Umbrella factory brewer

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Umbrella factory brewer
legal form registered businessman (e. K.)
founding 1882
Seat Aachen - Eilendorf
Number of employees 10-19 (2017)
sales EUR 1-2 million (2017)
Branch Manufacture and sale of umbrellas, parasols and dolls' umbrellas

Emil Brauer umbrella factory in Aachen

The umbrella factory Brauer is an umbrella production company based in Aachen - Eilendorf . It was founded in 1882 and from 1928 had its production facility at Jülicher Strasse 97-109, corner of Lombardenstrasse in a new factory building built in the Bauhaus style . In 1984 the company moved to Eilendorf, greatly reduced in size, and transferred the Aachen factory building to the city, which placed it under monument protection . After appropriate renovation and renovation measures, the Ludwig Forum for International Art moved there in 1991 .

history

Stimulated by the relatively humid Aachen climate with its many rainy days in the year, the entrepreneur Emil Brauer senior decided in 1882 to open a workshop for the production of umbrellas with an attached shop in Adalbertstrasse 44/2. Just two decades later, sales had grown to such an extent that Brauer had to move to a larger factory at Peterstrasse 48 in 1913. This specialized exclusively in final production and the individual components such as the frame, stick, knob and the umbrella fabric were purchased from specialist companies, kept in stock and then assembled as required. At the beginning of the 1920s, Brauer stored up to two million meters of umbrella fabric, 60,000 dozen umbrella handles and sticks and up to 30,000 umbrella frames and up to 70,000 finished umbrellas in his building.

Since the production facility in Peterstraße no longer met the requirements, Emil junior and Artur Brauer, the sons of Emil Brauer senior and his successors in the management, commissioned the construction of a new factory building, which, in addition to large storage and traffic areas, also had a studio and should provide space for sample exhibitions. They had this built according to plans by Josef Bachmann and Alexander Lürken, who had previously renovated Brauer's Villa Haus Ficht , on the site of the former Piedbœuf steam boiler factory in Jülicher Strasse. In December 1928 the new factory was opened and the old factory building on Peterstrasse was sold.

Regardless of the global economic crisis , the Second World War and the subsequent years of construction, production could be kept at a high level. In its prime, the Brauer umbrella factory, with more than 1000 employees and with the help of modern production technology, produced over 10,000 umbrellas per day, which corresponded to a German market share of up to 40% at times. The new factory building itself was also used as a diverse advertising medium and, for example, presented as a model at trade fairs or shown in advertisements.

It was not until the 1970s that competition from East Asia meant that production had to be scaled back and finally stopped in Jülicher Strasse in 1984. The old headquarters were transferred to the city of Aachen, which after appropriate renovation work set up the Ludwig Forum for International Art there. The company itself went up while maintaining the traditional name in "Texa GmbH" (textile and trading company mbH) founded in 1971 and moved into a smaller company building on Zieglersteg 12 in the Eilendorfer industrial park. Since then, pocket umbrellas for women and men as well as children's, advertising and special umbrellas with the licensed brands "bugatti", "Bernd Berger Umbrellas" or "Viventy Umbrellas" have been made there in reduced editions. Up to a million umbrellas can be stored and the entire German market can still be supplied. In addition, from 1980 to 1998, Brauer ran a shop on Hartmannstrasse in Aachen and since 1990 has run another one at 51 Jülicher Strasse, not far from the former headquarters.

building

The building of the former Brauer umbrella factory was built in 1928 according to plans by the architects Josef Bachmann and Alexander Lürken in the New Objectivity style and is based on the Bauhaus style thanks to its special designs. The building is a two-story and three-story, four-winged complex on the side of the street in reinforced concrete - skeleton construction with 17 to 14 axes on a square base. With its rounded corners and all-round dark cornices , Bachmann was based on templates by Erich Mendelsohn . The building was raised on a high base , which compensates for the slope of the street and turns the basement into a mezzanine floor . The wings of the building have a continuous flat roof and the approximately 3000 m² inner courtyard used as a production hall is equipped with a shed roof . The facades are clinkered yellow on the storeys and red on the plinth level . The large rectangular transverse lattice windows , which ensure sufficient light penetration in the interior, as well as the large round window above the former main entrance are striking . The storage rooms were housed on the upper floors of the side wings and the workshops, offices and showrooms for dealers and representatives were housed in the three-story wing facing the street.

As part of the handover to the city of Aachen, the complex was renovated by the architect Fritz Eller for 30 million DM and adapted to the needs of a modern museum. For this purpose, the former production hall and the wings were converted into exhibition rooms of different sizes, some of which were multi-storey, as well as rooms for seminars, library and catering, and a square recess was added as an action space in the middle of the former production hall. On June 27, 1991, the building was officially opened as the “Ludwig Forum for Modern Art Aachen”.

As early as 1987, the building was officially included in the new monuments directory of the city of Aachen, after it had been a “3-story skeleton structure with rounded corners and flat roof; the facades are clinkered yellow, the plinth is faced with red clinker ”

Web links

Commons : Schirmfabrik Brauer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Company data on kompass.com
  2. ↑ Textil- und Handelsgesellschaft mbH & Co. and Emil Brauer e. K. , registered on the textile technology network of the IHK Aachen , pp. 1/2 (Texa) and 11/12 (brewers)
  3. ↑ Company portrait on the pages of firmenindex-deutschland.de
  4. ^ Ludwig Forum for International Art Aachen , building description on baukunst-nrw.de
  5. ↑ Chronicle of the City of Aachen from 1976 to 2007 , on the website of the City of Aachen,
  6. ↑ "State Conservator Rhineland. List of monuments. 1.1 Aachen city center with Frankenberger Viertel. ”With the assistance of Hans Königs , arr. v. Volker Osteneck. Rheinland Verlag Cologne, 1977, p. 30.

Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 52 ″  N , 6 ° 6 ′ 7 ″  E