Riding work
Reitwerk (also Reidtwerk or Reidewerk ) is the name of special pre-industrial iron production facilities , but also of smaller ironworks or hammer companies that were operated from the High Middle Ages to industrialization , especially in the Eifel , Märkisches Sauerland and Siegerland . The corresponding counterpart in the Austrian provinces were the local wheel works , which had their focus in Styria on the Erzberg near the town of Eisenerz in the mountain range of the Eisenerzer Alps . With the development of equestrian workshops from the 14th century onwards, the profession of Reidemeister (also Reidtmeister or Reitmeister, in Siegerland Raitmeister and in Styria Radmeister) emerged, which includes both the metalworking manufacturers and ironworkers as well as the managers of a medium-sized equestrian workshop.
The etymological origin of the term is ambiguous depending on the region. The word "Reide", "Reidt" or "Rait" (common in Siegerland) comes from the Old High German word "rîtan" and means something like "to manufacture", "to prepare", "to prepare", "to prepare", "to prepare", “Prepare” but also “calculate”, “calculate”, “settle”. In miners' language, the word "raiten" or "raitung" is used for "billing" or "giving an account [of the mine budget]".
Technology and history
Historical circumstances
The name "Reitwerke" became established in the late Middle Ages , especially in the Eifel, and the first huts were founded in Eisenschmitt an der Salm in Rhineland-Palatinate and Eiserfey am Feybach in the Euskirchen district as early as the beginning and middle of the 14th century. Their spread was favored by the increased demand of the new cities that emerged in this epoch and by late medieval price increases for finished goods as well as the fall in prices for agricultural products, which can be attributed to the population decline as a result of the plague . The rural population, who became unemployed as a result, was able to earn their living in and around the riding stables. In addition to skilled workers, the Reitwerke and their ancillary businesses also employed a large number of unskilled workers for the extraction of charcoal and ore and for the transport of these goods.
Production steps and locations
Reitwerke combine two production steps : smelting and forging iron. Two high medieval innovations were used for this purpose: the blast furnace , which replaced the racing furnace used since the beginning of iron processing , and water power , which powered bellows and forging hammers and which shifted iron processing from the heights into the valleys. With their heavy, mechanically working ejector or raw steel hammers, the hammer mills freed slag from the iron ore and charcoal melted in the piece furnace. Later the hammers were also used for stretching and spreading raw material and thus brought the obtained blanks into the desired shape. In frost, high or low tide, work in the riding stables had to be stopped.
In detail, the production process of a riding factory comprised the following operating units and buildings: Sheet metal was the name given to the place where the delivered ores and coal were weighed. The coals were stored in their own shed. The iron stone was washed in its own place and stored in a detector or Möller until the furnace was loaded . In the early or fresh forge, the carbon was removed from the pig iron . In the hammer mill was bar iron forged in the slag - or Schnorr mill the slag were crushed, collected the remainder being iron and manufactured to the conclusion sand. It was mostly a stamp mill . Six water wheels were required: One for the fan of the blast furnace, two each for bellows and hammer from the early forge and hammer smith, and one for the slag mill. For this purpose, the water was dammed in a ditch and, with the help of Erk (weir) and Schütz, directed onto the wheels.
The problem of the high demand for charcoal
The high demand for charcoal of the Reitwerke, which they used for heating and reduction, whereby around 23 cubic meters of wood had to be coked to extract 15 kilograms of iron , led to the clear cutting of the beech and birch forests in the area. Their wood was best suited for the production of the kind of charcoal that was used in the equestrian centers. This led to a significant shortage of wood, even if the authorities, who otherwise promoted the establishment of equestrian centers as a welcome source of income, countered this overexploitation of nature by issuing decrees. A special reason for the later decline of the Eifel iron industry was the connection to Prussia after 1815, which put the region in a geographical peripheral location, combined with the poor transport links to the "Prussian Siberia", which had been degraded to a troop deployment area and spruce supplier. Ultimately, however, technical progress gave the Reitwerke the fatal blow, as they lost their economic viability due to the use of coke in iron smelting and the weather-independent steam engine in further processing (especially in rolling mills ). The iron industry finally migrated to the new centers of the coal and steel industry , which developed primarily in the Ruhr area and in whose rise, among others, the former Eifel Reidemeister family Hoesch with the establishment of the Westfalenhütte and Poensgen with the establishment of the Düsseldorfer Röhren- und Eisenwalzwerke AG played a significant role .
