Bleach (Wald ZH)
Bleiche stands for the former weaving mill Bleiche and the surrounding area in Wald ZH in the Zurich Oberland . The name "bleach" comes from the time at the beginning of the 19th century, when cotton cloths were bleached in the sun near the current factory location . The bleaching area became the largest textile area in the forest, and at times one of the largest in Switzerland .
prehistory
Forests are a good example of the history of industrialization in Switzerland and of the central role that the textile industry played until the second half of the 20th century. The place was also known as the “Manchester of Switzerland” at the turn of the century. The Zurich Oberland was a center of the home industry when the brothers Kaspar and Johannes Honegger founded their own weaving mill in the mid-19th century.
Hueb cotton weaving mill, Sagenrain
Otto & Johann Honegger AG began in 1853 in the Hueb, a hamlet above Wald. Johannes Honegger (* 1832) first worked in the home industry, and his brother Kaspar worked in his father's nail smithy. In 1853, the two brothers set up their first cotton weaving mill in the Hueb. In 1860 the factory in der Hueb burned down and the two brothers decided to continue working on their own account. Kaspar Honegger (1820–1892) founded the Neutal weaving mill in Wald in 1861 , a company with 90 looms. In 1888 he bought the Elba spinning mill in Wald with 10,000 spindles. Johannes Honegger rebuilt and expanded the old factory in the Hueb.
Cotton weaving bleach
After the fire in the weaving mill in the Hueb, the brothers went their separate ways from 1860, and so this date is considered to be the start of the Otto & Johannes Honegger company. In 1873 Johannes Honegger built the “Bleiche”, which for a long time was the largest weaving mill in Switzerland. The bleaching facility was built near the Jonah River and initially operated with water power. Bleiche still operates a small hydropower plant to this day. The “Bleiche” weaving mill now forms the core of the Bleiche district.
The factories, factory owners' villas and the tower-shaped dining rooms for the working-class families built by the “founding father” Johannes Honegger still shape the architectural image and the spatial division of the bleaching area. The bleaching area and the surrounding buildings are part of Otto & Joh. Honegger AG. Today the company is run by the fourth generation of Andreas Honegger.
Expansion, Lindenhof spinning mill and factory in Albino
In 1885, Johannes Honegger bought the Lindenhof, Tobel, Tiefenhof, Strickenberg and other properties in Wald from the bankruptcy estate of the factory owner Heinrich Hotz. ( His brother Kaspar had worked in the factory of the Lindenhof spinning mill as a child.) This and his expansion to Italy made him a major industrialist. In the same year he bought out three of the five Swiss partners in a factory in Albino , near Bergamo . This factory, which operated around 35,000 spindles and 1,000 looms at the turn of the century, was later taken over entirely by Johannes Honegger and renamed Cotonificio Honegger & Co.
With 771 looms in Switzerland, Johannes Honegger was at the head of Swiss weaving mills in 1888. The Wellenwaage weaving mill was closed and converted into workers' apartments, the looms were set up in the Bleiche. The workers' apartments at the Wellenwaage later became the setting for the socially critical novel "Barbara, die Feinweberin" by Otto Kunz . In 1903 Johannes Honegger died as one of the last representatives of the founding generation of the textile industry . His four sons, all of whom had gradually been introduced to the business, took over the businesses in Wald and Albino. The company was henceforth named «Joh. Honegger's Sons »continued. In the same year they had another new building built in Bleiche.
In 1907 the factory increased the number of looms in Wald to 1,016. In addition, this year there was a wage conflict between employees and employers, which resulted in a first short strike. In 1911 the companies in Albino and Wald separated from each other. The brothers Julius and Otto took over the business in Wald, the factory in Albino was continued by the two younger sons Ernst and Oscar under the name Cotonificio Honegger . The company is still called that today, although in 1992 the Zambaiti Group bought the business from the descendants of the Honegger family. During the First World War , when a large part of the male workforce was called up for active service, the bleaching area burned out in 1915. Reconstruction occupied the company during the war years.
Staberei, Bleiche 1913
Upper weaving room, Bleiche 1913
Bleiche weaving mill 1913
The “Otto & Joh. Honegger Company Welfare Fund” was set up in 1921 as an in-house worker welfare scheme. After the death of the last representative of the second generation, Otto Honegger, his sons Johannes Honegger and Otto Honegger took over the management of the company in 1924.
The workers, shaken by the economic crisis of 1929/1930, went on strike in 1931. The immediate trigger was the introduction of a new loom support system. After four months the strike was broken without any major concessions being made. The events of those months went down in the forest's memory as the "bleaching strike". The company was doing poorly until 1936, after which it was able to make a profit again , partly because of the devaluation of the Swiss franc . In particular, the introduction of synthetic fibers as a raw material enabled it to survive the crises of the late 1930s and 1940s. When it was no longer possible to import cotton at all during the Second World War , this switch to synthetic fabrics proved to be a stroke of luck.
A week before the outbreak of World War II, a flood devastated large parts of the Zurich Oberland in 1939. The factory in the Hueb was completely destroyed. After the war, the Bleichewies weaving mill was expanded in 1947 and foreign workers, first mainly from Italy and then from Yugoslavia, joined the workforce. Some of them came from Albino and previously worked for the sister company Cotonificio Honegger. In these years the company was kept up to date by investments.
The general partnership Otto u. Joh. Honegger was modernized in 1974 and converted into a stock corporation. In addition, the company began to publish the OJH-Mitteilungen , which became a platform for their workforce.
Otto & Joh. Honegger AG was specialized in the production of artificial silk and fine cotton fabrics . The Bleiche weaving mill housed not only various weaving rooms, but also almost all the outworks of the entire company, i.e. those departments in which the yarns were rewound, put on the slip, sized and prepared for the looms.
