Joh. Schlösser wax bleaching and candle factory

Joh. Schlösser GmbH Wax bleaching and candle factory
legal form	GmbH
founding	March 10, 1764
Seat	Cologne , Germany
management	Stephan Zimmermann
Branch	Candle manufacturing
Website	www.kerzenschloesser.de

Consignment note from the candle factory (1796)

Signature Matthias Hummelsheim

Johann Schloesser

Signature of Johann Schlösser

Wax bleach in Raderthal

Signature of Johann Heinrich Schloesser

Candle shop in the company building in Cologne-Marsdorf

The Joh. Schlösser GmbH wax bleaching and candle factory is a candle factory founded in 1764 in Cologne . After the Eau de Cologne factory Johann Maria Farina opposite Jülichs-Platz, the company is the second oldest family company in the city that still exists at the Cologne Chamber of Commerce and Industry . Among other things, the company supplies the Archdiocese of Cologne and thus the Cologne Cathedral with altar and sacrificial candles .

Company history

18th and 19th centuries

The beekeeper and farmer Nikolaus Hummelsheim founded a candle factory on March 10, 1764 at Severinstraße 149 based on a letter from the "Freyen Stadt Cöllen" . Hummelsheim learned the trade from his in-laws, who owned a beekeeping themselves and also operated a wax bleaching facility. Having achieved a certain level of prosperity, Hummelsheim first relocated his business to Severinstrasse 192 and in 1769 acquired the H aus zum Grünen Schild in Severinstrasse 213/215, where candle production was operated until 1866. The interior of the four-story commercial building and some of the furnishings were preserved until the Second World War and were destroyed in a bomb attack in 1944. Nikolaus Hummelsheim was - like all owners of the company until 1914 - a member of the Roman Arch Brotherhood, the Misery Brothers .

After Nikolaus Hummelsheim's death in 1801, the factory, in which almost exclusively altar candles were made, was continued by his son Matthias Hummelsheim. He was able to develop the business steadily and devoted himself to numerous charitable tasks . Matthias Hummelsheim was prefect and benefactor of the Matthias Brotherhood , which organized the traditional procession from Cologne to Trier before Pentecost . As a pilgrimage director, Hummelsheim had a letter of protection from the Free and Imperial City of Cologne, which he later bequeathed to the owners of the Joh. Schlösser company.

After Matthias Hummelsheim's death on January 2, 1831, his sisters took over the business. In 1835 they handed the business over to the gardener Peter Ohrem, husband of Katharina Pesch, a granddaughter of Nikolaus Hummelsheim. In the following decades, Ohrem was able to further build up and expand the company with the help of his wife and nephew Johann Schlösser. In 1854, Ohrem retired from business life and administered the family's lands until his death on February 14, 1878. In 1866, Johann Schlösser acquired a plot of land in the immediate vicinity at Severinstrasse 178 (previously 122). In the dilapidated house, which housed a poor house in the time of the imperial city , and on the adjacent, relatively deep plot of land, he set up a wax bleaching facility, which, however, was impaired in its function over the next few decades due to the increasing development. In addition to making candles, the family pressed wine , baked bread and produced large quantities of honey until 1870 .

After the death of Peter Ohrem, Johann Schlösser took over the candle factory, who continued it with his son Johann Heinrich Schlösser. Until the First World War , Schlösser also produced thousands of pounds of honey every year. As a replacement for the inner-city bleaching wax, Johann Heinrich Schlösser, who had been running the business since 1890, relocated the bleaching wax to Raderthal and modernized production and broadened the product range. When the wax bleaching company moved to Raderthal, the commercial building in Serverinstrasse was rebuilt and modernized. At the same time, the small sale of fairground wax wire and fairground torches , which were part of the Cologne festival tradition, was gradually abandoned. The fair torches were lit during the processions in the surrounding churches and then only the burning was paid for. On fair days at dusk, the children wandered through the streets with the burning wax threads and were rewarded with a few pfennigs to buy sweets at the fair.

