to supply the entire bishopric of Paderborn with salt. The sovereign gladly complied with this wish, which corresponded to economic policy . But even this ban was ineffective. The reason for this unsuccessfulness lay in the long and poor access routes, which drove up the price of salt. The Paderborn court chamber therefore decided to exempt the Beverungen and Manufacture offices from the ban and to allow the importation of foreign salt.

In order to reduce costs, however, the sovereign reacted by obliging numerous farmers to deliver the wood from the areas adjacent to the saltworks. During these so-called salt transports, they had to bring the firewood they owned and from the Oberwald district to the saltworks in Salzkotten . Wilhelm Anton tried to provide the Saline with a further cost advantage in the area of foreign trade by exempting the Salzkottener salt from all customs duties . For example, traders who had bought salt abroad in Salzkotten were given passes in order to be able to use the export discounts. The economic situation of the Salzkotten saltworks developed so positively towards the end of the 18th century as a result of this and the improvements in the road network in the Paderborn bishopric as a result of the episcopal infrastructure policy that more surpluses from salt production were available for export . In this situation, driven by the technical innovations and accompanied by the commercial policy of the sovereign, but also with the aim of no longer accepting the salt price that had been fixed by the sovereign since 1768, the people of Sälzer renounced the privilege of the salt sales monopoly and import ban in 1789 and sought their future in free trade competition with the other salt pans of their time. Wilhelm Anton's successor complied with this request.

Summary

In summary, the following can be said for the works constitution and management of the Salzkotten saltworks as well as for the state framework conditions set by the sovereigns in the Paderborn monastery. The salt works, or better the individual salt works at Salzkotten, went into the 18th century with an extremely fragmented company structure and management. In addition to the division into various shareholders, there was still no uniform management. Even the salters' college, which, if they had agreed on the necessary technical innovations and the associated investments, could have decided by consensus, was not in a position to manage the company because of the interests of the individual salters and the resulting disputes. It should be noted that there was a barely manageable coexistence and opposition of many individual experts in Salzkotten. The result was that the Salzkotten saltworks remained economically and technically backward until the middle of the 18th century. The attempt, initiated by the Sälz College in 1750 to initiate the necessary modernization through the Werler art master Christian Meermann, ultimately failed because of the disagreement among the Sälzers. In addition, the Sälzerordnung from 1700 for production, sales and price specifications was formulated in such a planned economy that the individual Sälzer completely lacked the necessary incentives to expand or convert his salt works. The consequences of the Seven Years' War also contributed to the fact that the Salzkotten saltworks lagged behind other saltworks technically and economically for another decade even after the middle of the century. The situation only changed noticeably when a new sovereign, Wilhelm Anton von Asseburg, triggered a modernization and rationalization push through his salt works. Since the prince-bishop was interested in the saltworks, but did not have the necessary specialist knowledge, he made the decision to make the Salzkotten pastor Philipp Korte his own specialist and therefore sent him on trips so that he could acquire the latest knowledge of the southern German saltworks . What is astonishing about the subsequent modernization of the Salzkotten saltworks is that Wilhelm Anton completely renounced the path that many other sovereigns in their spheres of power had already taken: the consistent implementation of the sovereign mountain and salt shelf. There is no known attempt by the Paderborn prince-bishop to break up the individual interests prevailing in his country in the salt pans by asserting his salt shelf. Rather, with the active help of his technically experienced Korte, Wilhelm Anton decided to act as a role model in the modernization and management of his salt works. It is noteworthy that he succeeded with this tactic: the other shareholders and Sälzer recognized the well-known advantages of the prince-bishop's reforms and now followed suit. Even if the ownership structure concentrated on fewer and fewer shareholders in the course of the 18th century, the Salzkotten saltworks remained in its basic operating constitution until the end of the century and beyond, a saltworks organized as a partnership.

While Wilhelm Anton took a different approach to enforcing the Bergregal than the rest of the sovereigns, it opted for the usual approaches of an economic policy as it was typical of the 18th century in the area of state framework conditions. The salt trade monopoly and the import ban on foreign salt existed in parallel in the Paderborn Monastery until 1789. In addition, Wilhelm Anton tried to improve the traffic infrastructure and by means of some subsidies - unilateral waiver of customs duties, free salt transports for energy supply - to ensure the good development of the saltworks in Salzkotten. At the end of the 18th century, salt production in Salzkotten was of great importance for the bishopric of Paderborn in two ways: on the one hand it covered the entire salt requirement of the small country, on the other hand the salt trade brought the entire East Westphalian region, but also with the diocese of Münster, the county of Rheda as well as the Lippe and Bielefeld area not inconsiderable funds into the country, even though the saltworks continued to struggle with the competition there.

literature

GJ Bessen: History of the Diocese of Paderborn. Volume 2, Paderborn 1820.

