Braucommune Freistadt

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Brewing commune in Freistadt

logo
legal form Commune
founding 1777
Seat Freistadt , Austria
management Ewald Pöschko
Number of employees 90 (2018)
sales approx. 8 million euros
Branch brewery
Website www.freistaedter-bier.at
As of March 28, 2018

Brewery from 1777

The Braucommune in Freistadt is a beer brewery in Freistadt , Upper Austria and was first mentioned in a document in 1770. The brewing community produces around 80,000 hectoliters of beer, 20,000 hl of non-alcoholic beverages and 15,000 hl of merchandise every year . This makes the Freistadt brewery the largest in the entire Mühlviertel . As of 2018, 90 people are employed. The delivery area includes the Mühlviertel, the greater Linz area , Wels, Steyr and Vienna .

history

Early brewing

With the documents issued by Duke Rudolf IV on June 5, 1363 and June 29, 1363 , the city of Freistadt received the right to miles and every house owner within the city walls received the right to brew beer . Not every citizen brewed his own beer, and the amount was based on the house's appraisal. The magistrate regulated and monitored this amount in accordance with the applicable brewing regulations. The oldest brewing regulations in the province of Upper Austria have been preserved in the town regulations of Freistadt from 1440/1447. It regulates the brewing times, quantities and equipment, the payment of the master brewer and the brewery clerks, the storage of beer, the price of beer and spent grains as well as the penalties for importing malt from Bohemia and other violations.

In 1525 there were a total of 12 breweries in the city (today Eisengasse 10, 12 and 16, Huterergasse 4, Pfarrgasse 20, Salzgasse 3, 32 and "behind the inner bath", Samtgasse 7, Waaggasse 15, 22 and 27), in 1557 there were 11 , 1560 only 8. In 1648 there were still five bourgeois breweries, in 1685 only the one in Pfarrgasse 20 and the one in Salzgasse "behind the inner bath".

Originally only brown beer and red beer were brewed , sometimes also the so-called young beer and Märzen beer . As a reaction to the increasing competition from Bohemian wheat beer , the municipal wheat beer brewery was established in Freistadt in 1573, which was managed by its own wheat beer office.

In the 18th century there was dissatisfaction among the citizens due to the poor quality. They joined forces, acquired the municipal wheat beer house in 1770 and built a new brewery outside the city center between 1771 and 1780, which was inaugurated on March 2, 1780 and in which the first brew of brown beer was brewed on March 4, 1780. The building of the old wheat beer brewery, which had previously belonged to the magistrate, was sold to the cloth merchant Anton König, but no buyer was found for the old brown beer house of the “Gmain”, so it was demolished and converted into a garden in 1783. All 149 homeowners in the city center became members of the brewing commune and have remained so to this day.

founding year

Purchase agreement from 1770, page 1
Purchase agreement from 1770, page 2

For the Braucommune Freistadt there is no charter, rather the formation of the company took place in several steps:

  • When Georg Schinagl's brewery at Pfarrgasse 20 closed in 1737, the citizens of the city got together, bought the last remaining bourgeois brewery behind the bath from Josef Kreuzer for 1000 guilders and set up the brown beer house there.
  • In 1746, under the leadership of the external council Johann Michael Winkler, the citizenship submitted a list of all townhouses with the title “Description of their citizens' houses” to the magistrate, so that the number of buckets to which a house is entitled serves as the basis for the town's contribution and thus as a tax base . This request was approved by Mayor Gubatta on June 20, 1746, so that citizens with high brown utility would pay correspondingly higher taxes in the future.
  • At the latest with the construction of the new and now only brewery in the city, the brewing commune was not only formed from an administrative point of view, but also from the outside. The year 1777 ("Erbauet 1777"), carved on the main gate, is therefore considered to be the founding year of the Free City Brewery. Alternatively, one could have taken either the year 1770, when the master bricklayer Johann Gangl from Linz began breaking the stones on the Kalvarienberg and the purchase contract was signed on December 31st, or the year 1780, when the new brewery was inaugurated.

19th century

The brewing commune was originally managed by the respective mayor with the economic council, which consisted of six to fourteen people. From 1835/37 an elected board of directors was entrusted with the management. The meetings dealt not only with brewery issues, but also with many other matters relating to money, deposits and loans. The Bürgerspital, the Johanneskirche, the shooting range and the toll house are often mentioned in the minutes.

