Kupferhof willow
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The pasture is a partly original copper farm in the city of Stolberg . The building is located in the immediate vicinity of the not preserved Kupferhof Krautlade and the still existing Kupferhof Unterster Hof . The pasture was built by Simon Lynen around 1615, but the main house was almost completely destroyed in the Second World War. The outbuildings were preserved.
Lynen family property
Simon Lynen (* 1589/90 in Aachen , † March 31, 1651 in Stolberg) moved from Aachen to Stolberg and built the Kupferhof Weide there around 1615. The Treaty of Xanten guaranteed the free practice of religion, but some copper masters had previously left the city for religious reasons and had moved to Stolberg. Many of Lynen's relatives were among them. His wife was the granddaughter of the copper master Leonhard Schleicher, who had already moved to Stolberg. Her mother was the sister of Jeremias I. Hoesch (1568–1643), who had also built a copper yard, the Neue Krautlade , in Stolberg . Her sister Maria (* 1593, † 1640) had married Heinrich Peltzer (* 1593; † October 22, 1645 in Stolberg), also a copper master based in Stolberg. This situation made it easy for Simon Lynen to make a decision for Stolberg.
One can assume that the proximity of so many yards (a total of seven copper yards are in this area of Stolberg) of related copper masters was no coincidence. It offered protection during the dangerous period of the Thirty Years' War .
The location of the Kupferhof had a special feature. Despite the geographical proximity to Stolberg Castle , the Unterherr von Stolberg had no right of disposal over the area. The pasture was in the area of the small Herrschaft Schnorrenfeld . This was subordinate to the lord of the Nothberger Burg, with the abbot of the imperial abbey Kornelimünster being the patron of the Krautlade and Unterster Hof courtyards that had already been established there .
Before moving to Stolberg, Simon Lynen owned a copper yard in Eilendorf , but its location is not known. The Galmeierz probably came from the region around Verlautenheide . There was a drivable path between Eilendorf and Stolberg, so that an economic connection to the Kupferhof was guaranteed.
The choice of the building site for the Kupferhof Weide had disadvantages. The gradient of the Vichtbach flowing past the farm was insufficient to use water wheels to operate a hammer mill. Therefore, the pasture could only be used as a producing copper yard and not as a processing copper hammer. This created a constant dependency on a brass processing company.
Simon Lynen left four sons and five daughters as well as 27 grandchildren from two marriages. His heirs, including his son-in-law Jakob Bernhard Rütger Schmits, sold the Kupferhof Weide to Theodor Peltzer and his wife Margarete Prym according to a document dated January 21, 1723 . The purchase price was 1900 Reichstaler and 80 Albus.
Owned by the Peltzer family
The Weide farm was owned by the Peltzer family from 1723 to 1805.
The new owner of the Kupferhof Weide, Theodor Peltzer († 1738), Mayor of Stolberg, and his wife Margarete Prym († 1761) expanded the farm to include the Kuhklau -Galmeimühle on the other side of the stream.
Her son Heinrich (* 1710) rebuilt the farm in 1762 and also expanded it. In memory of his parents, he put the letters TP (Theodor Peltzer) and MP (Margarete Prym) above the front door of the manor house.
There is a description of the structure of the farm from 1843, which reflects the structure at the time of the Peltzer family.
On the ground floor of the manor house there was a hall, a kitchen covered with stone, four rooms and a salon, on the upper floor the corridor (on the south side) and seven rooms as well as an attic in the very spacious attic. The house adjoining the gate building to the south accommodated the office, a workshop and a mangle house, both of which had a gate on the courtyard side. At the south end there was a room for the stamp house and the Krösensöller [Krösen = crucible]. The upper storey had three hatches, and there were probably living quarters for the servants, just as there was a room above the gate entrance with windows to the outside and inside. In contrast, no apartment was described north of the gate building. There was a shed accessible with a gate opening. In the adjoining north wing were the carriage shed, horse stables and a laundry room, so no servants' quarters either, in front of the gate, between the courtyard building and the pond, the flower garden and a small meadow enclosed with a wooden lattice wall.
