Agathe Zeis

Agathe Zeis

Agathe Marie Dorothea Zeis (born Rudolf, born May 29, 1840 near Oschatz ; † December 27, 1887 in Bern ) ran the first German apprenticeship dairy on the Heinrichsthal farm near Radeberg . She introduced the French Camembert in Germany.

Life

After completing school, Agathe geb. Rudolf at the Naundorf manor near Oschatz. She received an agricultural training from the owner Bernhard von der Planitz .

Agathe Zeis was married to the estate inspector Hermann Alexander Zeis, who came from Podemus . The couple leased the Oschatz mail from 1863 to 1876. After the lease expired in 1877, Hermann Zeis bought the Heinrichsthal works near Radeberg. Around 1880 Agathe Zeis wrote one of the first textbooks on dairy farming, entitled “Die Milch und die Butter. A textbook for training young girls in housekeeping in general, as in dairy farming in particular ” . The book was not printed at the time; however, the manuscript was preserved. In 2010, Zeis' textbook appeared in print for the first time on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the Camembert cheese dairy in Heinrichsthal.

The Zeis couple remained childless.

In December 1887, Agathe Zeis fell seriously ill with jaundice during her stay in Bern ; she died on December 27, 1887 in the University Hospital in Bern of liver failure . He was buried in the Bremgarten cemetery in Bern .

After the bankruptcy in 1887 and the foreclosure auction of the Heinrichsthal dairy in 1888, Hermann Zeis founded a dairy in Zell im Odenwald in 1896, where he worked until his death on October 15, 1898.

Act

Agathe Zeis (left) with students from her teaching farm Heinrichsthal Radeberg

Zeis interned between 1880 and 1882 in the dairy schools in Rastede and Groß Himstedt and finally with Wilhelm Fleischmann , the head of the higher dairy in Raden near Lalendorf ( Mecklenburg ). On July 1, 1880, with the support of the Saxon State Culture Council and later student grants from the Saxon Queen Carola, she was able to found her "Lehrmeierei Heinrichsthal - Housekeeping School for Agricultural Daughters" and give lessons in dairy and housekeeping. A total of 182 schoolgirls received training in teaching, including a. from Austria, Poland, France and America. In 1885 Zeis had to temporarily stop teaching for health reasons.

At the “Commercial and Agricultural Exhibition” organized by the “Agricultural District Association of Dresden” in Radeberg on the fairground behind the shooting house from September 11 to 13, 1880, the Heinrichsthal teaching dairy was also awarded a medal. On September 13, 1880, King Albert of Saxony visited this exhibition and met Agathe Zeis there. She received the suggestion from him to produce the popular French Camembert herself in Saxony and in the German Empire . Agathe Zeis traveled to Normandy in 1883 and studied the making of the French Fromage de Camembert. In 1883 she produced the first German Camembert based on the French model in her Heinrichsthal dairy. She also added Brie and Neufchâtel to the production program.

In 1884 it was granted a patent for the production of French-style soft cheese. The Heinrichsthal Radeberg dairy became Camembert's first production site in the German Empire. At that time, their staff consisted of 2 foremen, 4 assistants, 1 machinist (who also made boxes) and 1 accountant. The sales area was initially limited to the greater Dresden area, but could quickly be expanded far beyond the Kingdom of Saxony .

In order to be able to meet the increased demand, the Zeis couple set up a dairy in Löbau in 1884 (especially for the production of Neufchâtel) and in Bautzen in 1886, and in 1886 they set up a dairy in the dairy in Lauterbach in Hesse .

Due to the nationwide rapid development of the dairy industry and the good economic situation of the dairy, plans arose in 1887 to expand the facilities and increase production capacity, which were linked to bonds and long-term fixed prices for buying me. However, this was contradicted by the generally not proportionally increasing sales and consumption of dairy products. The resulting oversupply led to a general drop in prices and also to existential financial difficulties in Heinrichsthal, so that the Zeis couple had to sell the Löbau dairy and terminate the lease with Bautzen.

In June 1887 Agathe Zeis tried in vain to get loans from her former student Charles Baumert, who had built up the Baumert cheese dairy in Antwerp, New York State . During another equally unsuccessful attempt to raise capital from his friend Felix Anderegg, a pioneer of the Swiss dairy industry at the time, in Bern in December 1887, Agathe Zeis fell seriously ill.

The Royal District Court of Radeberg had already filed for bankruptcy over the Zeis couple's assets in December 1887 and announced the foreclosure sale of the Radeberger Immobilien on April 19, 1888 . The Lehrmeierei Heinrichsthal was deleted from the commercial register.

Appreciations

Due to the product quality and the solid management of the dairy, King Albert of Saxony awarded "... the head of the teaching dairy to Heinrichsthal Agathe'n Zeis ... the title of 'royal purveyor' ..." on November 26th, 1883. The dairy was added to the list of "Royal Saxon Court Suppliers" .

At the dairy exhibition held in Munich in 1884 , Agathe Zeis received the “Prize of Honor” as the highest award given there for her Heinrichsthaler Camembert. Before the award ceremony, the award commission also checked the production facilities, in particular the hygienic conditions.

In 1937 a wooden memorial plaque was hung in the meeting room of the Heinrichsthaler Milchwerke in memory of Agathe Zeis. It is the second German cheese dairy monument. The text on the memorial plaque begins with the words “It was in the year of salvation one thousand eight hundred and eighty that on July 1st an honorable woman from an old Saxon farming family, Agathe Zeis by name, founded the Heinrichtsthaler Milchindustrie. In those times it was really bad about the Saxon dairy industry. "Then it is described how little attention was paid to the dairy farming in Heinrichsthal in Zeis' time, before a decisive change took place:" But it happened at that time that one of the Lefeld was called, built the first milk centrifuge. Whether the common man had no idea what was going to happen with it, our Agathe Zeis recognized with a few others with a clear eye that something had been created that would give the dairy industry a new foundation. ”Then the Heinrichsthaler Milchwerke were founded and built up before mentioning of Agathe Zeis' trip to France, from which she brought back the art of making German Camembert that was "not only as good as the French", after which she was appointed purveyor to the (Saxon) court. In addition, the German Dairy Association awarded her the only gold medal that had been awarded in 1886.

Another monument for Agathe Zeis was to be erected in Bern. However, this plan was not carried out. Agathe Zeis' tombstone was preserved in the Bremgarten cemetery in Bern until the middle of the 20th century . It bore the inscription: "Agathe Zeis 1840 - 1887. Dedicated by her grateful students".

A street in Radeberg has been named after her.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Manfred Schollmeyer : Secrets about the mother of the German Camembert . In: Sächsische Zeitung from January 6th / 7th 2018 ( online ).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Saxon pioneers in the dairy industry. in: Deutsche Molkerei-Zeitung, Kempten, 60th year, 1939, issue 22. Online resource ( Memento from March 28, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Milk and Butter , Milk & Culture Association Rhineland and Westphalia, 2010, ISBN 978-3-9810663-5-7 .
4. ↑ Radeberger Chronik 1840–1904 . P. 393. Handwritten manuscript. Archive no. 00003477. Museum Schloss Klippenstein Radeberg
5. ↑ List of butter and cheese factories ... in Jefferson County NY State , accessed February 28, 2018
6. ↑ quoted or referred to after the inscription on Agathe Marie Dorothea Zeis. Milk and Culture Association, accessed on July 11, 2020 . 
7. ↑ City map Radeberg