Louis Adam goose

Original from the south, around 1900. In the middle of the south gable of the three-story weaving mill, which has been in operation since 1862; on the left the buildings for steam generation, such as the steam boiler house, the steam chimney etc., which go back to the modernization by Gans

Louis Adam Gans (* in Kassel on May 24, 1819 ; † unknown) was a textile manufacturer in St. Gallen and a cotton manufacturer in Urspring

Origin and education

Louis Adam Gans was born in Kassel on May 24th 1819 as the son of Abraham Löb Gans, banker from the Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel and his second wife Sara Breidenstein.

The family had evidently been based in Offenbach am Main since 1825 at the latest. Louis Gans received the citizenship of Offenbach am Main on August 26, 1843 (at the age of 24). There he married Rosalie Emden from Frankfurt am Main on December 26, 1843 (also at the age of 24).

After his marriage to Rosalie Emden, Louis Adam Gans stayed as a trader in Frankfurt am Main from 1844 to 1847. Gans has been present in Hohenems , Vorarlberg, Austria since 1852 and is naturalized there in 1857. There was a larger Jewish community there.

But he had his business in St. Gallen, where he “(...) at least since August 27, 1850, together with David Strauss from Friedberg (Hesse) [ran] the company JB Heumann's successor. On March 5, 1857, this business ceased to exist; The company Gans Gebrüder & Cie. was newly founded, led by Louis and Jakob A. Gans from Frankfurt am Main. The end of this business on February 16, 1861 was followed by "Louis Gans & Cie.", Operated by Louis alone, while Jakob had the power of attorney, but was absent. The St. Galler Adressbuch 1861, pp. 15-16, writes about Louis Gans's business that it manufactures and exports St. Gallen articles in St. Gallen and Friedrichshafen; a branch Passavant and Comp. in New York; the St. Galler Comptoir was on the Untere Grabenstrasse A 186. ”(…). At the same time he is said to have owned a machine factory in Landquart in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland.

The cotton weaving mill at Urspring under Gans

On March 14, 1859, Gans bought the Urspring factory from Christian August Blezinger and ran it for eleven years until 1870. Gans kept his residence in St. Gallen for the first few years and had the Urspring factory run by his authorized signatory and director Wilhelm Römer. He did not give up his citizenship in Offenbach am Main until April 8, 1868.

On December 28, 1861, he applied to the Blaubeuren regional office to be allowed to set up a second steam boiler after its previous owner had already been allowed to set up a first. On January 3, 1862, the Ministry of the Interior complied with this request. This was used to heat the factory rooms.

On July 31, 1867, Gans received approval from the government of the Danube District in Ulm a. D. to supplement or replace the water wheel with two turbines. In 1869 there was a Jonval turbine and a second, smaller one.

As in the 1830s, the monastery church was used as a magazine in the 1860s.

Gans is said to have been a great lover of telegraphy. So he was certainly not only running a telegraph station on business .

The factory equipment from 1861/62 to 1870: conversion to steam engine operation

With Gans the factory entered its fourth phase, steam engine operation. The factory under goose can be divided into two periods. The first began with the takeover of the factory in 1859 and lasted until 1862. The second period lasted from 1862 until the factory was sold in 1870.

In the first period from 1859 to 1862 , the building stock essentially remained as Gans had taken over from Christian August Blezinger. The weaving mill was left in the mill and the brewery . This building was two-story and had a dwelling in the attic with a freight elevator, as the attics were used as a granary in the monastery. The entire building was made of stones except for the half-timbered dwelling. On the first floor there were the following rooms, all vaulted: a heatable office, a heatable carpenter's workshop, a heatable finishing workshop, a packing room, a goods store, a yarn store and a laundry room. On the first floor there were heated factory rooms in three departments.

