LVR-Industriemuseum Solingen - Hendrichs drop forge

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LVR industrial museum Solingen
Solingen - Hendrichs drop forge 03 ies.jpg
Street view of the drop forge F. & W. Hendrichs (2009)
Data
place Merscheider Strasse 289-297, 42699 Solingen
Art
Technology museum
opening Founded in 1986, opened in 1999 after renovation and expansion
Number of visitors (annually) approx. 27,000 (2013)
operator
management
Nicole Scheda
Website
ISIL DE-MUS-277512

The drop forge Hendrichs is a museum location of the LVR industrial museum in Solingen. From 1886 to 1986, here scissors - blanks forged and partially processed. The drop forge is an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Culture (ERIH) and part of the Bergisches Land industrial culture network .

history

Company sign

Favored by many watercourses in Bergisch Land and the many forests that sufficient charcoal provided, as well as the proximity to mines in Siegerland that formed in the Middle Ages in the space Solingen blades business , which evolved over the centuries into a comprehensive cutlery industry evolved. In the last third of the 19th century, the Solingen cutlery industry achieved a leading position on the world market.

Owner's villa

In 1886 the brothers Peter and Friedrich-Wilhelm Hendrichs founded the drop forge in Solingen-Merscheid . They were motivated by the increasing mechanization of the forging process. Within a few decades, it should develop into one of the largest Solingen drop forges with a total of 33 hammers. In the second half of the 19th century, the forging process in Solingen was completely changed from hand forging to mechanized drop forging. The Hendrichs drop forge can be seen as a typical example of this development. The numerous closed-die forges produced the raw material, which was then processed in the traditional way in small craft or home workers' businesses. H. for example hardened , ground and assembled.

Development of the Hendrichs drop forge

Wrought

Like all drop forges, the Hendrichs drop forge essentially consisted of four departments:

  1. Splitting shop in which the raw material, long steel rods 4 to 6 m in length, is cut to size on heavy presses.
  2. The forge, in which the blanks are punched and given their shape.
  3. The tailoring, in which the superfluous material - the wing - is then cut off.
  4. In the tool shop, the tools for forging (dies) and deburring (cuts) are made.

The machinery was operated via transmission, so a boiler house and a machine house for the steam engine were required. In 1956 this was replaced by a diesel engine. There were also bearings for the blanks and the tools. The Hendrichs drop forge was a steam grinding shop in which independent grinders (home workers) rented a workplace.

End of the Hendrichs drop forge

Due to the serious illness of Peter-Wilhelm Hendrichs, a grandson of the company's founders, the number of employees fell from around 60-70 in the 1950s to eight after the Second World War. After his death in 1974, the widow Luise Hendrichs continued the business. She was looking for a way to phase out the business without any serious consequences for the employees. In this situation, LVR's offer to take over the drop forge and its employees turned out to be a stroke of luck.

LVR industrial museum Solingen

In 1986 the Hendrichs company ceased operations - one hundred years after it was founded. The Landschaftsverband Rheinland (LVR) acquired the factory including the complete inventory and the attached factory owner's villa. The remaining employees were taken over by the museum, then worked in the showroom and continued to produce. When it closed, the drop forge met neither the safety requirements of a modern company nor of a facility open to the public. In addition, a museum infrastructure had to be built into the factory. The Landschaftsverband Rheinland therefore financed the renovation of the museum with DM 2.0 million and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with DM 15 million. In this way, the listed character of the factory with its working atmosphere was retained. The official reopening took place in March 1999.

Industrial culture

All machines, the drop hammers, presses and milling machines, all tools and the workbenches for the toolmakers are still completely available. Even the changing room with the old lockers, the washroom with the long row of rotatable wash bowls, the machine house or the office with the clattering typewriter have been preserved. The company villa of the entrepreneurial family was also integrated into the museum.

Components of the permanent exhibition

In the former Hendrichs drop forge, with more than 3,500 m² of exhibition space, scissor blanks are still produced today. In the tool shop, the die tools for the scissor shapes are processed with machines and on a vice. The further processing of the scissors blanks - hardening, grinding and assembling - is shown in former, still operational homeworker's workshops, which have been integrated into the exhibition. Other departments illustrate the mechanization of grinding and explain the work in cutlery production. The stately company villa from 1896 also offers insights into the bourgeois world of the factory owner family. The museum's restaurant with winter garden is also located here. The garden with old trees is used by the operators as a beer garden in summer. The restaurant is currently operated with Greek cuisine and is open to visitors to the museum (as of August 2014).

Museum education and events

The LVR-Industriemuseum Solingen has an extensive range of educational museum offers, differentiated according to grades and school types . The program is supplemented by special offers for children and families, such as the puppet theater "Amlaufband", the organization of children's birthdays or special family Sundays, blacksmith workshops and creative workshops.

In addition to Sunday tours, themed tours, children's tours and also dialect tours, the museum regularly organizes industrial history excursions and factory tours, and occasionally also lectures, concerts, readings or discussion events. In addition to the annual museum festival, the MesserForkScherenmarkt is a program highlight with a product show by over 25 Solingen manufacturers every autumn.

