Clog maker
The clog was probably from the late 15th and mid-16th century to the late 19th century a widespread craft outside the guild system of the former cities. Up until the mid-1950s, wooden shoes were the everyday footwear for a large part of the rural population in Westphalia , especially in the Münsterland .
Originally, clog making was not a separate craft. Kötter and Maurer made wooden shoes as a sideline in winter. It was not until after the First World War that wooden shoemaking became an independent craft with apprenticeship training and master craftsman's examination. Since the end of the 19th century, wooden clogs have increasingly only been made in larger craft workshops and, since the 1920s, also in larger numbers using machines. Thus, the profession developed in the communities Ahaus in the district of Borken and new churches in the district of Steinfurt and other places (including Bocholt , Altenberge , Coesfeld of wooden shoemaking) particularly in western Münsterland until the mid-1930s, a stronghold.
Favored by the shortage of raw materials during the Second World War and the post-war years until the mid-1950s, the clogmaker's profession flourished between 1939 and 1955. Between 1939 and 1945, all larger handicraft businesses were classified as "important to the war effort" because they supplied the civilian population as well as the armaments industry and the armed forces with local raw materials . The boom for the clog making trade continued after the end of the war into the 1950s.
In northern Germany, after the guilds of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia had already merged, the clog makers 'guild was transferred to the shoe makers' guild in 1968, since rubber boots and steel-toed shoes had been the clogs, which at that time were called "poor people's shoes" , since the early 1950s. were in force and no longer met the industrial safety regulations.
Work steps
The profession of wooden shoemaker includes - until today - the following work steps:
- Choosing, felling and depositing the wood (duration of deposition approx. 3 years; first as a trunk, then as a tree slice; from 1920 also mechanically using a chainsaw)
- Carving out the so-called "Bollen" from the tree slice (Bolle = the log from which the wooden shoe is made. From 1920 onwards, splitting out the Bollen with an ax increasingly replaced the circular saw - to make work easier, but at the expense of a significant loss of quality.)
- External shaping with the help of the draw knife. (From 1920 also by machine using lathes.)
- Hollow out the footbed with spoon knives. (From 1920 also by machine using so-called copier machines.)
- Fine-tuning of the footbed and the outer shape (from 1920 partly also by machine with the help of the belt sander.)
For 90 years the way of working of the wooden shoemaker has not changed significantly until today (2012).
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- Robert Wehmschulte: Our village. A little home story . Neuenkirchen 1972, pp. 22-23.
- Johannes Hagemann: clogs and clog-making in the western Münsterland . Thesis, Münster 1997.
- Reinhard Peesch : Wooden device in its original forms. Academy Publishing House . Berlin 1966, pp. 59-61.