Regional focus (selection)
Stolberg area
One focus of the establishment of the riding stables is found in the Voreifel along the Vichtbach and the Wehebach in the area of the city of Stolberg in the Rhineland in the city region of Aachen , only the riding stables Mulartshütte on the Vicht was affiliated to Roetgen . The Stolberger Reitwerke received a significant impetus from the Protestant families who were given the imperial ban from Catholic Aachen in the course of the Aachen religious unrest and were expelled from there, including in particular the Hoesch family , who, starting with Jeremias Hoesch, were the leading riding master family in the Vichttal for several generations . Due to a lack of charcoal, a large part of the riding stables were given up in the 18th century. Some of them were then converted into copper yards or after the end of iron production into copper or grain mills. Others were merged or relocated to other regions of the Eifel, especially in the Olef and Urft valleys in the former Schleiden district . The iron industry in today's Stolberg only came to a standstill in the course of the 19th century.
Riding stables on the Vichtbach
Map with all coordinates: OSM | WikiMap
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Binsfeldhammer Binsfeldhammer, Stolberg ( location ) |
founded around 1500 and named after Hans and Hendrick v. Binsfeld. In 1588, called "Junker Heinrichshammer", the complex was pledged by Mathis von den Veldt and his wife Katharina von Binsfeld. The brothers Gerlach and Wilhelm Beck then use the facility as a copper yard or as a copper hammer. The complex was merged into the later Binsfeldhammer lead smelter around 1840 . |
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Dollartshammer Finkensiefstrasse, Stolberg ( location ) |
The oldest riding facility on the Vicht, named after its founder, the Aachen lay judge Heinrich Dollart. Went in the 19th century along with the Kupferhof Bauschenberg and the Court of Strasbourg in the company William Prym GmbH & Co.KG on. |
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 Zweifaller Straße 208, Stolberg ( location ) |
In 1723 Leonhard Schleicher V built a new, representative mansion, which, in contrast to the older Kleinbernardshammer located to the north, was called Großbernardshammer . |
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Zweifaller Straße 200, Stolberg ( location ) |
Only the Bernardshammer farm , on the right of Zweifallerstraße in the direction of Nachtigällchen, which was built by Bernard Mondenschein as an iron hammer in 1564, has survived. After it was converted into a copper yard in the first half of the 17th century, the Bernard hammer was run by the Schleicher family for generations. |
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Henneswerk Kranzbergstrasse, Stolberg- Vicht ( location ) |
Located between Vicht and Stolberg, the riding center was founded by Wilfried Hennes around 1552. It may be identical to the earlier Dederich hammer. In the middle of the 16th century a grain mill for a short time before it was taken over by the Schleicher family in 1593 and by Jeremias Hoesch in 1736. After its bankruptcy on the Junkershammer, the mountain master Johann Franz Eiffeler acquired the Henneswerk in 1760 in the name of a virgin Steprath, who in turn used it as a copper mill. Eiffeler's son operated a lead smelter on the grounds of the Henneswerk. By 1790 it was rededicated, this time to a fulling mill. Only the pond and a few houses and the shed have been preserved from the Henneswerk. | |
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Junkershammer Junkershammer, Stolberg-Vicht ( location ) |
The name of the hammer mill located in the valley of the Vicht probably goes back to the Zweifall family Joncker from the first half of the 15th century and was the most important equestrian works in the valley. Around 1640 the Junkershammer came into the possession of Jeremias Hoesch, the younger one, who made it the most modern riding facility in the Jülich region. He also relocated the charcoal rights from the church hut and the Vichter hut here. The Junkershammer remained in the possession of the Hoesch family until it was closed in 1869. One residential and several farm buildings / operating houses are still preserved. |
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Church hut Stolberg- Zweifall ( location ) |
Located in the immediate vicinity of the Catholic Church, the Zweifaller Kettenis family held around two thirds of the shares before Jeremias Hoesch began buying up shares in the church hut in 1637, which they owned in full by 1641 and merged with Junkershammer. Later the church hut was converted into a grain mill. In two cases, the field names "Alter Hammer", "Altwerk", "Werkerhütte" (approx. 1500 to 1800 near today's Werkerstrasse) suggest another earlier Reitwerk. The Cronenhütte also existed between 1500 and 1800 on today's Hammerbendstrasse . | |
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Klapperhammer Stolberg-Vicht ( location ) |
The name Klapper can be traced back to the knocking of the hammers or the clatter of the water wheels. In the course of its existence, the Reitwerk has seen numerous changes of ownership and optionally served as an iron hammer, grain mill, Reckhammer, copper mill and, finally, until 1861 as a paper mill for Philipp Wilhelm Hoesch. While some of the walls of the rattle hammer still existed as ruins around 1900, today only shallow, silted-up ponds indicate the former facility. | |