The executive bodies were:

  • the brewer had to execute the decisions of the economic council and to report to this.
  • the measure was a municipal office that existed as early as the 15th century and was responsible for the correct quantities and weights for incoming goods
  • the beer writer was responsible for carefully recording the quantities of beer produced and sold
  • the "controller" had to look to the brewery manager to support the order in the company

In the 19th century, 13 to 21 people were employed in the brewery over the course of the year:

  • 1 master brewer
  • 4–8 skilled workers (“brewers”): stokers, dehydrators, maltsters, beer brewers, beer pullers
  • 6–8 keg pullers who were responsible for transporting and shipping the beer kegs
  • 2–4 grooms for as many teams of horses
  • Day laborers as required

In 1885, the new board member Paul Obermayr brought new technology into the old walls within a year. A coal-fired boiler house for steam operation was set up by the Prague company Nowak. The oö. Construction company took over the conversion of the existing brewhouse into an ice and fermentation cellar and the construction of a new brewhouse with cold store.

20th century

In January 1907 a request by the workers led to a workers strike, against which the board of directors took vigorous action. On January 16, 1907, the workers 'shop steward demanded written recognition of the workers' organization, which first appeared in 1906. The Board of Directors rejected this proposal on January 31, and also refused to withdraw the dismissal of a guy who had since been terminated. On the morning of February 4, the majority of workers stopped work. The board of directors dismissed five unwanted employees without notice, but promised the other workers that they would not lose their jobs if they returned to work by 12 noon. On February 5, work resumed and some wage demands were met.

Between the two world wars, a series of ice cellars in the places with beer depot was built in the district: 1924 in Neumarkt , 1925 in Kefermarkt , Reichenau and Reichenthal , 1929 in St. Oswald , Windhaag and Rainbach , 1930 in Gutau , 1931 finally Schenkenfelden whose Brauhaus had already been leased in 1901. The elevator to the ice cellar, which had previously been carried out with horses, was electrified in 1922. The first truck driver began his service in 1931.

After the Second World War, there were further technical changes. In 1956 the last team of horses left the brewery. In 1959 the last ice cream cart was raised and a new Linde cooling system was put into operation. In place of the wooden storage barrels, which were cellared for the last time in 1959 and sold to Hungary as wine barrels, a large aluminum storage tank from Hinke was installed. In 1970, as in other breweries before, the in-house malt house was discontinued because cheaper malt of more uniform quality could be bought from large malt houses.

In 1959 the successful beer type "Ratsherrn-Trunk" was introduced, the name of which indicates the close interweaving of the brewing commune with the town's history and which has become a quality mark of the Freistadt brewery.

Directors of the brewery

List of brewery board members (selection):

  • 1863–1864 Caspar Schwarz
  • 1885–1889 Paul Obermayr
  • 1889–1897 Josef Schifferer
  • 1897–1922 Theodor Scharizer
  • 1922–1926 Franz Ferschl Sr.
  • 1926–1928 Franz Wimberger
  • 1928–1945 Matthäus Koller
  • 1945–1947 Franz Haunschnmidt
  • 1947–1950 Josef Mayringer
  • 1951–1956 Franz Ferschl jun.
  • 1956–1962 Josef Burgermeister
  • 1962–1977 Wilhelm Jäger
  • (2018) Michael Raffaseder

Brewing commune

The “Commune” as the legal form of a company is currently registered as such in the commercial register and is now the only and last of its kind in Europe.

The Commune's deposit consisted of buckets (a bucket is around 56 liters), whereby a total of 6,390 buckets total assets were brought in in the 18th century. The buckets are unevenly distributed, the insert is at least 15 buckets and a maximum of 140 buckets. This has been the case to this day, which means that buying a house in the city center also acquires a share in the Freistadt brewery. The contribution is recorded in the land register in the following way:

"This property is linked to the purchase of an annual brown use of 140 buckets from the brewing community in Freistadt"

Brewery

The baroque , three-story, three-wing building from the 1770s has been a listed building since 1986 ( list entry ). The cultivation in the southwest dates from the second half of the 19th century.

Inside there is a rich design with vaults, mostly lancet barrel vaults or groin vaults . The three brew kettles in the basement were built when the new brewhouse was built. The general renovation of the brewery took place in 2011 and 2012 in preparation for the Upper Austrian Provincial Exhibition 2013 " Old Traces, New Ways ".

