Galluba & Hofmann porcelain factory

Administration building of the porcelain factory

The porcelain factory Galluba & Hofmann was a German porcelain manufacturer that produced a wide variety of porcelain items in Ilmenau in Thuringia from 1888 until the Great Depression in 1929 .

history

The porcelain factory was founded on June 6, 1888 in Ilmenau under the name " Bernhard Küchler & Co. " by Bernhard Küchler. The Küchler family was a family of industrialists from Ilmenau who gained their wealth by operating several glass factories in the middle of the 19th century.

The company was located in an area north of Langewiesener Straße directly at the Ilmenau train station , to which there was a works track. The production was focused on the production of Nippes products such as figurines, vases and decorative plates and kitchen equipment (porcelain parts for kitchen cabinets and buffets as spice trays or handles). Normal utility porcelain was produced on a smaller scale. At that time it was mainly produced for export to France and the United States . Only the minority of the products was sold in Germany.

Shortly after it was founded, the factory experienced a rapid upswing, so that two years after it was founded it already employed 80 people. In 1891 Hugo Galluba, who had previously been a member of the board of the Ilmenauer Porzellanfabrik (Henneberg) , joined the company as a partner . At the same time, Bernhard Küchler left the company, which has now been renamed "Galluba & Hofmann". From then on, the factory grew rapidly, with the number of employees increasing from 100 in 1891 to over 500 in 1897. The factory's products were of a very high artistic standard and were often awarded at trade fairs and exhibitions . In 1897 the company received a gold award at the Saxon-Thuringian industrial and trade exhibition in Leipzig , which prompted the grand ducal family of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach to visit the factory several times and stock up on various porcelain jewelry. In 1900 the porcelain factory took part in the world exhibition in Paris , where an artistically decorated porcelain clock it produced received the "Mention honorable" award. This award further increased sales of Galluba & Hofmann products in France.

The heyday of the factory ended with the First World War , as a result of which the sales markets in France and the USA collapsed. There was no longer any interest in German porcelain. A slow decline began in the 1920s. The Great Depression finally gave the company its fatal blow when it went bankrupt and had to cease production in 1929. The owners had not succeeded in establishing their products on the domestic market.

Products of the “Galluba & Hofmann” brand are rare today and mainly from the period between 1895 and 1914 have been preserved. They achieve correspondingly high prices with collectors.

Today there is a building materials trade and several other companies on the former site of the porcelain factory. Some factory buildings as well as the villas of the factory owners in Langewiesener Strasse have been preserved.

literature

• Claudia Fiala: Porcelain manufacture in Ilmenau - tradition and diversity , in: Ilmenau - contributions to the history of a city . Frankenschwelle publishing house, Hildburghausen 1998, ISBN 3-86180-043-8 .
• See also the list of porcelain manufacturers and manufacturers

Coordinates: 50 ° 41 ′ 0 ″  N , 10 ° 55 ′ 26 ″  E