Consumers Cooperative Forward (Barmen)

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Main building in Münzstrasse
Part of the building in the courtyard of Münzstrasse

The consumer cooperative Vorwärts was founded in 1899 in the then independent town of Barmen (now part of Wuppertal ). The consumer cooperative initially had 45 families as members when it was founded, and at first it was not convinced of its success.

history

In 1904 the site north of the Heubruch train station in Münzstrasse on Sedansberg was acquired, at which time the cooperative already had 3800 members. The main building of the consumer cooperative on Münzstraße was built between 1905 and 1908, but a few years later the capacities of the bakery and the headquarters were no longer sufficient.

Karl Eberle took over the management of the cooperative in 1907 and managed under his leadership that the number of members rose to 14,000 in 1912. Over time, the site on Münzstrasse was constantly expanded. The heart of the facility was a highly efficient bread factory with an underground rail link.

The time of the First World War was a difficult time for the cooperative. Horses and wagons were confiscated and two of the three trucks were requisitioned for the military. When food became scarce and food ration cards were subsequently introduced, 27 percent of the citizens of Barmer signed up for the cooperative's customer lists. At times up to 50,000 loaves of bread were produced every day.

In 1924 the three large consumer cooperatives in the region, Vorwärts in Barmen, Hope in Velbert and Liberation in Elberfeld , merged under the name of the consumer and production cooperative Vorwärts-Liberation . At that time the consumer cooperative Vorwärts had 33,368 members and 66 distribution points, making it the largest part of the merger. With just under 50,000 members and 800 employees, the forward-liberation consumer cooperative was one of the largest consumer cooperatives in Germany at the time.

Monument protection

The ensemble of buildings on Münzstraße was recognized as a monument on April 19, 2000 and entered in the list of monuments of the city of Wuppertal and is supported by the consumer cooperative association Vorwärts Münzstraße e. V. supervised.

literature

  • Reiner Rehfus: Good and inexpensive: Bread from the large consumer bakery , in: Industrial culture. Preservation of monuments, landscape, social, environmental and technological history . ISSN  0949-3751 . 20 (2014), issue 2, page 22
  • Landschaftsverband Rheinland (Ed.), The new times are moving with us ... Consumer cooperatives in the Rhineland 1900–1918 (exhibition catalog) , ISBN 978-3-00-044188-2

Web links

Commons : Consumers Cooperative Forward  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1914 - In the middle of Europe, information on exhibitions, publisher: Landschaftsverband Rheinland, Cologne 2014, p. 4

Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ′ 36.6 ″  N , 7 ° 11 ′ 52.6 ″  E