In the second period from 1862 the factory building was raised by a half-timbered storey; d. H. the entire roof was removed, a third floor was built and a new roof was built. The factory building was now three-story with vaulted rooms on the ground floor, and factory rooms on the first and second floors. Existing photographs show this condition. There was now a large steam engine room on the first floor that was not vaulted. The first floor had steam heating. There were also heated factory rooms on the second floor. Gas lighting was available throughout the building. To produce the gas, a gas furnace was built in an annex in 1862.

The drive by a water wheel, which drove a longitudinal shaft and 15 cross shafts via a transmission, from which the individual looms, winding, warping, sizing and sizing machines were driven via leather straps, remained. The steam engine drive was probably only used as a supplement if the water power was insufficient or additional machines had to be used.

The machine park had grown considerably. In the factory hall on the first floor alone there were 104 looms; on the second floor there are another 36 looms, four winding machines, four warping machines, two sizing machines and a sizing machine. An elevator was also already available. The total insurance value of the machine equipment in the weaving mill building was 43,425 guilders (fl) in 1862.

The conversion to steam engine operation required new buildings for steam production, while the actual weaving mill could still be housed in the monastery buildings. In 1861 Gans built a steam boiler house, a brick steam chimney, a sizing house for the sizing and coating machine and a coal magazine.

On July 31, 1867, Gans received approval from the Württemberg government of the Danube District to install one or two turbines, "(...) in order to increase (...) hydropower and thereby improve his work".

Demolition of the monastery buildings

Gans continued the demolition of monastery buildings, which the Württemberg state had begun in 1806 and was continued by the two manufacturers Reichenbach and Blezinger. In 1861 the Kosthaus (or hospital) disappeared above the Urspringtopf. In 1865 he went to the core substance of the monastery and had the southern and western cloister wing including the cloister and also the northern cloister, which was attached to the south wall of the monastery church, demolished

The cotton crisis of the 1860s

In the wake of the American Civil War of 1861–1865 , there was a worldwide crisis in the cotton industry. The cause was that cotton production in the southern states almost came to a standstill. There was a great shortage of raw cotton as other producers such as India and Egypt were not yet able to supply sufficient quantities. The price of raw cotton rose to four times its previous level, which led to a collapse in sales of finished cotton products. The cotton spinning and weaving mills either had to close or continue to produce to a lesser extent. Many German cotton mills went bankrupt. In Lancashire, England, for example. B. there was a real hunger for cotton . Regrettably, we do not have any further details on these crisis years for the factory in Urspring. From 1867, however, the crisis of scarcity of raw cotton was overcome and the factories now had to struggle with a large excess demand. So it comes as no surprise that the manufacturer Gans wanted to have Gans work on some Catholic holidays in 1868. This resulted in disagreements with the parish priest of Schelklingen, who had the competent authorities enforce a work ban. It was about the "Catholic required holidays" Peter and Paul as well as at the conception of Mary . Ultimately, the Ulm district government decided “that the holiday law only applies to Catholics, so that factory operations cannot in principle be forbidden as long as the service is not disrupted. Since this could not possibly be the case in the remote location of Urspring, Gans was allowed to work on the relevant holidays, provided the workers were given the opportunity to attend the church service ”. It was finally agreed that in general, and especially on the next St. Joseph's Day, “work may only be done after the main service (after 10 1/2 o'clock)”.

sale

Whether it was caused by this incident or not, Gans looked for a buyer in the most important business newspapers (such as the Königlich Württembergisches Staats- und Regierungsblatt , Schwäbischer Merkur ) in 1870 and found one in the Rall family from Eningen unter Achalm . Johann Jakob Rall and Albert Rall bought the factory on June 20, 1870 and July 1, 1870, respectively.

family

Louis Gans married Rosalie Emden in Offenbach am Main on December 26, 1843. The wife was born in Frankfurt am Main on August 28, 1824 and died in September 1898. The date and place of death of Louis Gans are so far unknown. There were at least four children from this marriage:

• Auguste Anna Bernhard, b. Frankfurt am Main or Offenbach am Main December 15, 1846, †…, oo Leon Bernhard Wertheim from Wageningen , Gelderland province, Netherlands
• Wilhelm Louis, b. Frankfurt am Main January 11, 1848
• Victor Ernst Louis, b. Frankfurt am Main December 21, 1848
• Julius, b. St. Gallen February 16, 1857

literature

• Klaus Brügelmann (1987), Urspring as a factory. In: Urspring News 1987 . Schelklingen: Ursprunging School Foundation, pp. 13–26.

