Rinn & Cloos

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The Rinn & Cloos AG, founded in 1895 in Heuchelheim when pouring was, by the 1920s - until the 1950s -years of the largest cigars - cigarillos - and tobacco manufacturers in Germany with more than 5,000 employees temporarily. The company closed in 1991.

history

Cigar box by Rinn & Cloos around 1965.

Gießen and the Gießener Land had already developed into one of the leading locations for cigar manufacturing in Germany by the beginning of the 19th century. In this respect, the establishment of Rinn & Cloos in 1895 can be classified as a relatively late foundation.

Ludwig Rinn (1870–1958) had learned cigar manufacture in the Heuchelheim cigar factory Busch & Mylius before he took the step into self-employment in 1895. He was able to win the Nidda wood merchant Heinrich Wilhelm Cloos (1856–1920) as an investor - the company name Rinn & Cloos was born; However, Ludwig Rinn ran the business alone from the start.

Due to the import ban on raw tobacco and the forced management during and after the First World War , there was an increasing number of short-time working and numerous company closures in the tobacco processing industry. In 1919, Rinn & Cloos also had to temporarily close production at the headquarters in Heuchelheim and lay off all workers; Ludwig Rinn's partner Heinrich Wilhelm Cloos had already retired from the company in 1917 and died a little later. Run as a trading company since 1917 , Rinn & Cloos was converted into a family stock company in 1920. From 1926 the number of employees rose again, and in 1927 Rinn & Cloos set up a foundation for support for survivors and pension grants .

The machine ban for the cigar industry, enacted in 1933 by the National Socialist Reich government as an instrument of labor market policy, meant a complete switch back to hand-wrapping cigar production. As a result of the rising production costs and the parallel establishment of the cigarette , a general decline in the cigar industry gradually began. The first of what was once more than 30 cigar and tobacco factories in the Giessen region gave up in the 1930s. But thanks to Ludwig Rinn's skillful corporate policy, which included taking over competitors in the region - profitable businesses were continued, less profitable ones closed - companies in Bünde and Minden in Westphalia were also acquired and the company gradually went from being the industry leader in Hesse to being the market leader in Germany built up; the Brotterode site in Thuringia had existed since 1914.

With the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, the machine ban was relaxed, as the war effort of men and the increasing duty of women very soon meant that there was a shortage of workers, but the lack of raw materials soon forced a radical cut in production.

The attempt to join the Alsatian tobacco factory in 1941 failed, although Hans Rinn - Ludwig Rinn's nephew - was then head of the stock exchange department of the Dresdner Bank responsible for the negotiations .

Although there was another brief upswing in the mid-1950s, due to the profound change in tobacco consumption - away from cigars and pipes to cigarettes - the end of cigar production was inevitable. In 1991 the end of Hesse's last cigar factory came: Rinn & Cloos was sold to competitor Dannemann and finally closed at the end of March 1992.

In 1994, Steffen Rinn , Ludwig Rinn's grandson, founded a new cigar factory under the name Don Stefano in Heuchelheim, continuing the family tradition of Rinn & Closs and cigar making in the Giessener Land.

Branch factories

Former Branch factory in Wißmar

With increasing demand, Rinn & Cloos set up branch factories - initially in the Giessen area, later also in more distant places. The settlement of cigar factories in the villages led to a significant change in the employment situation, as it was usually the first commercial jobs for women that were created: Women were skilled and - although they received a lower wage than men - were happy about an opportunity to earn money on site . Within a few years, the female cigar makers were outnumbered by the men and until the 1950s it was a matter of course in many villages in the Gießen region that a girl's path led to the cigar factory after school.

In 1950 there were branch factories in:

Today's district of Giessen :

Today's Lahn-Dill district :

Today's district of Marburg-Biedenkopf :

Larger establishments were in

  • Brotterode (Thuringia): Branch production from 1914 in Steinbachstrasse, in 1919 the buildings of the Hosse & Witte company in Oberen Strasse were bought. Until the beginning of the Second World War, cigar production was one of the main branches of business in Brotterode.
  • Frets and
  • Minden in Westphalia .

Brands

"German Unity" 50 Pfennig - cigar box from Rinn & Cloos around 1965.

The cigars produced by the Rinn & Cloos company came onto the market over the years under innumerable names that were based on contemporary tastes as well as on objects of identification for certain target groups. A small selection: Bank of England, Churchill, German Unity, Festglanz, gold diggers, love dance, Lufthansa, rulers (with a portrait of "Old Fritz"), top dog, Princess Sunshine, Rackelhahn, wild boar, steel and iron, tropical splendor .

Engagements outside the tobacco industry

Ludwig Rinn's entrepreneurial interests were not limited to the tobacco industry. In 1932 he auctioned the bankruptcy estate of the Gießener Maschinenfabrik Heyligenstaedt AG and ran it from 1934 under the name of Heyligenstaedt & Comp. Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik GmbH continues.

In 1948 he acquired the Minox camera factory , originally located in Riga and newly founded in Wetzlar in 1945 ; He moved the production facility to the premises of the Rinn & Cloos cigar factory in Heuchelheim.

In the course of the decline in cigar production, these companies also fell into the red: In 1986 Heyligenstaedt was sold to a Korean investor, and in 1988 Minox had to apply for a settlement . However, both companies were able to overcome the turbulence.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus-Dietmar Henke (Ed.): The Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich. Munich: Oldenbourg 2006, ISBN 3-486-57782-4 , p. 849.
  2. ↑ Busecker Geschichtsbrief 1/2004, p. 2 ( Memento of the original from February 15, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.4 MB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-giessen.de
  3. ^ Rödgener history and local history museum
  4. ^ History of Brotterode
  5. ↑ My little smoking room

Web links