The so-called brewery gallery is located in the brewery .

The brewing water comes from two 80 meter deep wells in a water protection area near St. Peter, west of Freistadt.

Products

Types of beer

  • Ratsherrn Premium (12.1 ° original wort , 5.1% alcohol )
  • Midium (9.8 ° original wort, 3.8% alcohol)
  • March'n (11.3 ° original wort, 4.8% alcohol)
  • Bio Zwickl (11.1 ° original wort, 4.7% alcohol)
  • Dunk'l (12.5 ° original wort, 4.8% alcohol)
  • Böck'l (16.3 ° original wort, 6.8% alcohol)
  • Black Bock (17 ° original wort, 7.1% alcohol)
  • Redhead (13.5 ° original wort, 5.6% alcohol)
  • Mühlviertler Junghopfen Pils
  • Zwickl- Radler (40% beer and 60% lemonade, 2% alcohol)

Lemonades

  • Fruit lemonades (orange, lemon, herbs, pineapple, raspberry, cola, cola mix, lemon soda)
  • Fitness lemonades (Vitall Orange, Vitall Water)

See also

literature

  • Braucommune Freistadt (Ed.): 225 years of the Braucommune in Freistadt. Search for clues. Freistadt 2003, 108 pages.
  • Othmar Rappersberger: 200 years of the Freistadt Brewery Commune. 1777-1977. Upper Austria. Landesverlag, Wels 1977 (only chapter counting without page numbering).
  • Josef Burgermeister: 180 years of the Freistadt Brewery Commune. 1777-1937. 1957.
  • Florian Gmainer: 160 years of Braucommune Freistadt. 1777-1937. Freistadt 1937, 72 pages in Gothic script.
  • Elisabeth Hirsch: The communal brewing right of Upper Austria. Historical, legal and economic aspects with special consideration of the brewing commune Freistadt. Dissertation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna 1979, 289 sheets of machine writing.
  • Markus Götzl: The history of the brewing commune Freistadt. Diploma thesis at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna 1995, 104 sheets of machine writing.
  • Karl Marhardt: Braucommune Freistadt. A corporate relic from the 18th century - historically since the beginning and economically since 1980. Diploma thesis, Linz 1987, 123 sheets of machine writing.
  • Herbert Knittler: Considerations on the early days of the beer brewery in Freistadt / Upper Austria. In: Yearbook of the Upper Austrian Museum Association. Year 157, Linz 2012, pp. 181–200, PDF on ZOBODAT

Web links

Commons : Braucommune Freistadt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Freistädter facts on freistaedter-bier.at, accessed on March 29, 2018.
  2. ↑ Freistädter Team on freistaedter-bier.at.
  3. ↑ a b Upper Austrian document book, secular part (540-1399) 1363 VI 05 in the European document archive Monasterium.net .
  4. ↑ Rappersberger 1977, Chapter A.1.
  5. ↑ a b Rappersberger 1977, Chapter A.2.
  6. ↑ Knittler 2012, pp. 188–192.
  7. ↑ Knittler 2012, p. 196 ( Table IV: Breweries of Freistadt 1519/21 and 1525 with today's house number. The 12 breweries are marked in red on the city map on p. 195).
  8. ↑ a b c Rappersberger 1977, Chapter A.3.
  9. ↑ a b Rudolf Scharizer: From Freistadt's past days . In: Heimatgaue . 1st issue, 1922, pp. 16-19 ( Memento from November 7, 2017 ( Memento from November 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) [PDF; accessed on March 29, 2018]). From the past few days of Freistadt ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ooegeschichte.at
  10. ↑ a b Rappersberger 1977, Chapter B.1.
  11. ↑ a b Rappersberger 1977, Chapter C.1.
  12. ↑ a b c d Rappersberger 1977, Chapter C.2.
  13. ↑ Rappersberger 1977, Chapter C.3.
  14. ↑ a b Rappersberger 1977, Chapter C.4.
  15. ^ Rappersberger 1977, board members of the brewery with portrait photos in the picture section.
  16. ↑ The monument office and brewery commune reached an agreement on the topic of the new brewhouse building, OÖ Nachrichten of December 31, 2008, accessed on February 2, 2009.
  17. ↑ Brewery renovation. Archived from the original on November 2, 2012 ; accessed on March 29, 2018 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 30 ′ 36 "  N , 14 ° 30 ′ 4"  E