Marx & Auerbach

Marx & Auerbach spinning mill building

Marx & Auerbach was a cloth factory in Aachen , which was set up in 1839 by Nathan Marx and Mayer Lippmann in a former copper yard at Templergraben and had to be forcibly sold in 1938 as part of the aryanization measures. The extension building at the intersection of Templergraben / Eilfschornsteinstrasse from 1864, designed according to plans by the Aachen builder Friedrich Joseph Ark , is now a listed building and is used by RWTH Aachen University .

history

Former copper yard around 1920, from 1839 cloth factory and headquarters of Marx & Auerbach

The Jewish trader Nathan Marx (* 1797) from Weisweiler met his wife Blümgen Cahn (* 1797) from Königswinter, her brother-in-law, who was also Jewish, and who was a cloth merchant in Aachen, Mayer Lippmann (1792 or 1794–1855). He originally came from Fontainebleau and, after the early death of his father, had come to Aachen with his mother Hindel Mayer and his brother Aaron Lippmann (* 1797), where they had been registered as new citizens from 1821. In the same year, Mayer Lippmann took over a cloth business and first married Sophia Hirtz (1794-1825) from Eilendorf , who died giving birth to her second son Heinrich Lippmann (* 1825), and then Fanny Cahn (1792-1866), von Blümgen's sister who gave birth to four sons and four daughters.

Together with Mayer Lippmann, Nathan Marx took over a large part of the three-winged copper yard on what was then the pig market in Aachen, in the area of today's Templergraben, in 1839, and together they set up the cloth factory “N. Marx & Lippmann ”. As early as 1830, the newly established Hergett cloth factory, which specialized in the production of Buckskin , was established in another wing of this courtyard . The entire farm had previously served as a copper and needle factory and was owned by the manufacturer Johann Heinrich Schervier , who inherited it from his father Johann Gerhard Schervier . By relocating the needle factory to the neighboring Klosterrather Hof acquired by Laurenz Jecker , the empty copper courtyard could be used for other purposes.

Despite the local competition, “N. Marx & Lippmann "a significant upswing, so that a few years later both Mayer Lippmann's son, the trained banker Heinrich Lippmann, as well as the three sons of Nathan Marx, David (* 1828), Adolph (* 1832) and Leopold (* 1834) , were able to join the company as partners. Since the premises were no longer sufficient for ongoing operations from the end of the 1850s, the management initially took over the premises of the Hergett cloth factory, which relocated to Heinzenstrasse in 1861. In addition, “N. Marx & Lippmann ”build a new spinning mill building by the city architect Ark at the intersection of Templergraben / Eilfschornsteinstraße, which was completed in 1864 and equipped with two steam engines with a total of 120 hp. After the partner Heinrich Lippmann emigrated to America two years later and had given up his stake in the company, the company now remained completely in the hands of the Marx family and was renamed “Marx & Sons”. In the 1870s, the company mainly produced for the German market and employed 30 people in the management team, around 370 workers, 100 of whom worked from home outside the factory.

In the next generation, Adolph's son Robert (* 1861) and the manufacturer Isaak Auerbach (1861–1917) were taken on as non-family partners in the company management. They then renamed the company "Marx & Auerbach" and equipped it in 1914 with a new 200 hp steam engine from the "Maschinenbau Aktiengesellschaft Marktredwitz".

Finally, Fritz Marx took over the company in the fourth generation, which had increasingly politically provoked difficulties during the Nazi era . As part of the emerging wave of Aryanization, Marx was forced in 1938 to sell the company and the building complex for well below its value for 641,000 Reichsmarks to the building contractor Robert Grünzig , who in turn transferred this as a kind of dowry for his daughter and her husband, the cloth manufacturer Ludwig Charlier. Marx finally emigrated penniless to the USA in December 1938, after having to pay the Dego tax , the Reich flight tax and the Jewish property tax from the low sales proceeds . From then on, his former cloth factory initially operated under the name “Grünzig & Charlier” and, after Charlie's departure, under “Grünzig & Co”. After the Second World War , the factory shut down during the war was put back into operation in 1948 by Erna Grünzig (1920–2013), Robert Grünzig's youngest daughter, and her husband Hans-Hubert Neßeler and relocated to Indeweg in Brand in the mid-1950s Was shut down in 1963.

The entire large area with the former copper courtyard, which was largely destroyed in the war, and the corner block built by Ark was taken over by RWTH Aachen University, which erected new institute buildings there and had the corner block renovated and restored in accordance with the monument.

building

Spinning mill building, view from the west

The original copper courtyard, built and furnished by Johann Gerhard Schervier around 1780, was a four-storey, seventeen-axle three-wing complex with an inner courtyard, which was closed off on the street side at the Templergraben with a wall and a round arched gate passage. After the destruction in World War II, it was not rebuilt and later largely replaced by new, purpose-oriented institute buildings.

The spinning mill building, built between 1861 and 1864 with a late classical style, was erected west of the copper courtyard directly at the intersection and its shape and structure were adapted to the dominant courtyard. As with many other factory buildings in Aachen from the early industrial age , Ark opted for a slim, rectangular brick building with three to 10 axes and four main floors. An additional attic storey , which is covered by a hipped roof , was added over a wide cornice running all around . With the exception of the windowless south side, the walls between the axes are adorned with pilasters that extend up to the cornice above the fourth floor and whose plinths and profiled capitals are made of bluestone .

Between 1925 and 1930, the building underwent its first extensive restoration under Fritz Marx, during which the window openings were widened, the wooden ceiling on the fourth floor was replaced by a reinforced concrete ceiling, and freight elevators were installed, contemporary fire protection concepts were implemented, and technical, social and sanitary rooms on the the latest standard.

Another major renovation took place in 1956 after it was taken over by the university. Here, the wooden window frames were replaced by green aluminum frames and the small lattice windows were replaced by two-part window sashes with transverse skylights. Furthermore, the cast iron supports in the rooms were replaced by load-bearing walls with concrete supports, and the interior spaces were adapted to the requirements of a modern institute through a small-scale restructuring of the formerly large factory rooms.

literature

Rudolf Dünnwald: Aachen architecture in the 19th century. Friedrich Ark, city architect 1839–1876 , Aachen 1974
Reinhard Dauber and Ingeborg Schild : Buildings of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen , in: Rheinische Kunststätten , issue 400, Neuss 1994, p. 22