Gail's cigar factory

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The Gail'sche tobacco factory in Neustadt in the middle of the 19th century.

The Gail'sche Zigarrenfabrik (also Georg Philipp Gail AG ) based in Giessen was one of the first tobacco factories in Hesse and was one of the leading manufacturers of cigars in Germany and the USA from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century .

The prehistory in Dillenburg in the 18th century

The prehistory of the Gail'schen cigar factory lies in Dillenburg , where the grandfather of the later company founder Georg Philipp Gail, a grocer , started producing smoking tobacco at the end of the 18th century .

The County of Nassau-Dillenburg belonging Dillenburg came in the wake of the Act of Confederation in 1806 to League of the Rhine and was a constituent of the Napoleonic influence regiertem, newly established Grand Duchy of Berg . With the introduction of the French tobacco monopoly - d. H. Manufacture and sale of tobacco products of all kinds only by state-licensed companies - Napoléon Bonaparte in 1810 also confiscated the tobacco warehouse at Gail in 1811.

1812: Foundation of the Gail'sche tobacco factory as the first tobacco factory in Giessen

Georg Philipp Gail (1785–1865), the grandson of the Dillenburg colonialist, therefore decided to move to nearby Giessen . At that time, Gießen belonged to the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt , where there was, on the one hand, freedom of monopoly and , on the other hand, the tobacco tax was significantly lower. In addition, there was no noteworthy production of tobacco products in the province of Upper Hesse . With a starting capital of 700 guilders , the first Gießen tobacco factory was founded on January 27, 1812 on Kreuzplatz / corner of Sonnenstrasse with initially eight employees - the foundation stone for the city's first industrial company was laid. In addition to pipe tobacco, snuff was also produced, later also chewing tobacco . The expansion of production soon made it necessary to purchase a larger building: in 1825 Georg Philipp Gail acquired the "von Gatzert property" in Neustadt for 16,000 guilders.

1840: The Georg Philipp Gail cigar factory

On November 15, 1840, Gail began producing cigars for the first time in a newly founded company, the Georg Philipp Gail cigar factory - a product that should bring the company to an extraordinary boom and soon determined the economic development of the entire region around Gießen In addition to Gail, numerous other tobacco and cigar factories had established themselves in the Gießen area. Increasing tobacco imports from overseas also made the raw material tobacco cheaper in the following years, so that tobacco products became affordable for broad sections of society. All of this was favored by the rapid expansion of the railway network , and in 1852 the city of Giessen also received a rail connection.

At the same time, Georg Philipp Gail set up a wool spinning mill in Gießen (with extraordinarily high government subsidies) , which processed the raw material wool produced in the Hessian hinterland . But it was crowned with no particular success and was given up again early; its establishment is said to have resulted from a certain sense of social responsibility towards the poor farmers of the region rather than entrepreneurship .

GW Gail & Ax's Tobacco Works in Baltimore in the late 19th century.

1850: GW Gail & Ax's Tobacco Works Baltimore

In the year Georg Philipp Gail crowned his life's work with the establishment of a tobacco factory in Baltimore . This not only provided an additional production location and sales market - especially among the increasing numbers of emigrants from Germany - but also the purchase of raw tobacco could be carried out independently from here.

On October 6, 1855, on the initiative of Georg Philipp Gails, who had previously purchased a fire engine for the Giessen fire station , the Gail fire service was founded. It saw itself explicitly as firefighters for the general public, not as a pure company fire . In 1892 it was placed under the command of a joint fire chief together with the Giessen volunteer fire brigade and the compulsory fire brigade , from 1905 it formed the 3rd fire brigade , and in 1938 it was finally transferred to the volunteer fire brigade.

The expansion of production into the Giessen area

Since there was no longer any workforce to be found in the city, Georg Philipp Gail and his son Georg Karl Gail, who took over the management of the company after his death in 1865, set up production contracts: In 1852 the first contract was signed with the Marienschloss prison (today's Rockenberg juvenile prison ) .

The increasing demand not only brought Gail, but also other tobacco manufacturers from Giessen to the surrounding area. The first branch factory was founded in Rodheim in 1857. After production ceased due to the war, the buildings were used by a weaving mill from 1949 to 1957, and from 1957 to 1963 cigars of the “Hahn im Korb” brand were again produced here. In the 1990s, the factory buildings were demolished to make way for new buildings. More emerged in the following years and a. in Bieber (1903) and in Krofdorf .

