Wiesenthalhütte
The Wiesenthal hut was an owner-run Austrian and Czechoslovakian, after 1945, newly established in Germany companies of glass industry .
history
In 1868 Ludwig Breit (1845–1913) founded a glass button factory in Böhmisch Wiesenthal near Gablonz on the Neisse , at that time part of Austria-Hungary . From 1886 to 1888 a bead factory was set up, which for the first time in Europe used 16 glass blasting machines to split up stem glass , which led to the great glass blasting uprising of 1890. Regardless of this, the rationalization continued with the introduction of rounding drums to smooth the raw pearls. In 1913, the second generation of owners had a workforce of 400 who were employed in the manufacture of tubes and beads.
In the 1920s, up to 500 million rocailles were produced every day , later also micro glass beads, so-called ballottins . After their sales declined, people switched to stick and canned jars . From 1933 to 1938 the Wiesenthalhütte was part of the glass rod cartel . Since 1938 only technical pressed glasses have been produced; In 1945 the company was expropriated due to the Beneš decrees .
Between 1946 and 1953, Ludwig Breit jun. a smelter in Schwäbisch Gmünd ; one produced again for the jewelry industry. In 1956 Klaus Breit (1926-2004) took over the management ; he first introduced the Sabrina overlay rod glass . In 1958 he presented a completely new colored hollow glass product line in Scandinavian style at the Frankfurt trade fair . Elisabeth Aye, Heinz Eisele, Heinz H. Engler and temporarily Wilhelm Braun-Feldweg were used as designers . Most of the designs came from Klaus Breit himself. Due to the success of the hollow glass production, 200 workers and 20 employees were already employed in 1961; branches in Kaufbeuren , Karlsruhe and Bayreuth could be opened.
1968/1969 which was Dallglasproduktion the Jablonec Glassworks taken. In 1971 a new process for the production of branch vases from cast glass was introduced. The design line could be sustained until the early 1970s.
Under the increasing pressure of mechanical glass production, the company was taken over by Schott AG in 1975 . Nevertheless, the hollow glass production was stopped in 1982; the complete cessation of the glass production took place in 1991. Models, ironworks archive and production catalogs were handed over to the Museum Hentrich in Düsseldorf by Klaus Breit .
Products
- since foundation: tubular glass for the pearl industry and jewelry
- since 1930: rod glass in approx. 400 colors for the pressing technique according to Gablonzer style
- 1957–1982: hand-blown hollow glass
- since 1969: Dallglas
- also: glass mosaic, door handles, slug panes
design
Wiesenthalhütte's products received, among other things, the Good Industrial Form award at the special exhibition of the same name on industrial products of the same name at the Hanover Fair and the Federal Good Form Award from the German Design Council .
Colored Dall glass concrete windows of the Wiesenthalhütte were used in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church by Egon Eiermann and in the Sydney Opera House by Jørn Utzon .
literature
- Helmut Ricke (Ed.): Wiesenthalhütte. Design in glass 1957-1989 . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, ISBN 9783422067646 .
- Ulrich Müller: The history of the Wiesenthalhütte in Bohemia and Schwäbisch Gmünd . In: Gmünder Studies 7. Contributions to the city's history . Schwäbisch Gmünd 2005, ISSN 0170-6756, pp. 175-186.
- Klaus Breit: The Wiesenthaler Glashütte. Memories, notes, reflections. Schwäbisch Gmünd 1999.