Wool route

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Sheep's head on a factory building in Verviers

The wool route is a cross-border initiative that provides cross-border information on the cultural heritage of the cloth industry in today's Euregio Meuse-Rhine , in particular on historical buildings, cultural landscapes and museums.

The route leads in the three-country region around Aachen through Belgium , the Netherlands and Germany and takes into account the central production locations Aachen , Eupen , Euskirchen , Monschau , Vaals and Verviers . The wool route is not a signposted route from place to place, but represents the network that connects these six places again today.

International wool route Euregio Meuse-Rhine

The “Euregio Wool Route” working group has existed since 2004, preserving and promoting the memory of the common woolen cloth history in the three-country region across borders. In this international initiative, preservationists, museum experts, historians, cultural politicians, town planners and tourism experts work hand in hand to keep the memory of the cultural heritage of the old economic landscape alive and to increase the level of knowledge about the common history and evidence of the woolen cloth industry in the region across borders improve. The working group consists of the following institutions: aachen tourist service ev, cloth factory Aachen , city of Eupen, Tourist Info Eupen, city ​​museum Eupen in house Gospertstraße 52 , GrenzGeschichteDG, Eupener history and museum association, LVR industrial museum Euskirchen (cloth factory Müller), city of Monschau, Monschau -Touristik GmbH, Weaving Museum Höfen, Gemeente Vaals, Center Touristique de la Laine et de la Mode Verviers.

Built in the 18th century for the cloth maker Grand Ry as a residential and commercial building, today the seat of the government of the German-speaking Community of Belgium - and one of the sights of the wool route

It provides numerous information materials.

Common drapery story

The pre-industrial heyday

The Clermont Palais in Vaals was built in 1761 as a residential and factory building for the cloth publisher Johann Arnold von Clermont. The representative building now serves the community as the town hall.

Since the Middle Ages, the production of textiles from wool and flax for personal use has been a natural part of rural life in the region. The artisanal and guild cloth-making had its focus initially in Aachen, the pre-industrial or proto-industrial cloth production in the publishing system with thousands of home workers was settled at its peak in the late 18th century mainly in Monschau, Eupen and Verviers but also in Vaals.

Many ambitious cloth makers settled their businesses outside of Aachen in order to escape the strict municipal guild rules, which severely restricted the number of workers and the scope of production. Johann Arnold von Clermont , for example, controlled his publishing company from Vaals (near Aachen) and complained in a pamphlet that the Aachen guild regulation paralyzed "all industry the wings" and "took the courage away from even the best genius to bring himself up". In the guild-free places like Monschau, Vaals or Eupen, on the other hand, there was no limit to the scope of cloth production.

The draperies procured high quality wool (mostly from Spain), but gave the work of spinning and weaving to homeworkers in rural areas. The poor rural population in the Eifel, Limburger Land and around Verviers earned extra money from cloth production, especially in winter. Instead of flax or coarse Eifel wool, you now had to process fine Spanish merino wool according to the precise instructions of the publishers.

At the end of the 18th century, 30,000 people worked from home in the Limburg region and 25,000 in the area around Verviers for the region's cloth manufacturers! From this time, very representative, almost castle-like factory buildings have been preserved in Monschau, Eupen, Vaals and Verviers, which were both residential and commercial buildings.

The high industrialization

Mechanization began at the beginning of the 19th century, i.e. the replacement of the purely handcrafted cloth production, and the region was - not least under the influence of James Cockerill, who immigrated from England - something like the cradle of industrial textile technology on the continent: the sequence of mechanical Premieres in the region around Aachen: automatic wool scraping machine 1802, hydraulic press 1810, steam engine 1816, semi-automatic spinning mule 1818, shearing machine 1818, space machine 1826, cylinder fulling machine 1840. Initially, the machines were powered by water wheels, from 1820 increasingly also with steam engines.

One of Aachen's early steam engines worked in the Startz cloth factory built in 1821. Today the building is known as the “ Baroque Factory ” cultural center .

From the beginning of the 19th century, industrial cloth production with steam engines and mechanically driven textile machines was particularly successful in areas where there were early railway connections: i.e. in Aachen, Verviers and Euskirchen. The railway connection made it easier to transport the coal for the steam engines, but also the wool, which was now imported from overseas - Argentina, New Zealand or South America - and the dispatch of the finished woolen cloth.

