Basket factory Berthold Lawrenz
The basket factory Berthold Lawrenz was a wicker factory in Kröpelin , Mecklenburg . Until its closure in 1923/24, it manufactured beach chairs in the two-seater shape that is still popular today.
Company history
founding
Berthold Albrecht Lawrenz, from Northern Germany (presumably Hamburg ), opened the basket factory in Kröpelin in 1907 with start-up capital from his family. At the same time, the trained basket maker Franz Schaft (1868-1958) was dismissed without notice from his previous employer, the basket maker Wilhelm Bartelmann, because of his participation in the May 1st demonstration in Rostock as a member of the woodworkers ' association. So nothing stood in the way of a collaboration between Schaft and Lawrenz. Both of them knew each other before through basket makers' meetings in Rostock, at which Lawrenz heard, among other things, Schaft's ideas regarding the qualitative improvement of beach chairs and wanted to turn them into a business.
Location
Lawrenz bought a shabby barn in what is now Dammstrasse in order to build the workshop for the basket production. For his private use he added a living area. This was torn down after the wicker factory closed. After the hall was used as a military hospital and to accommodate refugees until the end of the Second World War , it stood empty for a long time before it was rebuilt in 1962 into the Catholic Church of St. Joseph, which still exists today.
Personnel situation
The company founder and owner, Berthold Albrecht Lawrenz, was responsible for up to 100 workers, who during the First World War consisted of around 30 employees and 70 prisoners of war . These workers supervised and instructed Franz Schaft, who worked as a basket maker for Lawrenz from 1907 to 1917 . As the only trained basket maker in the factory, Schaft trained the workers. There were no apprentices. Despite the fact that the number of working hours is above average from today's perspective, the employees received so little wages that they were forced to carry out another activity (e.g. in agriculture). The prisoners of war received makeshift meals as wages. The basket goods factory Berthold Lawrenz was considered a purely men's business, apart from the seasonal work of peeling willow, which not only involved foreign workers, but also refugees and refugee women after the First World War.
Decline
As a result of the inflation after the First World War , the number of orders for the basket goods factory Berthold Lawrenz fell sharply. Due to the financial situation, Lawrenz left his factory in 1923/24 to open an agricultural business in Göldenitz (Mecklenburg) with little economic success. After the closure, master basket maker Schaft continued to work in the profession he had learned in a private workshop.
production
raw material
Willow branches up to 4 cm in diameter were used as raw material . These were obtained from the willow plantation between Detershagen (Mecklenburg) and Kröpelin. Shortly before the First World War, consideration was given to ordering Indian cane instead of the usual willows for basket production. However, this idea was discarded due to the unruliness of the material and the resulting more complex processing.
Production process
Every year the willows were cut with willow knives in winter so that the rods were then freshly driven out. A distinction was made between green and white willows. Green pastures were those that were processed with bark; these were stored horizontally to dry, while the white rods, i.e. those rods that were to be peeled, were dried vertically. On the day before processing, the green willows were only soaked in basins, while the white willows were used standing in streams to root so that the willow peeling could be done more easily. With the help of a small three-star, some rods were then divided into three rails. The baskets were braided with these rails. The undivided rods served as a base frame to which they were bent after heating. While beach chairs were being worked on the floor, all other products were pegged onto boards on tables.
Products and sales
The wicker factory was best known for its round and square ammunition baskets, which it produced for the military, especially during the First World War. A special feature were the beach chairs, a development by Schaft, who received his master craftsman's certificate in Rostock in 1906 for working out an idea from his father Johann Adolf Schaft: the two-seater beach chair in the form of a padded beach chair with pull-out footrests, small foldable side tables and armrests. These were mainly delivered to all German seaside resorts for sale (there they were in turn loaned out by associations), but the coveted beach chairs, of which the Berthold Lawrenz wicker factory produced around 100 pieces a year, were also exported to Denmark and the Netherlands . Potato baskets (60-pound boxes), cane furniture and bags were also produced.
swell
- Jochen Schaft: Personal conversation with Mr. Jochen Schaft, grandson of master basket maker Franz Schaft, Kröpelin, on January 18, 2014
- Jochen Schaft: The story of the beach chair , accessed on February 4, 2014
- Peter Gerds: Modern beach chairs from Kröpelin. In: Ostsee-Zeitung Bad Doberan, June 7, 2006
- Heiko Bergmann: Beach chair, bath steamers and holiday service: the history of bath tourism in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Coastal Regional Publishing House, 2005, p. 92 f.
- Mecklenburg at war. Dedicated to the homeland and its fighters by the Mecklenburgische Zeitung Schwerin. Mecklenburgische Zeitung, 1918, p. 106.
Web links
Coordinates: 54 ° 4 ′ 20.5 ″ N , 11 ° 47 ′ 50.7 ″ E