Munte bell foundry
The Munte bell foundry was a metal foundry and turning shop in Witten .
history
The company was founded in 1864 by master bell founder Wilhelm Carl Ferdinand Munte (born September 17, 1827 in Neuhaldensleben ; † May 18, 1905) at Rosenstrasse 14 . His eldest son Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand August Walter Munte (born June 26, 1866 in Witten; † December 7, 1908) continued the business, but left the company due to family disputes. After the death of Carl Munte, Walter's brothers Carl and Hermann took over the bell foundry in 1905, but they no longer made bells.
From May 1, 1909, Franz Hillebrand took over the company and continued to run it until February 1, 1929, then followed by Heinrich Mellmann , who relocated the company to Ruhrstrasse on a former site of the Franziska colliery . The company “Carl & Herm. Munte Inh. Mellmann ”expired on February 26, 1957 and was deleted from the commercial register of the city of Witten on September 20, 1957 .
Bells
Most of the bells made by the company were not preserved. In 1898, for example, Munte made four bronze bells for the Reinoldikirche in Dortmund with weights of 817, 1,295, 2,088 and 3,168 kg. They were melted down in the First World War .
The school bell of the Lakeschule from 1894 with a weight of 25 kg was given to the local history museum of the city of Witten and is now in the Märkisches Museum . A total of six surviving bells from the Munte foundry are known, four of them in Witten, one in Dierdorf and one in Homberg .