Schwelm Brewery

The administration building ( Bergische Bauweise )

View of the Schwelm brewery

The Schwelm Brewery was a private brewery founded in Schwelm , North Rhine-Westphalia in 1830 and existed until 2011.

history

In 1830 the innkeeper Johannes Klein (1808–1878) founded a small brewery in Schwelm, which he sold in 1867 to the two entrepreneurs Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Wortmann and Heinrich Kathagen. In 1896, Kathagen sells its stake to Carl Bröking. From 1897 the brewery produced beer according to the Pilsner brewing style under the name Schwelmer Ur-Pils .

In 1904 the Schwelm brewery, as one of the first breweries in the world, switched its production from wooden barrels to enamel vessels from the Schwelm ironworks . From 1970 to 1993 Walter Prestel (1928–2009) was the managing partner of the brewery. In 1997 the Haarmann families sold their shares to the Bier Schneider company in Hagen , which in turn passed on their shares to the C & A Veltins brewery , which then announced the closure of the Schwelm brewery in 2000.

Customers and residents close to the company were looking for other solutions. Shortly afterwards, the Schwelm entrepreneur couple Heidrun and Rolf Lohbeck invested in the brewery and were able to save it from closing. A year later, the brewery was refurbished with investments of around 5 million euros . It got a new bottling plant and a new warehouse . The Schwelmer fan club, which has now been founded, has 11,000 members.

Schwelmer beer has been sold in swing-top bottles since 2002 , and the product range has been expanded to include mixed beer beverages , wheat beer and malt beer . The brewery also exported its beer to the USA and set up its own sales company for this purpose .

The brewery Schwelm, the distillery was founded in 1808 by Carl Levering belonged Levering that since the herbal Ossenkämper manufactures.

From November 2007 "Schwelmer" brought out the beer type Trassengold . It is sold exclusively in the Wuppertal akzenta stores and is used to support the Wuppertal northern railway line .

insolvency

Sales fell in 2008 by 18 percent and in 2009 by 15 percent. Despite investments in 2009 and longer working hours for employees without wage compensation , the company was in the red in 2009. For this reason, an application for bankruptcy was filed on September 16, 2009 . For the time being, operations continued, the insolvency capital was still sufficient until the end of November 2009.

On July 6, 2011, the insolvency administrator Manfred Gottschalk announced that the brewery with 32 employees could no longer be saved and that it would cease operations on September 30, 2011. The reason for this step was the decision of major customers to remove Schwelmer beer from their range.

Shortly afterwards, a Facebook group for the “preservation of the Schwelmer brewery” was founded, which was looking for an investor to preserve the brewery and the jobs there. The group had almost 8,000 members who were actively involved in local campaigns, including demonstrations and so-called “Fläsch-Plöpps” to preserve the traditional brand. On August 17th, 2011 an "Association for the Preservation and Promotion of the Schwelm Brewing Tradition" was founded. From May 2012 a SchwelmeBräu GmbH & Co. KG operated the brewing system in the LWL open-air museum in Hagen .

On November 15, 2011 the inventory of the administration, various technical systems z. B. from the brewhouse and fermentation technology and the bottling plant publicly auctioned. A resumption of brewery operations is therefore excluded.

In June 2012, the demolition of the newer buildings began, only the listed buildings remain. The bankruptcy proceedings are still ongoing.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Westdeutsche Zeitung (online) of September 16, 2009
2. ^ Off for the Schwelmer brewery. The West, July 6, 2011, archived from the original on July 9, 2011 ; Retrieved July 6, 2011 . 
3. ↑ Christina Fahrenhorst: Schwelmer Brewery. It's a shame about the nice beer. The West, July 7, 2011, accessed July 19, 2011 . 
4. ↑ Remscheider General-Anzeiger (online) of August 8, 2011, offline
5. ↑ The workforce of the Schwelmer Brewery calls for solidarity ( memento of the original from October 6, 2011 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. from August 3, 2011  
6. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from August 27, 2011 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.  
7. ↑ http://ploepp.net/ Initiative for the preservation of the Schwelmer brewery
8. ↑ http://www.schwelmbrau.de/
9. ↑ Schwelmebräu operates the brewery in the Hagen open-air museum ( Memento from October 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
10. ↑ Weekly courier of November 16, 2011
11. ↑ Marc Chudaska MA: "Schwelmer Brewery. Chronicle of a Brewery", in: "Bergischen Blätter, September 26, 2015".

Web links

Commons : Schwelm Brewery  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Heimatkunde-Schwelm - Brewery
• Description of this sight on the route of industrial culturehttp: //vorlage.rik.test/~9~10919

Coordinates: 51 ° 17 ′ 6 ″  N , 7 ° 17 ′ 39 ″  E