Trattenmühle (Wildon)
The Trattenmühle in Wildon is a former cardboard and beer mat factory in Styria . It is a group of buildings that includes an old mill, a manor house, a chapel, a tin museum, as well as warehouse and factory buildings for the paper mill. The buildings are considered a building ensemble of regional importance.
history
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Trattenmühle was bought by the Guggenbacher machine paper factory Adolf Ruhmann . In the following years, the representative manor house was regularly used as a holiday home by the Moritz Ruhmann family.
At an idea by Karl Ruhmann , the production of beer coasters was started in addition to paper production in the 1920s . This soon became an economic success with extensive exports abroad. Karl Ruhmann is also the creator of the alpine garden, which still exists today, and a spacious aviary with around 80 small birds on the area.
After the end of the war, the Trattenmühle, which was forcibly sold as part of the Aryanization , was restituted to Karl Ruhmann, who was the only survivor of the Ruhmann family, after six years of legal proceedings. With the money from another restitution process, the obsolete machines in the 100-man factory were made fully operational again and modernized. The world-famous production of beer coasters was resumed under the new name “Ruhmann KG Wildon”.
After the death of Karl Ruhmann, his widow Katharina Ruhmann (1910–2000) specialized in generating electricity and successfully cultivating land. The production of beer mats was discontinued. She also had a new chapel built in the Ruhmann area between 1974 and 1979. Furthermore, a part of the Trattenmühle building was converted accordingly and since 1988 contains the Dr. Karl Ruhmann Tin Museum with over 420 precious tin exhibits, which is considered to be the largest private tin collection in Europe.
With the death of Katharina Ruhmann in 2000, all of her remaining assets were transferred to a “Dr. Ludwig Karl Ruhmann Foundation ”in Vaduz under the chairmanship of Prince Michael von und zu Liechtenstein. The aim of the foundation is to preserve the Ruhmann area of the Trattenmühle with its cultural features (manor house, Nullerl house, alpine garden, aviary, etc.) and in particular Karl Ruhmann's pewter collection. The current income from electricity generation is intended to guarantee the foundation's sustainable security.
literature
- Manfred Wehdorn, Ute Georgeacopol-Winischhofer, Paul W. Roth: “Architectural monuments of technology and industry in Austria. Volume 2: Steiermark, Kärnten “, Böhlau Verlag, 1991, ISBN 3-205-05202-1
Coordinates: 46 ° 52 ′ 31.7 " N , 15 ° 32 ′ 4.9" E