20th century

At the turn of the century, the consumption of beeswax candles decreased and the wax was first replaced by stearin , lamp oil , gas lighting and later by electric light . From 1910 onwards, some articles were made by machine. In addition to altar candles, wicks for the Eternal Light and pellets for incense barrels were also made. As a specialty of Cologne, the company made so-called offers - Cologne wax votives and consecration offerings - using molds that go back to the 16th century until the first half of the 20th century . The wax tablet and medallions were a sign of thanks and of expression asking sacrificed . In addition to motifs from the Passion of Jesus Christ , Mary with the child , statues of the Madonna, guardian angels , waxy body parts and animal figures were popular motifs.

In 1913 Johann Heinrich Schlösser was awarded the Order Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice . For decades, the company had been supplying Altarkerzen to the Cologne churches and the Hohe Domkirche and the candle-making family provided a house and cash for the employment of a chaplain in St. Johann Baptist . Johann Heinrich Schlösser also did a great job as a local researcher in Cologne; he was the first to give lectures on the history of Cologne in the Cologne language .

Due to the shortage of raw materials in the First World War and the trade restrictions resulting from the Versailles Treaty , operations could only be marginally maintained during this period. After the death of Johann Heinrich Schlösser, his wife Elisabeth Schlösser and their son Peter took over the management.

When the son had a fatal accident in 1924, the widow commissioned the authorized signatory Peter Baur on April 1, 1925 to manage the company. After an economic boom in the 1920s and 1930s, combined with an expansion of the range, Elisabeth Schlösser founded an open trading company together with Peter Baur as a partner in 1933 . During this time, the company also manufactured candles for private use, including Advent and Christmas candles and candles for decorative purposes.

The ban on the use of beeswax for church use, which has been gradually enforced since 1939, caused great economic damage to the company; the wax bleach had to be closed. The manufacture of church candles with a beeswax content greater than 10% was immediately banned, candles for private use were no longer allowed to contain any beeswax. The company's beeswax stocks were requisitioned . From January 1, 1940, candles from a mixture of paraffin and earth wax were only allowed to be made for church use . The production of altar candles had to be reduced to 60%, later to 40% and finally to 20% of pre-war production according to official requirements. Shortly before the end of the war, the manufacture of candles for church use was completely banned.

During the Second World War, the company premises were hit and destroyed several times by bombs . While the burnt-out roof could be repaired once again after the bomb hits in 1942 and the factory facilities could be saved by the work of the workforce, during the bomb attack on the night of June 28/29, 1943, the administration and sales rooms were completely destroyed by explosive bombs destroyed. Elisabeth Schlösser had to leave Cologne after her apartment was destroyed and died on February 14, 1944 in Bad Kissingen . On March 2, 1945, three explosive bombs completely destroyed the entire factory and production came to a standstill.

With the remains of the raw material stocks and rescued tools, the surviving employees of the company opened an emergency operation on Bonn Wall 309 on July 1, 1945. In this makeshift production facility, candles were made on a modest scale until November 8, 1949. After the rubble had been cleared, the construction of the new factory building on Severinstrasse began.

On January 1, 1951, the open trading company was converted into a limited partnership . The following were entered in the Cologne Commercial Register as shareholders : Peter Baur, Margarete Probst (daughter of Johann Heinrich Schlösser), Wilhelm Zimmermann (son-in-law of Johann Heinrich Schlösser) and his son Josef Zimmermann.

A construction ban by the city of Cologne stood in the way of a planned expansion of the production facility , which required the candle factory's property for access to the new Severinsbrücke . The company was offered an alternative property in Cologne's Lindenthal district , at Oskar-Jäger-Straße 3. After a year of construction, the new factory was inaugurated on October 7, 1955. Here the candles were mainly made by machine. On January 1, 1961, Peter Baur retired from management after 36 years and handed the company over to Josef Zimmermann, who managed the company until his death on April 13, 1979. Until his son Stephan Zimmermann joined the company on January 1, 1983, Josef Zimmermann's wife Margrit took over the management of the candle factory. Stephan and Margrit Zimmermann have been running the company together since July 1, 1986.

