Cigar Makers Monument (Bremen)
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The monument to the Bremen cigar makers , a bronze group of sculptures made up of five half-figures, was modeled by Holger Voigts in 1984 and erected on the corner of Buntentorsteinweg and Kirchweg . It reminds of an important occupation of the residents who worked here in the Neustadt in the 19th century.
Bremen and the cigars
Tobacco , which has been smoked, sniffed and chewed in Europe since the 17th century, was first imported via Amsterdam and from there also traded to Germany. It was processed in Bremen at an early stage. In the 19th century, Bremen became the center of German tobacco imports. The leaves were previously mainly processed into pipe tobacco, now the cigarincreasingly an attribute of the bourgeois gentleman. Cigar production began in Bremen around 1820, mostly in small businesses with little more than five employees. Around 1851, the number of cigar workers employed in Bremen reached a peak with around 3900 people, with a total population of 55,000. The "Strieper" were involved in the production process and removed the midrib from the moistened leaf. The curler formed the raw shape of the cigar from the insert and binder, which an experienced cigar maker then placed in a precisely cut wrapper and rolled into shape by hand, or from around 1865 placed in curling molds that were pressed as a stack. These standardized two-part hollow forms were the only technical aids used by the cigar maker until around 1900. Until then, cigar production was largely a manual process based on the division of labor, in which many women and children were also involved. As everywhere in the home industry, the level of self-exploitation was high. Cigar workers were most likely to suffer from consumption . In the last third of the 19th century, when home and family work decreased and the cigar factories employed more and more workers on average, where class-conscious and solidary groups worked together, a workmate was often chosen to guide the others in their monotonous work from socialist writings and Read newspapers. Part of his wages was given to him or his work was done by the audience.
The monument
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The group of sculptures shows three men, a woman and a girl at work in the successive phases of their division of labor, from "strapping" or "stripping" to placing them in the mold. Holger Voigts has carefully reproduced these production steps and also made the different ages and the monotonous work clear. A place at the work table has been left free for the reader and his book. The viewer of the monument can take his place and read the following text (aloud):
- “Around 1850 every sixth person in Bremen was active in the cigar industry. Many cigar makers lived and worked in the small houses here in the Buntentor. A cigar maker had to make up to 1,000 cigars a day. To do this, he had to work 12-14 hours. The cigar makers often employed readers who read them from newspapers and socialist pamphlets as they worked. In this way, informed and educated about current affairs, they were able to campaign for workers' rights at an early stage. They formed their first trade union in 1849, founded relief funds and the like. "
It is difficult to estimate how often this mostly forbidden form of political education actually took place. We only know about her through reports from individuals, such as that of the Bremen socialist Julius Bruhns . The date 1849 mentioned in the book text hardly refers to a trade union in today's sense: In 1846 twelve cigar workers had already founded the educational association Vorwärts (in which political discussions were forbidden). The Bremen branch of the Cigar Makers Association , which was organized with a statute in 1849, was a support association for members in need. The Senate dissolved him on suspicion that he was pursuing “political and social goals”.
The monument consists of bronze (figures) and stone (table), its dimensions are 1.85 m × 3.5 m × 0.75 m. It was financed by the "Wohnliche Stadt" foundation and inaugurated on October 8, 1984.
literature
- Dagmar Burgdorf: blue haze and red flags. Economic, social, political and ideological development of the Bremen cigar workers in the 19th century. Bremen 1984.
- Wiltrud Ulrike Drechsel: History in Public Space. Monuments in Bremen between 1435 and 2001. Donat, Bremen 2011, p. 17f.
Web links
proof
- ↑ The number of 10,000 given in Schwarzwälder, Das Große Bremer Lexikon, keyword cigar maker , which was obviously also included in the monument text, is clearly too high, cf. Burgdorf, pp. 67-74.
- ^ Burgdorf, pp. 75-77
- ^ Burgdorf, p. 82
- ^ Burgdorf, p. 201
- ^ Burgdorf, p. 205
Coordinates: 53 ° 3 '43.49 " N , 8 ° 48' 36.99" O