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Mulartshütte ( location ) |
The Mulartshütte, which gave its name to today's district of Roetgen, was located upstream of Zweifall . It was probably named after its founder "Mulart" and was first mentioned in a document around 1504. | |
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Neuenhammer, Stolberg-Vicht ( location ) |
The Neuenhammer was taken over by the Hoesch brothers in 1724 and later operated and administered together with the Platenhammer until around the middle of the 18th century. Then the connection with the flat hammer was cut and the Neuenhammer abandoned. |
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Platenhammer, Stolberg-Vicht ( location ) |
The Platenhammer was set up in 1664 by Katharina Hoesch, the widow of Jeremias Hoesch, and after her it was merged with the Neuenhammer and operated jointly as an extended courtyard until the separation around the middle of the 18th century. Until it was sold and finally demolished in 1903, the Platenhammer remained in the possession of the Hoesch family. Only a residential building, several farm buildings and two fresh ovens have been preserved. |
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Stollenwerkstatt Fischbachstraße, Stolberg-Vicht ( Location ) |
Located in the triangle Pützweg, Fischbachstrasse and Eifelstrasse, the riding factory was first mentioned in writing in 1557, where a smelter with a blast furnace was also operated. In 1573 an additional grain u. Established an oil mill, which was converted into a copper mill towards the end of the 16th century and came into the possession of the Schleicher family. In a fire in 1908, the factory was destroyed and not rebuilt, only parts of the houses have been preserved. | |
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Vichter Hut Stolberg-Vicht ( location ) |
The Reitwerk is the "primordial cell" of the Vicht district and was located with the associated Konradshammer hammer mill at the northern exit of the village. It was probably already in operation around 1500, because deliveries of iron are documented for 1529. In 1644, Jeremias Hoesch II bought three days at the hut from the neighboring Junkershammer riding firm and in 1648 another six days . Nothing has been preserved from the Vichter Hütte. |
Riding stables on the Wehebach
On the Wehebach the riding stables were mainly in the village of Schevenhütte , which, as in the case of Mulartshütte, got its name from the central riding stables there and its first owner. The prerequisites for the settlement of equestrian workshops on the Wehebach were advantageous, as ores were either found directly on site or came from mining sites not far away, especially from Gressenich . There was plenty of wood from the surrounding forests, water to operate the hammers and bellows was donated by the Wehebach, and an ancient traffic route through the village enabled transport to and from the village.
Economic difficulties in the 19th century led to the decline of the local equestrian works, as in the Vicht also in Schevenhütte, and in 1849 the two iron hammers were initially used for forging iron, one on the so-called "hammer" on the north and the other on the "Joaswerk" at the southern entrance to the village, gradually shut down. Until 1895, when Pastor Anton Bommes wrote his book "On the history of the place Schevenhütte in the Aachen district", individual buildings were still standing, which were later also demolished.
The agony of the “Schevenhütte” itself, which stood in the middle of the village on the so-called “Hüttenplatz” (today opposite the “Waldfriede” restaurant), lasted longer . It comprised an iron smelting furnace with a foundry. Johannes Tilman Joseph Esser (1782–1855), the last riding master at Schevenhütte, made extraordinary efforts to maintain the foundry, which was in operation until 1870, after the ironworks was closed in the mid-19th century. Heinrich (Henri) Hoesch III. (1800–1879) owned shares in her. His descendants later tried to sell the remains of the old hut including the land for the planned new church in the village. Excluded from the planned sale were the large iron wheel, the weir and the whole of the previously owned water justice . Finally, in 1889, the foundry was also closed.
Street names such as “Im Hammer”, “Joaswerk” or “Hüttensiefen” still tell of iron processing.
Schleiden - Gemünd - Soetenich room
The riding works in the former Schleiden district have as long a tradition as the works in the Stolberg area. At the heyday of the local iron industry, there were 23 riding plants in the Schleiden - Gemünd - Sötenich area , nine of which were on the Olef with charcoal blast furnaces, fresh fire, hammer fire and slag pounding works, in which iron ore was melted and processed into bar iron.
Here too, in addition to the well-known local Reidemeister families such as Axmacher , Poensgen and Schoeller, it was also the reformed and Lutheran specialists who had moved in, who had made great contributions to the construction of iron hammers and iron smelters through numerous improvements in the extraction and processing of iron. However, a lack of resources and a lack of infrastructural connections in the region led to significant economic problems in the middle of the 19th century, so that the iron industry had to be gradually abandoned. There is hardly any evidence for posterity of the iron industry in the Schleiden district, which was highly developed before 1860, and what was not destroyed was removed without a trace in the years that followed.
