Industrialization in Rottenburg
For a long time there was hardly any industry in Rottenburg am Neckar . The city was more agricultural. The first significant entrepreneurs were Josef Pfeifer (1775-1842) and Honoré Frédéric Fouquet (April 9, 1802 Poinville, Eure-et-Loir department ; † May 29, 1888 Rottenburg).
Josef Pfeifer bought all the mills in Rottenburg and initially shut them down. In the 1830s he built a new weir on the Neckar and seven mills. This is how the first “industrial district” of Rottenburg was established. But the company could not survive. The Stuttgart-based Frédéric Fouquet acquired the site in 1873 and founded his factory there. The Junghans watch factory was added later as a further industrial company. In the early 1950s there were only Fouquet and Junghans in Rottenburg as entrepreneurs with more than 20 employees.
Fouquet & Frauz
For a long time, Fouquet & Frauz was the largest and only factory in Rottenburg. In the population it was generally known as "Fugge". The factory was initially built on a spinning mill site, and with economic success, the site was later expanded and a new factory building was also built.
Company history
"Motte & Fouquet" was founded in Troyes (France) in 1834 by Honoré Frédéric Fouquet and an older business partner. In 1845 Honoré Frédéric Fouquet received a French patent for the invention of an innovative mesh wheel, which became famous as the “Little Mailleuse”. In 1852, Fouquet merged with a textile industrialist in Stuttgart and relocated his company there. Together they built the first Württemberg factory for round chairs in 1852, for which they received a state loan of 10,000 florins .
In 1856, Fouquet invented the “Large Mailleuse”, which enabled the circular knitting machine to process all kinds of hard yarns perfectly. It was also called "mailleuse oblique" because its axis was installed at an angle to the horizontal. It could be attached to almost any French round chair. In order to process and elastic material readily has a large diameter, contains forward no actual Mühleisenscheibe and takes over the chair needles and their kulierenden and grinding vorziehenden boards as much space free, that a small pressing wheel and beside the Auftrag- and attaching device. This allowed pressing and applying within the mail lock room while the blanks held the loops.
The company thus became the oldest German circular knitting machine factory. Since 1861 Fouquet has been manufacturing circular knitting machines according to the “système américain”, based on the very first American types, and has supplied them for over 20 years. The first 50 buyers of Fouquet's circular knitting machines received an “encouragement bonus” of 50 florins from the state. In addition, the government promoted the production of the knitted goods industry by supplying the army with jerseys.
In 1862 Fouquet included his son-in-law Frauz as a partner and commercial director in the company, which has since operated under the name Fouquet & Frauz . Frauz died in 1868, and Fouquet was again solely responsible for the company.
The company was relocated from Stuttgart to Rottenburg in 1872 in order to use the hydropower available there. When Honoré Frédéric Fouquet came to Rottenburg, he was already an important entrepreneur. The company was going well, and so Fouquet himself moved to Rottenburg.
In 1873 the spinning factory was converted into a machine factory. In 1882 a traction engine was delivered by G. Kuhn , Stuttgart-Berg. The company's founder died in Rottenburg in 1888. In 1891 a steam boiler from the manufacturer G. Kuhn from Stuttgart-Berg was installed and in 1910 a water turbine was delivered by J. M. Voith in Heidenheim an der Brenz .
In 1914 Fouquet employed around 200 people and in 1934 even more than 400 people. The factory was known nationally; for a long time it was the only large industrial operation in Rottenburg. The heyday of the jersey and knitwear industry was based on Fouquet's two inventions . Fouquet's “new system” based on the Great Mailleuse has remained in force to the present day. In 1975 the company had to file for bankruptcy and in 1981 a rescue company finally gave up the company. The Rottenburger Fouquetstraße is still named after the company founder.