Steam engine in a former wool laundry in Verviers

Since the 18th century there has been a lively exchange of technology, knowledge, capital and workers in the region - across all borders - and spurred the industrial development of cloth production. In 1854 there were already 212 steam engines in operation in Verviers, 143 of them for the cloth industry. A very important wool laundry developed there, which was closely linked to the wool trade. The mechanization of weaving, on the other hand, did not occur until the second half of the 19th century. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that the mechanical loom slowly gained acceptance in woolen cloth production.

In the course of the 19th century, mechanization of production caused thousands of self-employed homeworkers to become unemployed. In Eupen, when new clippers were delivered, there was even a dramatic machine storm among the cloth shearers , who feared for their jobs. The machine parts were thrown into the Gospertbach by the shears. But in the end the technical progress could not be stopped. Many of the former homeworkers and artisans migrated to the factories in the new production centers.

The industrial cloth industry in the three-country region experienced its greatest heyday from the middle of the 19th century until the outbreak of the First World War. As early as 1843, 18,153 workers were employed in 768 factories in Verviers. In Germany, the highest number of employees was only recorded after the founding period: in 1889, Aachen had 151 companies with 13,671 employees. And even in the small town of Euskirchen, a total of 21 cloth factories existed before 1914 with a total of 1,187 employees, who made up a good two thirds of all industrial workers in the city. Many factories from this heyday of the industrial age are still preserved today. The Müller cloth factory in Euskirchen, which has been authentically preserved and shows the central machines for cloth production from the loose wool to the finished cloth, gives a good impression of how a cloth factory worked around 1900 .

The decline

In the middle of the 20th century - mainly due to low-wage competition from other European countries, especially from Prato (Tuscany) in Italy - the slow decline of cloth production in the region began. The Italians used inexpensive shredded wool , made the cloths with lower wage and social costs, and had even more modern designs. The industry around Aachen reacted by purchasing new machines, i.e. by increasing productivity . This intensified the predatory competition and many textile mills with old machinery were soon no longer competitive. With the introduction of the wool seal, the German cloth industry also tried to draw attention to the high quality of German products. But none of that helped. In the meantime, hardly any cloth for clothing is produced in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine. At most, niche companies that specialize in the manufacture of high-quality special products such as coverings for billiard tables, high-quality carpets with a large weaving width or technical textiles, e.g. B. specialized in the paper industry.

Dealing with the industrial heritage

The Peltzer Cloth Manufactory in Verviers was one of the first significant buildings by the cloth makers in the region. The building was converted into apartments and a social center in 1980, relatively early on.

The area around Aachen is connected by a common economic history, which is not least reflected in the architectural evidence of this time.

The cloth industry had a lasting impact on the cityscape of the places along the wool route, both in the pre-industrial and in the industrial phase. Numerous buildings from the 17th to the 20th century still bear witness to the great era of the cloth industry. Their condition is very different. The representative buildings of the drapery from the 18th century have now almost all found a worthy new use. The new users include, for example, the Prime Minister and the Parliament of the German-speaking Community of Belgium in Eupen , the Euregio Maas-Rhine Foundation and the municipal administration in Vaals. Other early drapery buildings, for example in Monschau and Vaals, were converted into hotels. The internal structure and architecture could not always be preserved. But at least the outer facades and the buildings in the urban space were preserved. The Red House in Monschau offers a particularly good impression of the typical interior architecture of such an early publisher's building, which is the only one of these buildings to present the complete interior of these clothmaker's buildings and has made it accessible to museums since the 1960s.

The large, simpler factory buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries were partly empty and fell into disrepair after the decline of the cloth industry, some were even torn down. For some time now, however, the classic factory buildings have also found new users: the first cloth factories in Verviers were converted into social housing; today, cloth factories are more likely to be converted into lofts, offices, studios, workshops, warehouses - sometimes also into event locations, restaurants or cultural centers.