"The largest company in the municipality of Wald is closing its factories", reported the "Zürcher Oberländer" in spring 1988. The economic framework had deteriorated further and further. Changed consumer habits, cheap imports and currency problems made the cessation of textile production in the bleaching area inevitable. The discontinuation took place at a time when there were still enough funds available to start a conversion of the factory buildings. Textile production was stopped in 1988, after which the factory buildings were converted into residential and commercial space.
Reuse, bleach today
In 1997, on the initiative of Otto & Joh. Honegger AG, in close cooperation with the Canton of Zurich , the municipality of Wald issued special building regulations with monument preservation requirements in order to be able to put the disused factory buildings worthy of protection to a new meaningful use . In December 1998 the first two loft apartments in the Bleiche were presented to the public . Since then, in addition to commercial premises, a restaurant, hotel rooms, a gallery, a Bleiche organic farm and the BleicheBad, thirty additional lofts have been built in the former weaving rooms.
In 2004 the “Bleiche Bad” and “BleicheFit” were built. The BleicheBad has a warm water relaxation pool, a Turkish and a Finnish sauna, a Kneipp path and a whirlpool in the bamboo forest. A cosmetic institute and rooms for therapies are attached to the bathroom. A fitness center is located in a former weaving room. The restaurant was expanded in 2006. A new bistro was added. The former Bleiche gallery gave way to the MuseumClubLounge, which houses exhibits from the factory's history. An open plan kitchen was built around the factory chimney and the backyard was covered for this.
In 2010 the book Die Bleiche der Zeit was published , a historical study of the textile industry in forest and its conversion into a post-industrial quarter. Based on unpublished sources from company, village and family archives, the book deals with the changing times in a rural industrial area.
Together with the Wald electricity company, Bleiche has been producing solar energy since 2012. There is also an annual classic car race.
A new quarter, the Claridapark, is also being built in stages between the Sonnenhof and Clarida manufacturers' villas and the Bleiche weaving mill. In June 2014, the foundation stone for the “ Jonagarten houses” was laid.
Web links
swell
- Company archive OJH AG, Wald ZH.
- Family archives Honegger, Wald, Zurich, Bern, Bergamo.
- Radio DRS, the entrepreneur Otto Honegger tells, Schneider B. (Red.), Land + People department, Studio Zurich 1988.
- Radio DRS, The Opposite Class as an Opportunity? (Working couple at the Honegger company), Mosaik: «Frauenarbeit», 1988.
- Radio DRS, The Swiss Textile Industry, Land + People, Studio Zurich 1988.
- Radio DRS, “Your” factory must close (three women - three locations), mosaic: “Women's work”, 1988.
- Radio DRS, Wald im Zürcher Oberland after the Honegger weaving mill closed down, Schneider B. (Ed.), Land + People department, Studio Zurich 1988.
- Swiss Social Archives (SSA), Ar. 18.302.22, Honegger weaving mill, Wald, 1930–1935, correspondence and newspaper articles.
- Swiss Social Archives (SSA), Ar. 18.316.47, Honegger company dossier, Wald ZH 1978–1988.
- Community chronicle forest .
- Walder home .
Literature on bleach and the forest
- H.-P. Bärtschi: Industrial culture in the canton of Zurich. From the Middle Ages to today. Zurich 1994.
- H. Brändli: The 'pale'. In: Us eusere Walder Heimet. No. 106, February 1973.
- R. Braun: Social and cultural change in a rural industrial area: (Zürcher Oberland) under the influence of machinery and factories in the 19th and 20th centuries. Erlenbach-Zurich 1965.
- H. Hess: From times gone by. Forest 1919.
- E. Joris, H. Witzig: Good women, rebellious women. Zurich 1992.
- K. Keller: Where the threads came together. Review of a textile entrepreneur. Neuthal 1997.
- H. Krebser: Forest in the Zurich Oberland. Local history images from three centuries. Forest 1951.
- O. Barbara Kunz: The fine weaver. A life story from the Zurich Oberland. Lucerne 1942.
- T. Matthiesen: The pale of time: A Zurich Oberland textile area in transition. Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2010.
- A. Rüegg: From the history of the Neuthal-Wald weaving mill, 1861 to 1961. A. Honegger generation 1861 to 1906. Wald 1957.
- H. Spoerry: The Cotton Industry of Forest. Forest 1935.
- G. Strickler: Meritorious men from the Zurich Oberland. Wetzikon 1937.
Literature on the textile industry in general
- P. Dudzik: Innovation and Investment. Technical development and business decisions in the Swiss cotton mill from 1800 to 1916. Zurich 1987.
- R. Jäger: Cotton yarn as a thread of fate. Economic and social developments in a rural industrial area (Zürcher Oberland), 1750 to 1920. Zurich 1986.
- E. Orsenna: White Plantations. A journey through our globalized world. Munich 2007.
- U. Pfister: The Zurich Fabriques. Proto-industrial growth from the 16th to the 18th century. Zurich 1982.
Individual evidence
- ↑ bleiche.ch
- ^ Archive link ( memento from March 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ zol.ch
- ↑ Martin Illi: Honegger, Johannes. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- ↑ textatelier.com
- ↑ bleiche.ch
- ↑ bleiche.ch
- ↑ bleiche.ch
- ↑ Urban island in an old textile factory. In: nzz.ch. November 2, 2004, accessed October 14, 2018 .
- ↑ bleiche.ch
- ↑ The eventful industrial history of Wald. In: nzz.ch. April 26, 2010, accessed October 14, 2018 .
- ↑ behance.net
- ↑ chronos-verlag.ch
- ↑ zol.ch
- ↑ zol.ch
- ↑ bleiche.ch
- ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives ).
- ↑ zol.ch
- ↑ zol.ch