Nicolaus de Smit

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Part of the original grave slab, originally part of the tomb in the St. Trinity cemetery, today exhibited in the Gera City Museum
The grave slab on the west side of St. Trinity Church in Gera, recreated in 1841 and renewed by Max Schramm in 1933

Nicolaus de Smit (born November 5, 1541 in Doornik , † March 7, 1623 in Gera ) was a textile manufacturer , equipment maker and merchant from what was then the Spanish Netherlands .

Life

Nicolaus de Smit was already working as a merchant and manufacturer when he had to flee to Brussels from his home town of Doornik in 1585 before the Spanish invasion under the Duke of Alba . Alba called on the Reformed citizens, including de Smit as a Calvinist , to return to the Catholic faith.

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De Smit initially worked in Leipzig and met Balduin Conrad , then 16 years old , at the Leipzig Trade Fair in 1594 , at which the Gera cloth makers had been represented since 1436, and whom he later took to Gera, where he enabled him to continue his commercial training and then employed him in his trading house and workshops. Conrad himself would later also own one of the largest armory shops and dye works in Gera and was one of the city's three mayors from 1638 to 1649.

Heinrich II receives Nicolaus de Smit in 1595, Heinrich Kirchgeorg, 1892

In 1595 de Smit came to Gera, where Heinrich II. (Reuss-Gera) had Calvinist religious refugees settled against the advice of his theological advisers . Against the resistance of the local guilds he received the sovereign privilege, which enabled him to set up his own textile factory. Under Nicolaus de Smit, manufacturing based on the Dutch model was introduced in Gera . So the workers in the factories had a large number of working machines, such as looms , which enabled different work processes and division of labor and ultimately led to the establishment of the clothing maker guild. It was customary until then linen , wool and silk to process only individually textiles and mainly to color only black and brown, these substances were now interwoven and in the introduced by de Smit euphemisms previously inked common dyes using.

With his new production methods, Nicolaus de Smit laid an important foundation stone for the extremely positive development of the Gera textile industry , which at times enjoyed world fame and ultimately remained the most important industry in Gera into the 20th century.

In his honor, on his 300th birthday in 1841, the apparel makers' guild established the De Smit Foundation . In 1868 De-Smit-Straße in Gera was named after him.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Knut Schulz, Elisabeth Müller-Luckner: Crafts in Europe: from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period , Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag 1999, ISBN 3-486-56395-5 , p. 238
  2. ^ City of Gera, Lower Monument Protection Authority: Industrial buildings in Gera , Wicher Druck Gera 2002, p. 6
  3. ↑ Günter Domkowsky: Mayor of Gera , Verlag Dr. Frank GmbH 2007, ISBN 978-3-934805-31-6 , p. 12
  4. ↑ Homepage of the Association for the Preservation of Geraer Höhler eV

literature

  • F. Alberti: Nikolaus de Smit , in: Thüringen in Wort und Bild, Volume 2 , Leipzig 1910, pp. 219–222.

Web links

Commons : Nicolaus de Smit  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Smit, Nicolaus de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch textile manufacturer, clothing maker and merchant
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1541
PLACE OF BIRTH Tournai
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1623
Place of death Gera