• Bernhard Hell (1935), History of the Urspring Monastery: A Contribution to Local History . Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag.

• Alfred Jacobs and Hans Richter (1935), The wholesale prices in Germany from 1792 to 1934 . Berlin: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt Hamburg (special issues of the Institute for Economic Research, No. 37).

• Marcel Lenoir (1912/13), Prix: production et consommation de quelques marchandises (charbon, blé, coton, café). Bulletin de la Statistique General de la France . Tome II, Octobre 1912 – Juillet 1913. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 172-214.

• Werner Rall (undated), History of the Rall family . Unpublished manuscript. (Partial copy in the Schelklingen City Archives)

• Franz Rothenbacher (2015), House book of the city of Schelklingen. Volume 2: Tables of houses . 2nd, increased edition Mannheim, Franz Rothenbacher.

• City of Schelklingen (Ed.) (1984), Schelklingen: History and life of a city. Published by the city of Schelklingen on the 750th anniversary of the city from 1234–1984 . Schelklingen: South German publishing company.

• Aron Tänzer (1905), History of the Jews in Hohenems and the rest of Vorarlberg . Meran: Ellmenreich (unchanged reprint Bregenz: Lingenhöle, 1982) (XXXV, 839 pp.)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Letter from the Offenbach am Main city archive on August 4, 1986; the place of birth is noted in the Offenbach am Main registration book. Kassel seems to be the correct place of birth, contrary to the information from the Frankfurt City Archives, which states Offenbach am Main as the place of birth.
2. ↑ The father was born June 21, 1783 in Hessen-Kassel; on July 9, 1825, he received citizenship in Offenbach am Main; oo 1st marriage before May 24, 1819 NN; oo as a widower 2nd marriage Offenbach am Main August 16, 1825 Sara Breidenstein, † ...
3. ↑ Letter from the Frankfurt am Main city archives from January 27, 1986, holdings "Senate Supplications".
4. ^ Dancer 1905 p. 718.
5. ^ Archives of the City of St. Gallen, Raggionenbuch 1842–1877, p. 64.
6. ^ Letter from the archives of the city of St. Gallen from April 3, 1987.
7. ^ Rall no year: 35.
8. ↑ Brügelmann 1987 p. 21f; Hell 1935 p. 67.
9. ↑ " Emigrated to Schelklingen in Württemberg with release on April 8, 1868" Letter from the Offenbach am Main city archive dated August 4, 1986: Offenbach am Main citizens' registration book.
10. ↑ Main State Archives Stuttgart E 146 Ministry of the Interior III Bü 2336 Steam boiler, OA Blaubeuren: Report of the Oberamt Blaubeuren to the Ministry of the Interior on the request of the manufacturer Louis Gans from St. Gallen to be allowed to set up a second steam boiler, December 28, 1861.
11. ↑ City of Schelklingen (Ed.) 1984: p. 366.
12. ↑ City of Schelklingen (Ed.) 1984 p. 366f.
13. ↑ The presentation is essentially based on Rothenbacher 2015 pp. 610–646.
14. ↑ Rall nd: 40.
15. ↑ Rothenbacher 2015 pp. 610–646.
16. ↑ Lenoir 1912/13, pp. 199-204; Jacobs and Richter 1935 p. 42.
17. ↑ City Archives Schelklingen C 462.
18. ↑ Stadtarchiv Schelklingen: B 146 Kaufbuch 1865–1870, fol. 287-292; Rall nd: p. 35.

Web links

• Albert Gieseler database: "Mechanische Weberei Urspring, MWU" [1]
• Hohenems Genealogy [2]