Junghans
In 1898 the United Watch Factory of Gebrüder Junghans & Thomas Haller AG from Schramberg founded a branch in Rottenburg because there was a shortage of workers in Schramberg. Between 1914 and 1926 the company employed between 200 and 400 people, mostly women and girls. The Junghans branch was thus the second largest company in Rottenburg after Fouquet and Frauz. In 1955 the company's Rottenburg branch was closed.
power plant
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The watch factory had electrical machines with a total output of 500 kW. That is why it has operated its own Kiebingen am Neckar hydropower plant since 1903 , which is still producing electricity today. The power station was oversized for the watch factory, so that the excess electricity was sold. The Kiebinger hydropower plant was designed to generate three-phase current from the start . This multiphase current had the advantage over direct current that its voltage could be increased significantly with a transformer. The transmission of the resulting high-voltage current of lower strength was technically much easier. In Kiebingen, for example, the electricity generated with a voltage of 3,000 V was fed into the overland network with 15,000 V.
On September 25, 1905, 50 founding members, including 26 Swabian mayors, founded a cooperative in Herrenberg , whose task it was to buy the surplus electricity from the Junghans company and distribute it via a network that was still to be built. This company was called "Electric power transmission for the area Herrenberg und Umgebung eGmbH (EKH)" based in Unterjesingen. In 1888 a steam engine was delivered to Kiebingen by G. Kuhn from Stuttgart-Berg. In 1902 J. M. Voith from Heidenheim supplied two Francis turbines and also the regulator . According to the regulator list, the power was 368 hp. In 1912 Junghans sold the Kiebinger power station to EKH, which installed four modern water turbines with a total electrical output of 1000 kW and a steam turbine with an electrical output of 750 kW. In order to be able to generate the steam required for this, a boiler house with a 36 m high chimney was built on the north wall of the hydroelectric power station. The boiler house still stands today, but the chimney was removed after the steam turbine was shut down after the Second World War .
State prison
As early as 1885, two steam engines and a steam boiler made by G. Kuhn from Stuttgart-Berg were installed in the state prison. In 1889 and 1903 two more steam boilers were installed by the same manufacturer. The latter powered a steam pump from Kuhn and the Esslingen machine factory .
Württemberg Motor Vehicle Plant Rottenburg
The Württemberg motor vehicle factory in Rottenburg was founded in 1929 by Wilhelm Jeckel from Rottenburg . In the years 1929 to 1931 different models of motorcycles were produced here. The machines produced were equipped with engines from 9 HP to 28 HP and were among the top brands of the time. After the company's founder died early in an accident at the end of 1929, production continued in Rottenburg until bankruptcy in 1931.
Today's companies
- Hartmann Energietechnik GmbH
- Berner Torantriebe KG
- ABUS publishing house
- Somfy Feinmechanik und Elektrotechnik GmbH
- Stoz Oberflächentechnik GmbH & Co. KG
- Ehing Wohnbau GmbH
- Biral GmbH
- Kopp Verlag eK
literature
- History traits, Gomaringer Verlag, 2006
- Rottenburg , Anton Konrad Verlag, 1974
- City Archives Rottenburg:
- Watches from the Neckar (1996)
- Commercial industry Rottenburg (1906)
- Economic history in Rottenburg (1914)
- The other side of Rottenburg, 1898
- Rottenburg around 1900, Sülchgauer-Altertums-Verein, 2002
- katalog.meinestadt.de
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Alfred Planck: Fouquet, Honoré Frédéric. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 307 ( digitized version ).
- ^ A b Fritz Scheerer: About our knitwear industry in the period before 1900 . ( Memento of the original from August 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) In: Heimatkundliche Blätter Balingen , Volume 23, August 31, 1976, No. 8, p. 79.
- ↑ On the history of the mechanical circular knitting machines . ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2012 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. German stocking museum
- ↑ Gustav Willkomm: About the properties of the various active materials and their influence on the work. In: Polytechnisches Journal . 212, 1874, p. 108.
- ↑ a b c Albert Gieseler: Steam engines and locomotives
- ^ Gerhard Kittelberger: Modern times - the electric current comes to Ofterdingen
- ↑ a b Kiebingen power plant: Now a cultural monument as evidence of the electrification of the state of Baden-Württemberg.
