Wool weaving mill in Göttingen

The production of woolen goods in Göttingen and the surrounding area can be traced back to the 13th century. The wool weavers' guild had a decisive influence on the cityscape of Göttingen. The industry provided the city with cultural and economic growth . The convenient location in the Leinetal and the north-south trade route from Frankfurt a. That ran along it at the time acted as a multiplier for this rapid increase in the wool industry . M. via Göttingen and Hanover to Lübeck . The spatial proximity of the pastures on the Hainberg ensured that the wool was supplied with raw materials. The wool industry in the Göttingen area changed and diversified over the centuries until it lost all of its importance in the first half of the 20th century.

history

In 1290, the professional group of wool weavers in the city of Göttingen was mentioned for the first time in a written source, as they supported the construction of the Marienkirche with significant financial means . A real boom did not come about until the 14th century. The " Wullenweber " settled in the city, and their quarters were mainly in what was then Neustadt (west of the Leine Canal). This occupational separation was also common in other cities at the time and, with regard to wool weavers, was justified by the fact that the industry was very noisy. In particular, the noise from the looms was one of the main reasons for the external situation. Another reason for the location of the weaving mills is the proximity to the water. The finished wipes could be cleaned in the leash channel or the leash directly after the manufacturing process. This also made it easier to operate water mills to drive looms .

Stegmühle near Göttingen, in which the fulling took place during the cloth production (drawing by Christian Andreas Besemann 1795)

Was in the early days of wool , the walking , so the mechanical processing for shaping the fabric, carried out even in manual mode, developed there a mechanization of work processes. The Stegemühle, which still exists today, dates from this time and only milled the cloth during the work process.

The raw material wool was mainly obtained from the Göttingen area . The Göttingen Forest and Hainberg were completely deforested at the time and served as pastureland for goats and sheep. There was a shortage of wool only in the course of the 15th century. The city ​​council occasionally imposed export restrictions on wool to meet local needs. In addition, demand could also be met at peak times with imported wool. Parts of the spun wool were sold to foreign weavers. This, however, only as long as the own needs of the woolen weavers resident in the city were covered. With the growth of the trade, part of the spinning work was finally outsourced to the nearby Eichsfeld , because the needs of the city could no longer be covered by the local spinning mills.

Specialists from the Netherlands

Around 1475 the City Council of Göttingen sponsored the cloth makers' guild with an import of specialists from the Netherlands, who were supposed to expand the expertise of the local wool industry. For this purpose, the relocation of weavers from the Netherlands was rewarded with a bonus of 30 guilders, they were also awarded 100 guilders in the form of loans and citizenship , and the relocation itself was supported both financially and in terms of infrastructure.

Thanks to this active promotion, many Dutch weavers emigrated to Göttingen. In order to avoid conflicts with the local weavers, they were united in their own guild . The Dutch weavers mainly made fine cloth and became cloth makers. Their special knowledge enabled them to offer dyed woolen goods, until then only white and gray cloths came from Göttingen. To ensure the high quality of the products, the cloths were checked several times during the manufacturing process and had to be presented to the town hall for this. There, two council members and two guild masters , the so-called wardens , checked compliance with the length and width measurements and provided them with a seal. The new process of dyeing was carried out by the " draperies ", as the newly settled woolen weavers were also called, in the colors blue, green, red, brown and black. The end of the cloth production was the shearing and pressing of the cloth, an activity that was carried out by the apreder .

Economic importance and decline

The sales relations of the cloth makers were rated as favorable up to the end of the 15th century and only deteriorated in the course of the 16th century. In the 18th century, the path of the wool industry in Göttingen and the surrounding area from a manufacture to a large-scale enterprise was largely complete. Göttingen and Osterode (Harz) formed the economically strong centers of the wool industry in the pre-industrial era. In addition to processing wool, the region's wool industry was mainly oriented towards the manufacture of products from flax, linen and cotton. Even if it was possible to build on the existing fundamentals, the success was largely determined by product innovations .

In 1823 the older Göttingen manufactories employed a total of around 2,110 combs and spinners, but the mechanization of wool processing and spinning that was establishing itself was already on the advance and significantly reduced the number of employees in the 19th century. The most successful woolen company of that time was the large Levin company founded in 1846 . Just nine years after it was founded, the Levin company was able to build one of the most modern cloth factories in Europe on the former site of the Graetzel company in Grone . The first production units were produced with hand looms , but these were soon replaced by mechanical looms. In addition to the steam drive , the water power of the Grone was also used to drive the looms . In 1895 the company employed around 400 workers and 250 women. At that time it was the largest woolen factory in the Hanoverian province . The Levinpark , which borders on Levinstrasse and Grätzelstrasse , is located on the site today . The son of the cloth manufacturer Hermann Levin created this park around 1890 as an ornamental and kitchen garden around the former manufacturer's villa, which also served as a break and rest area for the factory workers. The larger pond was created in 1873 as a water reservoir for manufacturing, but is now a little smaller. Today Levinsche Park is located in the middle of the largest industrial area in Göttingen. Of the former factories, only the two ponds, the bathhouse and the former home of the owners remain.

In addition to the large factories, several smaller woolen goods factories or machine spinning mills, each with around 12 to 80 workers, were built in the Göttingen area in the first half of the 18th century. The smaller workshops were in the villages of Weende , Grone , Rosdorf and Klein Lengden .

The location advantage of the wool factories in Göttingen at the time, through the local supply of raw wool and the cultivation of flax, had become unimportant. Sheep breeding as a wool supplier became unprofitable due to the cheaper foreign competition, which was also reflected in the fact that the Göttingen shepherds were gradually ceasing to graze and the Hainberg was reforested in the second half of the 19th century. The dependency on imported materials such as East Indian jute , American cotton and Russian flax had a very negative impact on regional textile production in Göttingen and resulted in the majority of the companies stopping their production before the First World War .

