Muetzenfabrik

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Here the specifications from September 1934 for the PO Muetze, which makes clear that such was to be modeled on the field cap for officers of the old armies or the Reichswehr.

Saris treats this material, too, and it is also in the Herstellungsvorschriften d RZM, but in a later form, ca. 1934.

[stonemint]

Death of a Mutzenfabrik: The Firma Ernst Kern of Lunzenau:

[Friedrich-Berthold]

Very evocative images. Granted modern German labor law as concerns conditions of work, such a workshop under a roof is not up to legal code.
If only the machines and the walls could talk, of course.
sic transit gloria mundi.

[davejb]

If only you could save those machines and the larger bobbins and i bet some of them had original threads in them, Ben will be having a fit by now lol

[HPL2008]

The images of the old workshop under the roof are excellent photography; they have an interesting aesthetic and strange beauty to them. (Although I would not have wanted to work there, especially on a hot summer day....) Just out of curiosity: May I ask where they came from?

[stonemint]

The images of the old workshop under the roof are excellent photography; they have an interesting aesthetic and strange beauty to them. (Although I would not have wanted to work there, especially on a hot summer day....) Just out of curiosity: May I ask where they came from?

HPL--I was doing some research on the firm (I have a Rechnung from Firma Kern) and found the pics. I believe I just inputted mutzenfabrik, kern, lunzenau .

[HPL2008]

HPL--I was doing some research on the firm (I have a Rechnung from Firma Kern) and found the pics. I believe I just inputted mutzenfabrik, kern, lunzenau .

Many thanks - that did it; I found the photographer's work. He's from Colditz, by the way:

Fotos von Andre´ Heidner - Fotograf aus Colditz | fotocommunity

He did some fine photographs of other closed-down/abandoned sites as well; here is that specific category:

Gebäude und Orte - Marodes von Andre´ Heidner - Fotograf aus Colditz | fotocommunity

While I was searching for this, I also found this 4-page chronicle of the Mützenfabrik at Lunzenau (Sorry, German language only):
http://www.lunzenau.de/pitcms/.lunze...inLunzenau.pdf

They carried on through the post-war years (shifting their production to the Soviet Army's needs in 1945) and, with numerous changes, throughout the GDR era and finally shut down in 1995.

[stonemint]

HPL--what is interesting is that I have yet to see a Drittes Reich Kern visor, be in Partei, Staat, or Wehrmacht.....

[Friedrich-Berthold]

One looks also in vain for the products of many cap makers in their number. This Lubstein obsession distorts reality, in fact.

The list under A 2 contains withdrawn licenses, in fact.


Thanks to our friend HPL for his fine research. The transformation of society and economy remains a interesting and compelling subject in which many non Germans struggle to make sense in the central European past and present.

But I also like his images of cute 20 something newbie East German girls playing golf, too, actually. The de industrialization of Chemnitz and its environs is part of the general transformation of the ex DDR in the past two decades, to say nothing of the creative destruction that occurred in an earlier time in the old FRG and beyond. The picture book on the collapse of Detroit from its majesty of seventy years ago is as heart breaking.

I studied far too much social and economic history in my salad years.

[stonemint]

A visor hat maker as well as a tailor that survived the war: Uniform Negele of the old university town, Tubingen:

Negele