Alte Dombach paper museum

Alte Dombach paper mill

The Alte Dombach paper museum or the Alte Dombach paper mill is a museum location of the decentralized LVR industrial museum in the Sand district of Bergisch Gladbach an der Strunde . The operator is the Rhineland Regional Council . The paper museum is housed in the buildings of the former Alte Dombach paper mill and part of the Neue Dombach paper mill in Dombach.

History of the paper mill

The New Dombach factory building

The old paper machine 4 is in the machine room of the factory building

It is assumed that the concession to operate a paper mill in Dombach was granted in 1614; the certificate is no longer preserved. According to a dendrochronological study, the construction work began around 1618. The first owner was Wilhelm Kessel; He transferred the management of the paper mill to the paper maker Hendrich Fues from Hesse. The Dombach was the third paper mill on the Strunde after two mills founded in 1582 and 1595/96. This evenly flowing stream was the most important basis for paper production in Bergisch Gladbach. In 1685 Cornelius Fues, the son of the first papermaker Hendrich Fues, bought the mill. Probably two families lived and produced in the Dombach from 1720 onwards. In 1746 a partition agreement was signed, which has not been preserved. In 1764 Johann Christian Müller married into a branch of the Fues family. His son Gustav took over the business in 1802 and made it the leading paper producing company in town for a few decades. He brought the technical equipment up to date and built a second mill about 200 meters up the valley, in the vicinity of which there was enough space for expansion. In 1817, 80 people worked in Müller's company, and 20 in the Fuesschen Mühle.

In 1827 he had to cede his company to his main creditor, Jakob Maurenbrecher from Düsseldorf. Maurenbrecher took over the other part of the Dombach in 1833 after the death of Wilhelm Aurelius Fues. Jakob Maurenbrecher and his son Wilhelm expanded the new mill built at the beginning of the 19th century into the Dombacher paper factory Neue Dombach; In 1843 they were the first company in Bergisch Gladbach to put a paper machine into operation. In the 1860s and 1870s, the Dombach got increasingly into economic difficulties.

In 1869 the company was converted into a stock corporation under the leadership of the Cologne-based Schaaffhausen Bank Association ; Wilhelm Maurenbrecher was the managing director. The problems were to be solved through extensive investments: In the first half of the 1870s, the factory was expanded to include a building complex with another paper machine.

However, the company could not be saved; In 1875 the Schaffhausen Bank Corporation decided to liquidate. The Zanders paper factory , at that time already the largest paper producer in the area, became the new owner of the entire Dombach in 1876 under its boss Maria Zanders . At the time of the sale, 160 workers were employed in Dombach and 380 workers in the Zanders paper mill.

Until the First World War, the Dombach facilities were expanded repeatedly; around 1900 both paper machines were replaced or modernized. Production in the old mill was discontinued around 1900, and the former factory owners' living quarters were used as company apartments. The production rooms were initially empty until they were also converted into apartments in 1952.

In 1930 the Neue Dombach paper mill in Dombach was also shut down; Since then, various businesses have been housed here.

The museum

In December 1987, Zanders Feinpapiere AG and JW Zanders AG transferred the buildings and properties of the Alte Dombach to the Rhineland Regional Council for incorporation into the LVR industrial museum. The museum has been open since 1999. It covers the history of paper manufacture and paper use from around 1750 until today.

Paper machine 4 from 1889 was still in use in the Zanders factory until 1991

Detailed view of the so-called dry line of PM 4

The production of paper is demonstrated with the laboratory paper machine

Houses / departments

On the mill building , the mill wheel, which was dismantled after the shutdown, was replaced to illustrate the pre-industrial production of paper. It drives a rag mill. Paper making is demonstrated in the mill building; visitors can also try it out for themselves.
The museum shop is located in the dry house. Special exhibitions are also presented here.
There is a café in the house for papermaker families.
In a hall of the former Neue Dombach paper factory , paper machine 4 (PM 4) from JW Zanders AG from 1889 can be seen, which was still in the mountain until 1991. Gladbacher Werk (Gohrsmühle) was in use.
Various old machines are located in an open-air area between the Alte Dombach and the Neue Dombach.

A new mill wheel was installed at the old location.
With the pan mill , waste paper was shredded.
In the Dutch , the processed raw materials are shredded or shredded.
In the sphere cooker which are rags cooked.
The wood required for paper production is shredded with the wood grinder

Demonstrations

During the guided tours, the mechanical production of paper with a laboratory paper machine is regularly demonstrated. Other historical machines are also in use. The use of paper is documented by numerous historical paper products.

monument

The entire property was entered as a monument under No. 53 in the list of architectural monuments in Bergisch Gladbach .

Individual evidence

↑ Ferdinand Schmitz : The paper mills and papermakers of the Bergisch Strundertal , Bergisch Gladbach 1921, p. 39.
↑ ^a ^b Sabine Schachtner, handwritten records in the archive of the Alte Dombach Paper Museum, Bergisch Gladbach 2009 and 2011.

literature

Ferdinand Schmitz : The paper mills and paper makers of the Bergisch Strundertal , Bergisch Gladbach 1921
Sabine Schachtner: Paper making and its history in Bergisch Gladbach , Bergisch Gladbach 1990
Sabine Schachtner: Contributions to the history of the Alte Dombach paper mill in Bergisch Gladbach , Bergisch Gladbach 1991
J. Georg Oligmüller, Sabine Schachtner: Paper - From craft to mass production , Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-7701-5844-X
Hans Leonhard Brenner : The Strunde and their Bergisch Gladbacher mills , Bergisch Gladbach 2012, ISBN 3-932326-67-9