Wool beater (profession)
Wollschläger is a historical occupation from the production cycle of wool processing .
job profile
The wool clubs were responsible for cleaning and loosening the raw wool , which was still coarsely clumped after shearing and mostly quite contaminated, and thus preparing it for later spinning . To do this, they used a percussion instrument, for example the so-called 'wool bow', with which the interconnected fiber bundles were separated. Wollschläger roamed the towns and villages and worked on site.
In some regions, a beating drum standing in the water (usually on a flat river bank) was used to clean the wool. The raw wool was filled into the beating drum and this was rotated until the impurities were dissolved and rinsed out. This method is still used today in the Middle East. After cleaning, the wool was spread out to dry, then filled into sacks and transported to the traders in the cities.
In some areas, the wool bats also took on other work steps in wool processing, such as oiling and combing the wool fibers to keep them supple and smooth for processing with a spinning wheel, and sometimes also spinning the wool itself.
distribution
In Germany, Wollschläger can be found mainly in southern Germany, for example in Regensburg , Nuremberg , Strasbourg , Augsburg , Speyer and Munich , where each Wollschläger guilds were formed. In the late Middle Ages there was sometimes a social decline of the woolen beater, when the wool beater servants were increasingly prevented from weaving cloth for their own use. As a result, a group of impoverished wool club servants formed, the wool club masters lost their importance and the earlier wool club guilds were often merged with the Tucher guilds.
The wool beater, which used to be quite widespread, almost died out in the course of the industrial revolution in Central Europe and has only survived in the form of family names. In some regions front; This profession still exists in South and Central Asia today.
Others
The apostle James the Younger , son of Alphaeus, is sometimes depicted with a 'wool bow' in his hands.
In the people's book Till Eulenspiegel , the 49th story describes how Eulenspiegel beat wool on a holiday because the draper had forbidden him to celebrate on Monday .
literature
- Rudi Palla : The lexicon of the lost professions. Eichborn, Frankfurt 1998, p. 361
- Sabine von Heusinger: The guild in the Middle Ages. On the interdependence of politics, economy and society in Strasbourg. Stuttgart 2009
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Proven in detail for Strasbourg, see S. Heusinger: Die Zunft im Mittelalter. Pp. 68-70, 165, 339.
- ↑ Hermann Bote : An entertaining book by Till Eulenspiegel from the state of Braunschweig. Edited and translated by Siegfried H. Sichtermann. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1981, 2nd edition, ISBN 3-458-32036-9 , pp. 143-146