Museums

Functional card set for the production of roving in the LVR industrial museum Euskirchen

Four museums, which are very different in their nature, are currently providing information on the various phases of cloth production in the three-country region:

  • Euskirchen: LVR-Industriemuseum Euskirchen with the cloth factory Müller. A fully preserved inside and outside cloth factory with technology from around 1900 gives a very realistic and vivid impression of the world of cloth manufacture. The most important textile machines (card grinder, card set, self-actuator, 4 looms) and the steam engine are regularly demonstrated.
  • Monschau: Red House . Probably the best preserved drapery residence from the heyday of the 18th century offers (in a loving reconstruction) an insight into the upper-class living culture around 1800. This is how the successful drapery publisher Johann Heinrich Scheibler lived.
  • Monschau: Weaving Museum Monschau-Höfen . The establishment of a typical home weaving mill, which was in operation from the end of the 50s to the mid-70s, was retained and moved into a newly created building. One of the four looms can be demonstrated during guided tours.
  • Verviers: Center Touristique de la Laine et da la Mode Verviers. A detailed museum presentation of woolen cloth processing and wool washing in Verviers, as well as an exhibition on the history of fashion - all in the stately building complex of the former Dethier cloth factory.
  • In Aachen, the Aachen cloth factory and its depot are part of the wool route. There, the production steps from fleece to cloth are explained on old and newer machines. Essential work steps are also demonstrated on running machines.
  • Not part of the wool route, but with a thematic and regional reference: the weaver's room with a hand loom in the LVR open-air museum in Kommern about the world of home weavers around 1800.
  • Eupen City Museum .
Warp warping machine in the Müller cloth factory in Euskirchen
Home work: Typical supplier for the cloth layer: Spinner and weaver at the hand loom, on the right material supplies are brought, on the left bales of fabric are made of cloth. Illustration from JE Gailer: "New Orbis Pictus for the youth. (1835)"

See also

swell

  1. ^ Website of the wool route
  2. ↑ az-web.de, May 17, 2011 ; Detlef Stender: Wool in video clips, in: Industriekultur 2/2011, pp. 34–35; the video clips on the wool route are available on the website or on the wool route's YouTube channel ; In 2019 a brochure was published with an up-to-date overview of the sights: The wool route Euregio Maas-Rhine. Euskirchen 2019
  3. ↑ Cf. Irmgard Timmermann: Hand weaving in the Eifel. Rheinisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 27/1987/88: 123 ff.; The presentation of the story essentially follows: Detlef Stender: From "Schandfleck" to "Charm of the Past" - Dealing with the architectural heritage of the woolen cloth industry in the Verviers-Aachen-Euskirchen area, in: Rheinisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 37, 2007/2008, Pp. 197–226 as well as the [representation of the textile industry on the website of the Association of Industrial Museums in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine: http://www.industriemuseen-emr.de/industrialisierung/ ].
  4. ↑ See Dietrich Ebeling: Guild craft, home work and manufacturing in the Rhineland during the 18th century, in: Dietrich Ebeling (ed.): Aufbruch in ein neue Zeit. Commerce, state and entrepreneurs in the Rhineland in the 18th century. Cologne 2000, pp. 11–32, here p. 17
  5. ↑ Stender 2007/2008, p. 199, Schmidt, Martin: Tuchmanufakturen in the Aachen area. Early modern factory buildings as a mirror of a form of business between publishing house and centralized production. In: Dietrich Ebeling (ed.): Departure into a new time. Commerce, state and entrepreneurs in the Rhineland in the 18th century. Cologne 2000, pp. 129-164
  6. ↑ Gerhard Fehl / Dieter Kaspari-Küffen / Lutz-Hennig Meyer: With water and steam ... witnesses of the early industrialization in the Belgian-German border area offered important early inventory. Aachen 1991 and Gerhard Fehl / Dieter Kaspari / Marlene Krapols: Remodeling instead of demolition! To preserve the industrial heritage in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine. Aachen 1995. Many of the early industrial buildings on the Wollroute are described in a publication on the Couven Route: Bauer, Marcel, et.al .: On the way in Couven's footsteps. Eupen 2005
  7. ^ Rhineland Regional Association (ed.): A society of migrants. Small-scale migration and integration of textile work in the Belgian-Dutch border area at the beginning of the 19th century. Bielefeld 2008
  8. ↑ Stender 2007/2008, pp. 202f. Overall on the high industrialization: Gilson, Norbert: On foot through Aachen's industrial history. Aachen walks 5. Aachen 1998; Minke, Alfred: The economic development of the border region Eupen-Malmedy-St. Vith from the end of the Ancien Régime to 1940. www.euregio.net/rdg/politics/minkeneujahr1997.html; Rouette, Hans-Karl: Aachen textile history (s). Developments in the cloth industry and textile machine construction in the Aachen region. Aachen 1992; Stender, Detlef: Wüllenweber in home work and industry. Cloth production, in: G. Harzheim / M. Krause / D. Stender: Commercial and industrial culture in the Eifel. Tours to monuments, landscapes and museums. Cologne 2001, pp. 78–119; Wilhelm, Monika: Eight cloth factories were hit with a stone's throw. On the history of the Euskirchen cloth industry. In: Tuchfabrik Müller, Arbeitsort - Denkmal - Museum (= Rheinisches Industriemuseum, Kleine Reihe, Issue 17), Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1997, pp. 14-23
  9. ↑ See Martin Henkel / Rolf Taubert: Maschinenstürmer. A chapter from the social history of technical progress. Syndikat, Frankfurt am Main 1979 and Ruland, Herbert (ed.): "God bless Christian work". A reader on the history of the Eupen workers in the French and Prussian times (1792-1910), Aachen 1988.
  10. ↑ On the crisis in the cloth industry in the post-war period, see Stender, Detlef: At the end of an epoch - the closure of the Müller cloth factory in the structural change of the branch. In: Rainer Wirtz (ed.): Industrialization-De-Industrialization-Museumization? (= Contributions to industrial and social history 8), Cologne 1998, pp. 98–126; Stephan Lindner: Lost the thread. The West German and French textile industries on the decline. Munich 2001
  11. ↑ Stender 2007/2008, p. 216ff.