It is very likely that Heinrich Peltzer had the foundry products of his farm processed in the neighboring Untersten Hof, which belonged to his brother-in-law Leonhard Schleicher (* June 1700, † December 9, 1741).
The Peltzer family had no economic success on the Kupferhof and sold the pasture on November 13, 1805 to Matthias Leonhard Schleicher († October 7, 1836). The agreed sales price was 11,000 French francs.
Owned by the Schleicher family
After Matthias Leonhard Schleicher bought the Kupferhof Weide, he now owned two neighboring copper yards. For this reason, he decided to create the possibility of a direct route between the pasture and the lower courtyard by buying four garden parcels on May 5, 1806. He acquired plots of land from blacksmith Johann Roeben, cobblers Matthias Elias Ledicke and Johann Ludwig Ledicke and copper hammer Johann Friedrich Elkenhans for six Reichstaler each. Here he laid out a path that was known as Schleicher's private path until 1941 and then became Schmidtstraße.
Matthias Leonhard Schleicher was very successful in the economically difficult time, and he managed to increase his fortune tenfold.
It is not known exactly when Matthias Leonhard Schleicher and his family moved into the pasture. It was probably in 1812 after the marriage of his son Matthias Ludolf, but at the latest in 1822, when the now 64-year-old copper master transferred all of his business to his three sons. But even at an advanced age he tried to increase the size of the pasture and bought additional gardens until the property finally reached the gardens of the Wuppermannschen Hof , which he had bought on August 29, 1832 from the heirs of Johann Wuppermann. Based on a letter sent by Matthias Schleicher from November 1831, it can be assumed that he intended to purchase a building plot in the event that the economic situation of the pasture would make an expansion necessary.
Matthias' plans were never implemented, as the gardens became the inheritance of his son Johann Leonhard after his death. He sold them to the innkeeper Gottfried Gohsen.
The economic situation of the Kupferhof Weide did not deteriorate as quickly as Matthias Schleicher had feared. On the contrary, on April 24, 1836, Matthias Leonhard Schleicher received the concession from the Prussian Ministry of Finance to build a brass smelter with eight ovens and the corresponding pouring devices for the Lower Rhine provinces in Bonn .
Napoleon Jeremias Schleicher (born August 8, 1801 in Stolberg, † March 12, 1875 in Wiesbaden ) inherited the court after Matthias Leonhard Schleicher's death. He and his brother continued to work on the farm.
In the autumn of 1841 the railway connection between Cologne and Aachen was put into operation and Stolberg received a connection. The Stolberg train station had to be built away from the city due to the route, and the connection to the copper yards was extremely unfavorable. For this reason it was necessary to create a new connecting road between the Stolberg district of Mühle and the train station in the Atsch, which was created with today's Eisenbahnstraße. For the construction of this connection, an area of fifty rods and 98 feet was sold from the grounds of Hof Weide for 84 thalers and 29 silver groschen. The city erected a new boundary wall that separated the pasture from the road.
Napoleon Schleicher built three mill trees to remove existing problems in the water supply to the Kuhklau mill in the Hamm mill in the Münsterbachtal . With them he ran a wire pull . Unfortunately, there were always disputes with other owners.
Another copper mill belonged to the property of the Kupferhof Weide. This was located on the Omerbach above Hastenrath . It was the Scherpenseeler mill. It was built around 1730 by none other than Tilmann Ru (o) land, the architect of the Kupferhof Rosenthal and the nave of the Finkenberg Church. Unfortunately, the said Ru (o) land was less fortunate in his career, as the builders Simon Lynen and Theodor Florenz Peltzer brought him to court because of the non-compliance with the agreed building sum of 170 Louis d'or and other offenses, which probably ultimately led to emigration moved from his homeland. Due to the inadequate performance of this mill, Napoleon Schleicher was the first Stolberg copper master to set up a 60 hp steam engine . However, the fixed costs of the machine, which only worked profitably in continuous operation, were incorrectly estimated, so that the economic success of the system, which was modern at the time, was not achieved. In addition, the period between 1860 and 1886 held great uncertainties for many commercial enterprises, as technology was finding its way into companies ever more quickly.