One of the oldest and best-known equestrian workshops on the Olef was the Gemünder Reitwerk , which received the operating license from the Duke of Jülich in 1486 and to which the Mauel ore mines in the Ramersdell also belonged. It later obtained most of its iron ore from the Keldenich mining area and the Schleiden mine field. The charcoal was delivered from the area around the Kermeter and the Monschau forest. Since it became apparent as early as 1780 that the local charcoal stocks were no longer profitable, charcoal from more distant areas had to be used, which was no longer profitable in the long term.
At the beginning of the 1830s, Reinhard Poensgen acquired the Mariahütte riding factory in Gemünd and tried to cope with the problems in the region by converting the factory more efficiently and delivering cheaper deliveries. The equestrian factory received its pig iron from Poensgen's relatives from their equestrian workshops in Blumenthal , Hellenthal , Jünkerath , Oberhausen , Steinfeld, among others . Despite an interim boom, the Gemünder Reitwerk had to surrender to the aforementioned economic conditions of that time as early as the 1860s and Poensgen's sons Rudolf and Gustav Poensgen moved the factory to Düsseldorf in 1860 .
In the municipality of Kall an der Urft, the Reitwerke in Dahlbenden (first mentioned in a document in 1640), in Neuwerk (mentioned in 1722), in Mönchenrath, which in 1725 was still owned by the Duke of Jülich , Karl III. Philip of the Palatinate stood, and in Sotenich one of the most important. Later came the Reitwerke Kallbach , founded in 1780, and the Eisenau hut, which was built in 1778 and later called “Marienhütte”.
The Sötenich riding factory, for example, was operated with four hammers and made a national reputation for itself as a bell foundry. Orders came from Aachen and Cologne and the bells were probably made by wandering bell foundry guilds in this riding factory. In the 19th century, the factory produced rods for further processing. In 1895, the Sötenich riding factory had to be sold and demolished for the economic reasons mentioned. As a result, roof beams from this sale were installed in some houses in the city.
Other regions
Explanations of the hammer mills in Sauerland and Radwerken in Styria see there. In the Siegerland, the term "Reitwerk / Raitwerk" was actually not in use and the ironworks were mostly referred to as "Hütten". The corresponding occupation of the "Raitmeister" was more the name of a dealer in iron and iron products, who later also operated ironworks or hammer works themselves.
literature
- Mätschke, Dieter: Stolberger walks. Vol. 2: In the Nordeifel Nature Park , Meyer & Meyer Verlag Aachen 1991, pp. 65–78. ISBN 3-89124-105-4
- Klaus Ricking: What are 'Reitwerke' actually? . in: Made in Aachen - Contributions to regional technical, economic and social history . Association for regional technical, economic and social history HisTech e. V., Aachen 2000, pp. 92–94 ( digitized )
- Katharina Schreiber, Helmut Schreiber: Mills, hammer mills and copper yards in the valley of the Vicht and their owners (= Stolberger Heimat- und Geschichtsverein [Hrsg.]: Contributions to the Stolberg history . Volume 23 ). Stolberger Heimat- und Geschichtsverein, Stolberg 1998, ISBN 3-926830-12-3 .
- Peter Neu: Eisenindustrie in der Eifel (= Landschaftsverband Rheinland [Hrsg.]: Work and live: folkloristic studies in the Rhineland . Volume 16 ). 1st edition. Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-7927-0978-3 .
Web links
- Reitwerk, Reidtwerk on Stolberg-ABC
- The iron industry in the Urft valley , report on the Soetenich website
- Nikolaus Kley and Hans-Georg Brunemann: In search of Eisenstein - traces of Kaller miners on wisoveg.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ iron ore mining and smelting in Eiserfay , information on eiserfey.de
- ↑ Junkershammer In: KuLaDig, Kultur.Landschaft.Digital. , accessed on August 5, 2020
- ↑ a b Fine Tonhauser: Platenhammer and Neuenhammer in Vicht. In: Kuladig , Kultur.Landschaft.Digital. 2014, accessed August 7, 2020 .
- ^ Hugo Bastin: Berg = Wercker, Reid = Meister, Iser = Recker , in: Heimatblätter des Landkreis Aachen, magazine of the Heimatverein des Landkreis Aachen. Booklet 4; 7th year, 1937
- ↑ Ernst Ludwig Haeger: The Gemünder Reitwerk , on wisoveg.de
- ^ Ernst Ludwig Haeger: " Visiting card" of the formerly flourishing Gemünder Eisenindustrie , on wisoveg.de