In the places concerned, this led to a significant change in the employment situation, as it was mostly the first commercial jobs for women that were created: Women were skillful and - although they received a lower wage than men - were happy about an opportunity to earn money locally. Within a few years the female cigar makers were outnumbered by the men, and until the 1950s it was a matter of course in many villages that a girl's path led to the cigar factory after school.

The Wilhelm Gail era

The Gail'sche tobacco factory under Wilhelm Gail (1854–1925) reached the peak of its development . Tobacco with the beehive as a symbol became the regional industry leader in the 19th century. In addition, let Wilhelm Gail, who had a good grasp of the needs of the construction boom of the century, in 1891, a brick factory , the Gail'sche Dampfziegelei and pottery factory , built just outside the city on Erdkauterweg which the popular decades Gail'schen glaze clinker produced .

In 1907 there were strikes in the Giessen tobacco industry, including in the Gail company; the labor dispute over higher wages lasted 19 weeks. At the beginning of the First World War , production initially increased - due to army deliveries - until the import ban for raw tobacco in 1916.

Parts of the Central Hesse police headquarters in the former Gail'schen cigar factory

The production, which increased rapidly after the end of the war and was also accelerated by the cigar wrapping machines established on the market, required larger premises at the beginning of the 1920s. In 1923 the tobacco and cigar production was relocated to the spacious factory on Sandkauter Weg, newly built by the Herford architect Wilhelm Köster , in the immediate vicinity of the Gail'schen pottery factory - conveniently located on the Gießen – Gelnhausen railway line and equipped with its own siding.

From the thirties to the end of production in 1963

After the death of his father in 1925, Dr. Georg Gail (1884–1950) took over the management. The machine ban for the cigar industry, enacted in 1933 by the National Socialist Reich government as an instrument of labor market policy, meant a complete return of production to manual wrapping and, associated with this, a considerable increase in the workforce. As a result of the rising production costs and the parallel establishment of the cigarette , a general decline in the cigar industry gradually began. At the beginning of the war in 1939, the machine ban was relaxed, as the war effort of men and the increasing duty of women meant that there was a shortage of workers, but the lack of raw materials soon forced a radical cut in production.

The first of what was once more than 30 cigar and tobacco factories in the Giessen region had given up - due to the change in consumer habits - as early as the 1930s and during the Second World War . Although there was another brief upswing in the mid-1950s, the end of cigar production was inevitable: As the penultimate of the factories still producing in Giessen, the Gail'sche cigar factory closed its doors forever in 1963.

Reminiscences

A number of outstanding objects in and around Gießen still bear witness to the former boom of the Gail cigar industry and the family's enthusiasm for building:

  • the Gail'sche cigar factory in Giessen, built in 1923; since the late 1980s the seat of the Central Hesse police headquarters .
  • the Gail'sche Villa at Gartenstrasse 22 in Giessen
  • the Gail'sche Villa at Wilhelmstrasse 16 in Gießen (built in 1866/67, rebuilt in a neoclassical style in 1924/25)
  • the Gail'sche Park with villa in Rodheim from the 1890s

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Voluntary fire brigade Giessen e. V .: The history of fire extinguishing in Giessen ( memento of the original from January 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 31, 2013 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ff-giessen.de
  2. ↑ Reference to the history of Biebertal with the districts (PDF file; 2.0 MB) In: Nachrichten des Heimatverein Rodheim-Bieber, No. 15, December 2005, p. 10.
  3. ↑ Heimatverein Rodheim-Bieber: Chronicle Rodheim-Bieber (PDF file; 1017 kB)
  4. ↑ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Gail'sche Zigarrenfabrik factories In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse
  5. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Villa Gail In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse
  6. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments Hesse (ed.): Villa Gail In: DenkXweb, online edition of cultural monuments in Hesse
  7. ↑ City Archives Gießen, photo and picture collection: http://stadtarchiv-giessen.tagebergen.de/bestaende/?o=80;b=12;s=01.01%20Wohngeb%C3%A4ude
  8. ↑ State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen / Wenzel Bratner: Monument of the Month September 2004: A sample of garden art from the early days , accessed on January 30, 2013