Cheese hammer
The Käshammer is a preserved historical hammer mill in the Gelpe Valley in the Cronenberg district of the North Rhine-Westphalian city of Wuppertal . The building is registered as a monument in the list of monuments of the city of Wuppertal.
history
backgrounds
Iron and steel have been industrially processed on the streams and rivers in the Wuppertal, Remscheider and Solingen areas since the 14th century. In the area of these three cities several hundred hammer mills and grinding cabins settled , which used the region's hydropower until the end of the 19th century .
Although the degree of industrialization due to the abundance of water in the region since the 17th century one of the highest in the German Reich was, the whole industry performance distributed to numerous individual workshops where from iron blanks of high-quality steel refined and further sickles , scythes , tools , Swords and other cutlery was processed. The pig iron was imported from the Siegen area via the Bergische Eisenstrasse , the charcoal for the forge fires was obtained on site in coal piles.
The products were then sold all over Europe . It was only with the advent of steam engines (later electric motors ) and the construction of coal routes from the Ruhr area (later railways ) that the companies left the narrow, damp and dark valleys and settled on the mountain ranges with better transport connections.
History of the cheese hammer
The Käshammer was first mentioned in documents in 1607, where it was awarded a gold gulden water certificate (right to use water). At that time, farmers from the Saalscheider Mark used the facility as a joint bone mill . In the course of the centuries the ownership changed several times through the division of inheritance and sale. Depending on the tenant or owner, the name of the hammer also changed, so that it was also mentioned in the documents as Henshammer , Saalscheider Hammer , Goldenbergshammer , Höltershammer, among others. From 1824 the name Käshammer became established under the owner Carl Noltzen .
In 1829 the plant was operated as a refining hammer , where pig iron was refined into stainless steel, i.e. refined. Three overshot waterwheels powered the drop hammer and two forge blowers. In order to have enough gradient for the fall water, the Gelpebach was dammed into a hammer pond. Even so, there were often long periods in the late summer months when the water level was too low to operate and work had to be stopped.
In 1832 the Käshammer belonged to the Holthauser Rotte in the rural outskirts of the city of Ronsdorf . The place, which was categorized as individual houses according to the statistics and topography of the Düsseldorf administrative district , had two residential buildings, the hammer mill and an agricultural building at that time. At that time, 18 residents lived in the place, one Catholic and 17 Protestant faith. In the municipality lexicon for the Rhineland province from 1888, two houses with 15 inhabitants are given.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the owner Johann Hölter and his wife founded a restaurant on the property, which was a popular restaurant in the Gelpe Valley until 2005 . At the beginning of the 20th century, day trippers rowed on the Hammerteich and the water was used as an outdoor pool for young people. In 1896 he set up a silk weaving mill on the first floor of the hammer building and stopped using it as a hammer mill.
From the middle of the 20th century, the building served as a residential building with a workshop and was falling into disrepair. At this point in time, hydropower had not been used for a long time. In the meantime owned by the Vorwerk company , the building was renovated by the subsequent owner Peter Rudolph and today presents itself from the outside as one of the best-preserved historical workshops in Wuppertal.
literature
- Egon Viebahn: hammers and grinding balls in the Gelpe valley . Born-Verlag, Wuppertal 1983, ISBN 3-87093-033-0 (extended new edition 2003)
- Günther Schmidt: Hammer and Kotten research in Remscheid . Volume 3: From Gerstau to Haddenbach with Gelpetal and Ibach . Publisher: Buchhandlung R. Schmitz, Remscheid 2002, ISBN 3-9800077-3-1
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Johann Georg von Viebahn : Statistics and Topography of the Administrative District of Düsseldorf , 1836
- ↑ Königliches Statistisches Bureau (Prussia) (Ed.): Community encyclopedia for the Rhineland Province, based on the materials of the census of December 1, 1885 and other official sources, (Community encyclopedia for the Kingdom of Prussia, Volume XII), Berlin 1888.
Coordinates: 51 ° 13 ′ 3 " N , 7 ° 9 ′ 58" E