Cutlery

Cutlery (selection)

Cutlery is traditionally a term for “cutting tools and devices of all kinds”, which has become particularly popular for scissors, knives and blades and similar products in the small iron industry.

Legal definition

In order to protect the brand name “Solingen”, the German government passed a law in 1938, for whose application the meaning of the designation cutlery has been defined in several implementing ordinances . According to the last ordinance of December 16, 1994, this term includes in particular

Scissors, knives and blades of all kinds,
Cutlery of all kinds and parts of such,
Table aids such as cake servers , pastry tongs, sugar tongs, grape shears and rugs,
Razors, razor blades and razors,
Hair clippers and clippers,
Hand and foot care devices such as nail files, skin and nail nippers, nail clippers and tweezers,
naked weapons of all kinds.

Tradition of cutlery manufacture

The production of cutlery took place over the centuries in medium-sized companies that were concentrated in Germany, especially in the Solingen area; in England, Sheffield was the location of the cutlery industry. Ore deposits , forests and water as well as the proximity to the trading city of Cologne were responsible for the fact that a cutlery and cutlery industry that is unique in Germany developed in Solingen over the centuries.

Already at the end of the Middle Ages, a division of labor between forging , hardening , grinding and reining (assembly) had developed. In the 14th century there were already the first three strictly separated guilds of grinders and hardeners , sword sweeps and reiders (assemblers) and swordsmiths . The sword-making trade gradually developed into a wide-ranging cutlery trade: in 1571 the knife-making guild was first mentioned; In 1794, the scissors-makers formed their own guild, and there is evidence that cutlery has been made in Solingen since the end of the 17th century , initially only consisting of a table knife and fork .

While in the 1960s in the Solingen area around 700 companies with around 19,000 employees produced cutlery worth almost 400 million DM (200 million €), the production turnover in the Solingen branch amounts to over 500 million euros at the beginning of the new millennium, which is only generated by around 5,500 employees. In the 1960s, people still often worked with self-employed home workers who picked up the knife blanks from the cutlery company and returned them after grinding in their own Kotten . At that time, just under 50% of production took place in 39 companies with more than 100 employees. Germany ranks second in cutlery production, behind the USA and ahead of Japan. Around 60% of German cutlery production is exported.

As the first larger cutlery company to combine all production steps under one roof, the company JA Henckels (called Zwillingswerk after the trademark of the twin) was founded in Solingen, which gave significant impulses for the factory concentration of production around 1850. The tradition of this company goes back to the blade smith Peter Henkel, who registered the sign of the twins as a blacksmith's mark in Solingen as early as 1624.

literature

Manfred Krause, Jochen Putsch: Cutlery industry in Europe. Trips to the workshops of an old trade. Cologne 1994.

Web links

Cutlery from Solingen and all over the world

Individual evidence

↑ Cutlery. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 15 : Schiefeln – Soul - (IX). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1899, Sp. 1281 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
↑ Law to protect the name “Solingen” of July 25, 1938 and ordinance for the implementation and amendment of the law, quoted by Rudolf Busse, Joachim Starck: Trademark Law, together with the Paris Association Agreement and Madrid Agreement: Commentary. 6. rework. Ed., De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1990, pp. 260-261.
^ Ordinance on the protection of the name “Solingen” (Solingen Ordinance) of December 16, 1994, Federal Law Gazette I, p. 3833, quoted from Christoph Schmelz: Case collection on copyright, industrial property rights and cartel law. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 2005, p. 149.
↑ In its current trademark meaning, “Solingen” refers to the Solingen industrial area, which, according to the ordinance of December 16, 1994, includes “the area of the independent city of Solingen and the area of the town of Haan in the Mettmann district”, cited in Schmelz: Fallsammlung…. 2005, p. 149.
↑ Wendelin Boeheim, Harold L. Peterson: Handbuch der Waffenkunde (= Seemanns arts and crafts handbooks . No. 7 ). Publisher by EA Seemann, Leipzig 1890, p. 647 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).

[1] Cutlery. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 15 : Schiefeln – Soul - (IX). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1899, Sp. 1281 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).

[2] Law to protect the name “Solingen” of July 25, 1938 and ordinance for the implementation and amendment of the law, quoted by Rudolf Busse, Joachim Starck: Trademark Law, together with the Paris Association Agreement and Madrid Agreement: Commentary. 6. rework. Ed., De Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1990, pp. 260-261.

[3] Ordinance on the protection of the name “Solingen” (Solingen Ordinance) of December 16, 1994, Federal Law Gazette I, p. 3833, quoted from Christoph Schmelz: Case collection on copyright, industrial property rights and cartel law. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 2005, p. 149.

[4] In its current trademark meaning, “Solingen” refers to the Solingen industrial area, which, according to the ordinance of December 16, 1994, includes “the area of the independent city of Solingen and the area of the town of Haan in the Mettmann district”, cited in Schmelz: Fallsammlung…. 2005, p. 149.

[5] Wendelin Boeheim, Harold L. Peterson: Handbuch der Waffenkunde (= Seemanns arts and crafts handbooks . No. 7 ). Publisher by EA Seemann, Leipzig 1890, p. 647 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).