21st century

The production was constantly adapted to the changing wishes of the church, private and commercial customers. The conversion of many churches from sacrificial candles to sacrificial lights made it necessary to build a fully automatic sacrificial light production facility. The increased demand and the expansion of the customer base required a spatial expansion of the production facilities, which was no longer possible in Lindenthal. In 2003 the production site was relocated to the industrial area in Cologne-Marsdorf , where a candle shop was set up in addition to the candle production.

In 2006 a new candle production plant was put into operation in Marsdorf in order to be able to react better to the needs of the market. Since 2007, the company has been cooperating with the Alexianer service companies , which separate the spent plastic trays from the sacrificial candles and refill them. Since Margrit Zimmermann left in 2013, Stephan Zimmermann and his wife Birgit have been running the business in the eighth generation.

Products

Candle in Cologne Cathedral, lit for the memorial service for Alfred Neven DuMont

Easter candle (2015).

The candle factory still mainly supplies church institutions in Germany and neighboring countries with around 50,000 altar candles, two million sacrificial candles made from a mixture of paraffin, stearin and beeswax, and five million tea lights annually. In addition, candles for gastronomy and private use are made, some of which are individually decorated by hand in Marsdorf. Every year 250 tons of paraffin around 5 tons of beeswax are processed, which is imported from Canada, China, Australia and Africa.

The candle factory provides all the votive lights, the altar and Easter candles for Cologne Cathedral is. Every year is there during the carnival season a special candle for the Cologne triumvirate placed the traditional. By the company Joh locks donated is. The largest candle set up in the cathedral with a height of 2 meters was also manufactured in the Joh. Schlösser candle factory.

Trivia

Candles on Heldenplatz during the Night of Silence on March 12, 2008

On March 12, 2008, the Schlösser candle factory delivered 80,000 candles to Vienna for the night of silence . At the commemorative event for the 70th anniversary of the National Socialists' seizure of power in Austria , the candles were meant to commemorate the 80,000 deportees. In 2011, the candle factory equipped the film set for Roland Emmerichs Anonymus with countless, temperature-resistant and very bright film candles by making special candles with several wicks.

literature

Franz Bender: Germany's urban development: Cologne , Deutscher Architektur- und Industrie-Verlag (DARI), Berlin-Halensee 1925, p. 205
Joh. Schlösser K.-G .: 200 years of candles from Cologne 1764 to 1964 . (Jubilee gift, Joh. Schlösser K.-G.). Cologne 1964, 53 pp.
Ulrich S. Soénius : Joh. Schlösser GmbH Wax bleaching and candle factory. In: Mario Kramp and Ulrich S. Soénius: Made in Cologne - Cologne brands for the world. JP Bachem Verlag, 2nd edition, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-7616-2750-1 , pp. 170f.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Mario Kramp and Ulrich S. Soénius: Made in Cologne - Cologne brands for the world . 2nd Edition. JP Bachem Verlag, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-7616-2750-1 , p. 170 f .
↑ Cologne Cathedral: Candles for the Cathedral. Retrieved December 19, 2015 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d Joh. Schlösser K.-G. (Ed.): 200 years of candles from Cologne 1764 to 1964 - anniversary gift . Cologne 1964, p. 53 .
^ Ullrich S. Soénius and Jürgen Wilhelm (eds.): Kölner Personen Lexikon . Greven Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , p. 474 .
^ Konrad Adenauer and Volker Gröbe: Lindenthal . 2nd Edition. Bachem, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-7616-0899-3 , p. 76 .
↑ A light that returns forever. Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, April 6, 2007, accessed on December 19, 2015 .
↑ In a conversation: candles producer Stephan Zimmermann. radiokoeln.de, accessed on December 17, 2015 .
↑ ^a ^b Robert Boecker: Advent 2015 -WACHSende Kunst. Archdiocese of Cologne, accessed on December 19, 2015 .
↑ Special events. (No longer available online.) Kerzenschloesser.de, archived from the original on December 22, 2015 ; Retrieved December 20, 2015 . 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. @1@ 2
↑ Monika Salchert: The best customer is the cathedral. welt.de, December 16, 2012, accessed December 20, 2015 .