J. Böhmer: The Secret Ratskollegium, the highest state authority of the Paderborn Monastery 1723–1802. A contribution to the administrative history of the principality. Hildesheim 1910.

D. Burgholz: Salt production and politics during the decline of the old saltworks. In: H.-J. Teuteberg (Hrsg.): Westphalian economy at the beginning of the "machine age". (= Studies on economic, social and technological history. Volume 6). Dortmund 1988, pp. 247-267.

Detten, G. von: Westphalian economic life in the Middle Ages. Paderborn 1902.

H. Ditt: Structure and Change in Westphalian Agricultural Societies. (= Publications of the Provincial Institute for Westphalian Regional and Folklore Studies, Series 1, No. 13). Munster 1965.

H.-H. Emons, H.-H. Walter: With the salt through the millennia. History of white gold from prehistoric times to the present. Leipzig 1984.

H.-H. Emons, H.-H. Walter: With the salt through the millennia. History of white gold from prehistoric times to the present. 2., through Edition. Leipzig 1986.

H.-H. Emons, H.-H. Walter: Old salt pans in Central Europe. On the history of evaporated salt production from the Middle Ages to the present. Leipzig 1988.

M. Fessner: coal and salt. The long way to the industrial Ruhr area. (= Publications from the German Mining Museum Bochum, No. 73). Bochum 1998.

W. Friday (Ed.): The Salt City. Old European structures and early modern innovations. (= Studies on Regional History. Volume 19). Bielefeld 2004.

A. Führer: History of the City of Rheine. Rheine 1974.

R.-J. Gleitsmann: Shortage of raw materials and solution strategies. The problem of pre-industrial timber shortages. In: F. Duve (ed.): Technologie und Politik. Reinbek 1980, pp. 104-154.

R.-J. Gleitsmann: Aspects of the resource problem from a historical perspective. In: Scripta Mercaturae. 15, No. 2, 1981, pp. 33-89.

A. Hanschmidt: The 18th century. In: W. Kohl (Hrsg.): Westphalian history in three volumes and an illustrated and document volume. Volume 1, Düsseldorf 1983, pp. 605-685.

M. Hart: Salt Tax and Salt Trade in the Low Countries. In: J.-C. Hocquet (Ed.): Le roi, le marchand et le sel. Lille 1987, pp. 293-312.

A. Heggen: Commercial economy and economic policy in the Hochstift Paderborn in the 18th century. (= Local history series. 8/1977). Paderborn 1977.

A. Heggen: State and economy in the principality of Paderborn in the 18th century. (= Studies and sources on Westphalian history. Volume 17). Paderborn 1978.

F.-W. Henning: Farming and farming income in the Principality of Paderborn in the 18th century. (= Writings on social and economic history. Volume 18). Berlin 1970.

A. Huyssen: The brine springs of the Westphalian Chalk Mountains, their occurrence and presumed origin. Berlin 1856.

W. Kaiser: The history of the company and the state influence in the salt industry in Hanover and Westphalia up to the end of the 18th century. Cologne 1938.

W. Kliche: The shipping on the Ruhr and Lippe in the 18th century. In: Journal of the Bergisches Geschichtsverein. 37, 1904, pp. 3-19.

J. Kloosterhuis: "... spoiled by villen Orteren von allerseidtz war folk ...". The consequences of the Spanish-Dutch War (1566-1609) for the county of Mark. In: The Märker. 32, 1983, pp. 125-132, pp. 162-173, pp. 200-211.

J. Kloosterhuis: princes, councilors, subjects. The County of Mark, its local administrative bodies and the government of Kleve. In: The Märker. 35, 1986, pp. 3-25, 76-87, 104-117, 147-164.

A. Knape: The most important undertakings in the Paderborn region in the time of the prince-bishop. A contribution to the economic and administrative history of the former Paderborn Monastery in the 17th and 18th centuries. In: Westphalian magazine. 70, 1912, pp. 183-346.

F. Knoke, FJ Ewers, J. Bürger (Ed.): City and Office Salzkotten. Paderborn 1970.

SR Krause: "The richest and most productive mines in Grafschaft Mark". Pre-industrial coal mining in Gogericht Schwelm. Wuppertal 2002.

K.-H. Ludwig: Mountain regulations, technical and social change in the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern age. In: History of Technology. 52, 1985, pp. 179-196.