Industrial culture stations

The Solingen cutlery industry was shaped by its decentralized structure based on division of labor. The LVR-Industriemuseum Solingen operates and supports a number of industrial culture stations in the city as part of a partner network .

Wipperkotten

The forged blanks have been ground with the help of water power since the Middle Ages . The Wipperkotten on the Wupper is the last original Solingen sanding kotten . In the Doppelkottenanlage, home workers are still working on whetstones driven by the water wheel . The history of Kottens and the grinding profession is documented in an exhibition.

Loosen machinn

Technical progress made it possible for the grinders to make themselves independent of hydropower. Since the 1850s, steam grinding shops have been established in Solingen that used steam engines to drive the grinding stones. On the Widderter ridge , Ernst Loos built one of the largest steam grinding shops in Solingen in 1888. Up to 183 grinders worked in the three-storey brick building with the adjacent machine house. The steam grinding shop called by the grinders Loosen Maschinn (Loos his machine) was in operation until 1990. In the building, which has been converted for residential and commercial purposes, there is an exhibition room in which the history of the Loosen Maschinn and the formerly over 100 Solingen steam grinding shops is shown.

Pocket knife workshop Lauterjung

The reider , assembling the handle and blade of a knife together, is another typical occupation in the cutlery industry. In the Reiderei Lauterjung, not far from the Müngstener Brücke in the district of Krahenhöhe, which specialized in pocket knives, the original equipment of the workshop can be viewed to a limited extent. The Kotten and the adjoining former residential building are an exemplary ensemble of the Solingen home industry, which shaped the Solingen court .

Delivery office of Friedrich Abr. Herder

The large cutlery companies in Solingen had delivery offices where the raw materials were distributed to home workers. The returned processed pieces were received and checked there and the wages were paid. The wives or daughters of the homeworkers, who carried a basket called Liëwermang on their heads, usually took care of the transport between the office and Kotten . In the representative administration building of the company Friedrich Abr. Herder in Höhscheid , the LVR industrial museum has reconstructed a delivery office. The exhibition in the building, which is now used as a start-up center , shows the great importance of working from home for this company. Elements of the original furnishings are delivery counters for various products, cash desks and fitted benches for waiting suppliers. In addition, the history of the Herder company and its delivery activities are discussed.

Wash house Weegerhof

Home or factory workers often had badly soiled work clothes. During the construction of 185 residential buildings in the Weegerhof estate in Höhscheid in 1928, a central laundry was built as an ultra-modern, socially exemplary community facility at the time. The wash house , which was still in use until 2005, is probably the only facility in Germany with the original equipment. You can see almost unchanged large, old washing machines , voluminous spinning machines , backdrop cabinets with steam spirals for drying the laundry and powerful lack of steam . In addition, the history of washing is explained in an exhibition .

Concept of the LVR industrial museum

The Solingen location is one of a total of seven locations of the LVR industrial museum, which together form a single museum. In factories, some of which are listed, the history of industry in the Rhineland and the people who work there is told at an authentic location. The focus is on the central sectors of metal, textiles, paper and electricity. In addition to the Solingen location in the former Hendrichs drop forge, these are:

The museum headquarters with management, the collection depot , library, photo archive and workshops as well as the Eisenheim estate with the local museum as a branch are also located in Oberhausen . The Regional Association of Rhineland (LVR) is the founder and sponsor of the LVR industrial museum.

literature

  • Johannes Großewinkelmann, Petra Geers, Milena Karabaic, Jochem Putsch: Hendrichs drop forge. Solingen industrial history between craft and factory . Klartext, Essen 1999, ISBN 3-88474-737-1 .

Web links

Commons : Solingen - Gesenkschmiede Hendrichs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Free cultural institutions in Solingen, City of Solingen - information template from September 17, 2014, p. 1 ( Memento from October 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 101 kB) at www2.solingen.de , accessed on October 4, 2015
  2. ↑ The new boss wants to bring the museum to life. On: solinger-tageblatt.de from March 15, 2019.
  3. ↑ Web museums - Hendrichs drop forge , consulted on July 22, 2010
  4. ↑ www.villa-zefyros.de
  5. ↑ Industrial culture in Solingen ( memento from September 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), requested on October 4, 2015 at industriemuseum.lvr.de
  6. ↑ Wipperkotten ( memento from September 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 4, 2015 at industriemuseum.lvr.de
  7. ↑ Steam grinding shop Loosen Maschinn ( memento from September 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 4, 2015 at industriemuseum.lvr.de
  8. ↑ Taschenmesserreiderei Lauterjung ( Memento from September 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 4, 2015 at industriemuseum.lvr.de
  9. ^ Report of the Solinger Morgenpost from April 5, 2013, accessed on October 4, 2015
  10. ^ Delivery office of Friedrich Abr. Herder ( memento of October 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), retrieved from industriemuseum.lvr.de on October 4, 2015
  11. ^ Waschhaus Weegerhof ( memento from September 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on October 4, 2015 at industriemuseum.lvr.de

Coordinates: 51 ° 10 ′ 16.1 ″  N , 7 ° 2 ′ 18 ″  E