Johann Heinrich Scheibler (textile manufacturer, 1705)

Johann Heinrich Scheibler (Monschau)

Johann Heinrich Scheibler (born September 14, 1705 in Volberg ; † August 26, 1765 in Monschau ) was a German cloth manufacturer and builder of the Red House in Monschau.

Live and act

The son of the pastor Bernhard Georg Scheibler (1674–1743) and Johanna Katharina Wittenius (1675–1749) as well as the grandson of the general superintendent Johannes Scheibler and great-grandson of the philosopher Christoph Scheibler completed an apprenticeship as a cloth merchant in 1720 after attending the Latin school in the Minorite monastery in Lennep the cloth factory Matthias Offermann in the Eifel community Imgenbroich near Monschau.

Three years later Scheibler married the daughter of his teacher, Maria Agnes Offermann (1698–1752), whose first husband, the cloth manufacturer Christoph Schlösser from Monschau, died unexpectedly in 1720. As a result, Maria Agnes became the heiress of a thriving cloth factory, which Johann Heinrich took over and continued to run. In the following years he began to import merino wool from Spain, among other things , and to process it by improving manufacturing methods and dyeing and finishing techniques as well as by picking up on current fashion trends and specializing in luxury items. For this work he hired both spinners and home weavers from the local area as well as skilled workers from Flanders . At times he employed between 4,000 and 6,000 people. However, this also led to conflicts between the long-established, consistently Catholic and rural population and the immigrant, mostly Protestant specialists, who also stayed among themselves because of their different faiths. Since the latter also tried to claim guild law for themselves in order to enforce better working conditions and higher wages, there were repeated uprisings, which Scheibler and later his successors together with other local cloth manufacturers and the municipal government were able to suppress. Nevertheless, a compromise was reached in 1777 to set up a health insurance fund based on the model of guild self-help under the leadership of the entrepreneurs.

Johann Heinrich Scheibler had single and multi-colored cloths manufactured in his factory according to the latest recipes, which successfully competed with the Flemish, French and English cloths on the national markets. Using a sophisticated distribution system and through certain commission houses , he sold his branded goods not only across Europe, but also in Russia, Turkey, Egypt and Persia. It was thanks to this economic success of Scheibler and his family that Monschau became a stronghold of the cloth industry for many decades and thus experienced an enormous social rise.

After his death in 1765, his sons Bernhard, Paul, Ernst and Wilhelm Scheibler and stepson Mathias Schlösser did not continue the JH Scheibler company, but founded their own companies, first in Monschau, and later in other cities in Germany and in other European countries. The sons and their successors diversified their companies into special fields of cloth manufacture, chemical production and trading activities. The last of the Scheibler companies that were dedicated to cloth weaving in Monschau ceased operations in 1957.

Red House Monschau - ancestral seat of the family - built by Johann Heinrich Scheibler

Scheibler's prosperity that came with his success was also evident in the construction of a representative residential and commercial building, the Red House in Monschau, which he had built between 1752 and 1768 in the styles of Rococo , Louis-Seize and Empire . Despite several inheritance divisions, this property remained in the possession of the extensive Scheibler family for more than a hundred years , until Carl Scheibler and Bernhard Scheibler bought the Red House back from third parties for the Scheibler family at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1963, Hans Carl Scheibler , the son of the Cologne industrialist Carl Johann Heinrich Scheibler , transferred the Red House as a whole, together with the integrated family archive, to the Scheibler-Museum Rotes Haus Foundation, which he founded . This foundation was finally incorporated into the Rhineland Regional Council as a deposit in 1987/8 and made available to the public.

family

His marriage to Maria Agnes Offermann, widowed Schloesser, gave birth to six sons and five daughters. His eldest son, Bernhard Georg von Scheibler (1724–1786) left his father's business early and founded his own cloth factories in Monschau, Eupen , Hagen and Herdecke , but then took over the Monschau businesses again after his father's death. In 1781 Bernhard Georg was the first of the Scheibler family to be honored with the elevation to the imperial nobility

Three other sons of Johann Heinrich Scheibler, Paul Christoph (1726–1797), Johann Ernst (1731–1773) and Wilhelm Scheibler (1737–1797), initially remained in their father's company, with Wilhelm initially managing the company Johann Heinrich Scheibler & Sons from 1777 continued as sole owner. His son Friedrich Jakob (1774–1834) renamed the company together with external partners to form Scheibler, Ronstorff, Rahlenbeck & Comp. around. Wilhelm's second son Johann Heinrich Scheibler (1777–1837), on the other hand, did the same as his grandfather and, like him, now in Krefeld , built up the flourishing velvet and silk manufacture Scheibler & Co , which merged into Scheibler & Peltzer GmbH in 1965 and finally in 1998 in the Girmes Werke Grefrath flowed. The youngest daughter of Johann Heinrich Scheibler, Maria Christina Katharina (1740–1807), married the Cologne textile merchant Christoph Andreae (1735–1804), who ran a linen and silk factory with his family in Mülheim .

Literature and Sources

Hans-Joachim Ramm: Scheibler, Johann Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 625 f. ( Digitized version ).
Carl Johann Heinrich Scheibler: History and genealogy of the Scheibler family , Cologne, 1895 Digitized edition of the University and State Library in Düsseldorf
Walter Scheibler : History and fate of a company in six generations (1724–1937) , Aachen, 1937
Walter Scheibler: On the 250th birthday of Johann Heinrich Scheibler, founder of the cloth industry , in: Das Monschauer Land , yearbook 1956
Hans Carl Scheibler and Karl Wülfrath : West German pedigrees . Weimar 1939
Elisabeth Nay-Scheibler: The history of the Scheibler family , in: Scheibler-Museum Rotes Haus Monschau Foundation (ed.), Cologne 1994
Josef Mangoldt: The rise and fall of the cloth industry in Monschau in the 18th and 19th centuries , in: Scheibler-Museum Rotes Haus Monschau Foundation , Cologne, 1994
Ernst Barkhausen: The cloth industry in Montjoie, its rise and fall, Aachener Verlags- und Druckereigesellschaft, Aachen 1925, reprint 1997

Individual evidence

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Scheibler, Johann Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German cloth manufacturer and builder of the Red House in Monschau
DATE OF BIRTH	September 14, 1705
PLACE OF BIRTH	Volberg
DATE OF DEATH	August 26, 1765
Place of death	Monschau

[1] Family Andreae as an example for the "Mülheimer" on Kreis-ahrweiler.de

[2] Christoph Andreae on heidermanns.net