On March 3, 1864, Napoleon Schleicher sold the Kuhklau mill for four hundred Prussian Kurant to the brass manufacturer Julius von Asten. This is an indication that the declining brass production at the Kupferhof Weide no longer required its own mill. The importance of the Kuhklau mill has never been particularly great. The gradient of the stream that drove them was slight and hardly sufficient to drive mill wheels. In addition, it was only available between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. The rest of the time, it could only be used when no one else needed its hydropower. In addition, the water supply of the Kuhklauer Mühlenteich was often inadequate and, especially in times of drought, there was hardly any water available.
The zinc smelter in the neighboring Münsterbusch contaminated in 1855 with their exhaust the environment of the copper courtyard considerably. The vegetation died off. Napoleon Schleicher lost interest in the business and finally decided to leave Stolberg and move to his new residence in Wiesbaden. He passed the business on to his eldest son Robert (* September 20, 1827, † August 13, 1872), who ran the company under the name Robert Schleicher & Cie. continued.
From 1865 there are documents that report extreme financial difficulties at the Kupferhof Weide. Relatives gave Robert Schleicher loans. The attempts to save the copper yard failed nevertheless. On January 24, 1866, Napoleon Schleicher agreed to liquidate the Robert Schleicher company together with Eduard and Alwin Schleicher and Friedrich Ingelbach. This marked the end of Robert Schleicher's business activity.
In 1866 there was a cholera epidemic in Stolberg . As a result of this, the Kupferhof Weide lost numerous capable employees.
On March 6, 1866, Eduard Schleicher sold the Hamm mill for 5,000 thalers . Two days later, Napoleon Schleicher wrote that they would try to auction the Scherpenseeler Mühle for 14,000 thalers. The Kupferhof Weide was sold by Napoleon to Eduard Schleicher for 6,000 thalers and this was confirmed by a notary in a contract dated March 31, 1866. On July 1, 1866, the owner changed. Due to the poor economic returns, however, the payments were delayed again and again, and it was not until January 25, 1875, that the total amount was paid, which now had the equivalent of 18,000 marks for the newly founded German Reich .
Eduard Schleicher died on January 31, 1873, and his eldest son, Kommerzienrat Emil Schleicher (* July 8, 1850, † January 3, 1933) acquired the Kupferhof Weide on May 12, 1875. It served as a residential courtyard until 1905 for the employees and workers of the company Matth. Lud. Schleicher son and to take up the stables for the company's workhorses. The foundry building was converted into work accommodation.
During the Wilhelminian era, the architecture, which had meanwhile been badly suffered, was remodeled on both the neighboring Untersten Hof and the Kupferhof Weide . The workers' apartments in the old foundry were demolished. A chicken yard was built here. The mansion was restored and furnished with historicist decorations from the German Renaissance . This also applied to gate construction. The cellar area was converted into a wine cellar, because Emil Schleicher's hobby was trading in Palatinate wines. Since the storage capacity in the lower courtyard was insufficient, the willow cellar was used as an additional warehouse.
The very comfortably furnished building was very difficult to rent, however, and tenants kept changing.
In 1934, four small apartments were built in the stable building as part of the measure to create new living space.
On July 21, 1944, parts of the copper yard were damaged by fire bombs . However, the fires could be extinguished without any major problems. On September 9, 1944, the order was issued to dismantle all of the company's machines and move them to Saxony . The eviction order was issued on September 12, 1944, and the following day all residents left the Kupferhof. By September 20, 1944, the Weide farm was in the foremost German front line , which was defended until November 19, 1944. During the fighting, the mansion was set on fire by phosphorus shells. It burned down completely, while all of the outbuildings remained almost undamaged.
In the meantime, a residential building with an adapted appearance has been built on the site of the former manor house.
literature
- Kurt Schleicher: The willow . (= Contributions to Stolberg history and local history, issue 11, 1965, published by the Stolberg City Library (Rhld.))
Web links
- Portrait on stolberg-abc.de
Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 49.8 " N , 6 ° 13 ′ 11.2" E