Linen weaving company S. & A. Rosenberg

The Göttingen linen weaving mill was founded as S. & A. Rosenberg linen weaving mill in 1872, initially at Groner Straße 15 and from 1896 on the property of the Stegemühle. Up to the First World War, the company's order volume grew steadily, clothing and fabrics were manufactured for the Reichsmarine and the Reichswehr . Financial difficulties arose during the Great Depression in the 1920s. The company was managed by Otto Rosenberg. At the beginning of 1933 the weaving mill had to struggle with a reduced level of liquidity and thus provided the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK), the city administration and the NSDAP with an excuse to eliminate the Jewish company owners. The company S & A Rosenberg was taken over by the city and aryanized , sold to a German company. This was renamed "Göttinger Leineweberei".

Former company owner Otto Rosenberg left Göttingen in August 1939 as the last Jew who managed to leave the country before the war began. He survived with his family in exile in London . His brother Ernst Rosenberg moved to Frankfurt in 1933 and emigrated with his family to Northern Ireland in May 1939. The third brother, Fritz Rosenberg, had moved to Hamburg with his family in April 1933 . On November 9th, he was deported to the Minsk ghetto with his wife and two children . Only his son Heinz survived several transfers through various concentration camps .

In May 1941, a second production site was set up in the company, where young prisoners from the Moringen youth concentration camp had to manufacture Wehrmacht supplies.

In mid-1944, the Göttingen linen weaving mill and other textile companies in Göttingen were classified as not essential to the war effort and were forcibly closed. The defense company Sartorius took over after the closure of the entire infrastructure of the production site of the linen mill, including the Soviet forced laborers and the barracks in which they were staying.

Traces of the wool industry to the present day

Copper engraving of the historic fulling mill by Christian Andreas Besemann around 1797

The partial building of the old fulling mill ( fulling mill ) is still there, in which the fabrics used to be deformed or milled . The mill was built in 1770 and is a listed building. It is located behind the Eiswiese swimming paradise in Göttingen, which offers wellness treatments there.

Former locations of wool weaving mills in Göttingen can still be found in the following street names :

• Walkemühlenweg
• Stegemühlenweg

In the historic spinning mill Gartetal eV near Klein Lengden there is an industrial museum in the attached spinning mill , in which the history of wool processing and paper production is thematized.

Literature and Sources

• Bernd Herrmann Ulrike Kruse (ed.): Scenes and topics of environmental history; Universitätsdrucke Göttingen Graduiertenkolleg 1024 Interdisciplinary Environmental History Natural Environment and Social Action in Central Europe (2010)
• Göttingermonths Blätter (1982) From the Middle Ages to the 19th century Göttingen's most important trade, in: Göttingermonthsblätter May 1982, Göttingen
• Holtermann W (1931); The Göttingen cloth industry in the past and present , printed by the Göttinger Handelsdruckerei, Göttingen
• Laufer J (1999): Between home trade and factory , in: Lower Saxony Yearbook for State History Volume 71, Hahnsche Buchhandlung Hannover, Hannover
• Laporte W (1912): 75 years of wool goods production - Hermann Levin GmbH wool goods factories in Göttingen and Rosdorf; 1837–1912, Göttingen 1912
• Alex Bruns-Wüstefeld: Profitable business. The “de-Jewification” of the economy using the example of Göttingen , Göttingen 1997 pp. 193–198
• Heinz Rosenberg: Years of horror ... and I was left to tell you , Göttingen 1985, p. 9 f.
• Cordula Tollmien: Jews in Göttingen, in: Göttingen . History of a university town Volume 3: From the Prussian middle town to the southern Lower Saxony big town 1866–1989 (edited by Rudolf von Thadden and Günter J. Trittel), Göttingen 1999, p. 675–760, here p. 708 f.
• Memo on July 23, 1940, State Labor Office at Stalag July 23, 1940, memo on July 25, 1940, August 7, 1940, list on August 23, 1940, memo on August 24, 1940, August 28, 1940, October 16, 1940, council meeting 4. September 1940, Göttingen City Archives Building Department Department I, Subject 16 No. 48, oP
• Stock list at the request of the Gestapo dated September 6, 1944, Göttingen City Archives Pol.Dir. Compartment 124 No. 2, sheet 545 ff.
• Meeting March 4, 1941, Göttingen City Archives AHR IA compartment 11 No. 55.
• Letter from Luftgaukommando August 15, 1942, memo October 30, 1942, Göttingen City Archives, Building Department Department I, Subject 16 No. 49, oP
• Company health insurance fund Sartorius, list of "Ostarbeiter" and "Ostarbeiterinnen", in: Schörle, Eckart, expert opinion on the situation of "forced laborers" at the Sartorius Göttingen company during the time of National Socialism, Göttingen in June 2000 (manuscript in the Göttingen city archive), o. S. (between p. 54 and 55).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Factory workers on the website www.geschichtswerkstatt-goettingen.de (accessed on January 23, 2016)
2. ↑ The Levinsche Park in Göttingen by Ulrich Schubert: newspaper article (topics; 333 things) in the Göttinger Tageblatt of March 10, 2011
3. ↑ History of Levin Park on the website www.stadt-natur-wildnis.de/ (accessed on January 23, 2016)
4. ↑ Nazi forced labor: Göttinger Leinenweberei On the website www.zwangsarbeit-in-goettingen.de (accessed on November 27, 2015)
5. ↑ Die Wohlfühlmühle , accessed on December 31, 2016

Web links

Commons : Wollweberei in Göttingen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• History of the Levin wool factory in Göttingen