literature

  • Bauer, Marcel, et al .: On the way in Couven's footsteps. Eupen 2005
  • Buhren, Jochen: Monuments of the textile industry in Aachen - (not) an inventory, in: Walter Buschmann (Hg): Between Rhine-Ruhr and Maas. Pioneering country of industrialization. Industrial culture workshop. Essen 2013, pp. 68–85
  • Herrebout, Els: The history of the Eupen cloth industry compared to other woolen cities in Europe. In: Geschichtliches Eupen 38 (2004) pp. 45–83
  • Gerhard Fehl / Dieter Kaspari / Marlene Krapols: Conversion instead of demolition! To preserve the industrial heritage in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine. Aachen 1995
  • Heuvel, Marga van den (ed.): The fine cloth. Ups and downs in the cloth industry using the example of the Wilhelm Peters family of textile entrepreneurs from Eupen and Aachen from 1830 to 1970. Eupen 2014
  • Gilson, Norbert: History of the textile industry in the area of ​​Verviers, Eupen, Aachen with special consideration of the woolen cloth industry. (Unpublished manuscript) Euskirchen 1997, online
  • Landschaftsverband Rheinland (Hg.): A society of migrants. Small-scale migration and integration of textile work in the Belgian-Dutch border area at the beginning of the 19th century. Bielefeld 2008
  • Mangold, Josef: The rise and fall of the cloth industry in Monschau in the 18th and 19th centuries. In: Scheibler Museum Foundation - Red House Monschau (Kind regards.): The red house in Monschau, Cologne 1994
  • Rouette, Hans-Karl: Aachen textile history (s). Developments in the cloth industry and textile machine construction in the Aachen region. Aachen 1992
  • Ruland, Herbert (ed.): "God bless Christian work". A reader on the history of the Eupen workers in the French and Prussian times (1792-1910), Aachen 1988
  • Schmidt, Martin: Cloth manufacturers in the Aachen area. Early modern factory buildings as a mirror of a form of business between publishing house and centralized production. In: Dietrich Ebeling (ed.): Departure into a new time. Commerce, state and entrepreneurs in the Rhineland in the 18th century. Cologne 2000, pp. 129-164
  • Stender, Detlef: From “Schandfleck” to “Charm of the Past” - Dealing with the structural legacy of the woolen cloth industry in the Verviers-Aachen-Euskirchen area, in: Rheinisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 37, 2007/2008, pp. 197–226, online
  • Stender, Detlef: From woolen cloth manufacture to the wool route. Common history, common cultural property in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, in: Series of publications of the Georg-Agricola-Gesellschaft 37 (2015), pp. 37–56, online
  • Wilhelm, Monika: Eight cloth factories were hit with a stone's throw. On the history of the Euskirchen cloth industry. In: Tuchfabrik Müller, Arbeitsort - Denkmal - Museum (= Rheinisches Industriemuseum, Kleine Reihe, Issue 17), Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1997, pp. 14-23, online
  • Wool route Euregio Maas-Rhein (ed.): The wool route Euregio Maas-Rhein, Euskirchen 2019, online

Web links

Commons : Wollroute  - collection of images, videos and audio files