C. von Looz-Corswarem: The western parts of the country. In: J. Ziechmann (ed.): Panorama of the Friderician time. Frederick the Great and his epoch. A manual. Bremen 1985, pp. 695-704.

A. Meister: Commerce, trade, industry and mining until the beginning of the 19th century. In: A. Meister (Ed.): Die Grafschaft Mark. Festschrift to commemorate the 300-year union with Brandenburg-Prussia. Volume 1, Dortmund 1909.

P. Piasecki: Salt trade and salt trade policy in the Paderborn region from the 16th to the 19th century. In: J.-C. Hocquet, R. Palme (ed.): The salt in legal and commercial history. International Salt History Congress September 26th to October 1st 1990 Hall in Tirol. Congress files. Innsbruck 1991, pp. 155-175.

P. Piasecki: New technologies, rationalization and the development of the workforce structure in the Westphalian salt pans from the middle of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. In: T. Hellmuth, E. Hiebl (Ed.): Cultural history of salt: 18th to 20th century. Vienna / Munich 2001, pp. 75–88.

P. Piasecki: Investments in the Westphalian salt pans in the age of industrialization. In: Thesis. 4/5, 2002, pp. 74-83.

H.-J. Puhle: Prussia: development and undesirable development. In: H.-J. Puhle, H.-U. Wehler (Ed.): An overview of Prussia. Göttingen 1980, pp. 11-42.

H. Rachel: The trade, customs and excise policy of Prussia 1713-1740. Berlin 1922.

W. Reininghaus: Economy, State and Society in the old County of Mark. In: E. Trox (Ed.): Prussia in southern Westphalia. Economy, society and the state, especially in the area of Grafschaft Mark until 1870/71. Lüdenscheid 1993, pp. 11-41.

W. Reininghaus: The Brandenburg coal mining and Brandenburg-Prussia. An overview of the development in 1770. In: T. Schilp (Hrsg.): Das Muth-, Verleih- und Confirmationbuch 1770–1773. A source on the early history of the Ruhr mining industry. Edit v. Joachim Huske , Wilfried Reinighaus, Thomas Schilp. Dortmund 1993, pp. 15-45.

J. Schäfers: Philipp Korte, pastor of Salzkotten (1758–1803). In: Heimatborn. 3, 1923, pp. 9-34.

R. Schütz: Prussia and its provinces. In: M. Schlenke (Ed.): Preußen-Ploetz. A historical balance sheet in dates and interpretations. Würzburg 1983, pp. 24-40.

JJ Scotti: Collection of the laws and ordinances which were passed in the Duchy of Cleve and the County of Mark on matters of sovereignty, constitution, administration and the administration of justice, from the year 1418 until the entry of the royal Prussian governments in 1816. Volume 2, Düsseldorf 1826 .

RP Sieferle: The underground forest. Energy crisis and industrial revolution. Munich 1982.

E. von Sobbe: The storming of the city of Salzkotten on December 22nd, 1633 by the Swedes and Hesse. In: Westphalian magazine. 17, 1856, pp. 292-323.

JD von Steinen: Westphalian history. Part 2, Lemgo 1755.

D. Stievermann: Absolutist centralism or class regionalism? Prussia and its western provinces in the 17th and 18th centuries. In: Westphalian magazine. 138, 1988, pp. 51-65.

L. Suhling: Mining, Territorial Rule and Technological Change. Process innovations in the mining industry of the Renaissance using the example of Central European silver production. In: U. Troitzsch, G. Wohlauf (Hrsg.): Technology history. Historical contributions and recent essays. Frankfurt am Main 1980, pp. 139-179.

J. Vüllers: About the development of the salt pans Salzkotten, Westernkotten and Salzuflen, which were related to the former principality of Paderborn. In: Westphalian magazine. 59, 1901, pp. 167-195.

H.-H. Walter: Joachim Friedrich von Beust and his work on the salt pans. In: The cut. 42, 1990, pp. 26-43.

W. Westhoff, W. Schlueter: History of the German mining law. Edited from the estate by Oberbergrat Wilhelm Schlueter. In: Journal for Mining Law . 50, 1909, pp. 27-95, pp. 230-269 and pp. 357-386.

F. Wiemers: The salt system on the Ems and Weser under Brandenburg-Prussia. A contribution to the genesis of the city of Bad Oeynhausen. Munster 1915.

J. Ziechmann: Features of European economic and trade policy. In: J. Ziechmann (Hrsg.): Panorama of the Friderician time, Frederick the Great and his epoch. A manual. Bremen 1985, pp. 471-477.

51.670277777778 8.6019444444444Coordinates: 51 ° 40 ′ 13 ″ N , 8 ° 36 ′ 7 ″ E