Transcript: #6 Tobler & Co. Hosiery factory, Embroidery buildings

Jeanne Devos

In front of you is a two-story house with a roof terrace. On the south side the house extends another three levels down the slope. From below it looks like a high-rise building, probably the first and only one in the Appenzellerland. Because of its visual conspicuousness, it was called the «Kamelhof». To this day this name has remained. Marcel, there are legends about how it got this name.

Marcel Anderwert

My grandfather told us children the following story: Because the house is so high it reminded people of the long neck of a giraffe. Since they were not so familiar with exotic animals, they mistook the giraffe for the camel and called the house «Kamelhof». The more plausible story is probably this: For a while, stockings made of artificial silk were knitted in the house. For these threads to run well in the machines, high humidity was required in the rooms. Together with the heat in summer working in these halls was almost unbearable. The workers therefore often opened the windows to cool down a little. This, of course, also lowered the humidity and the silk threads were less supple for processing. This annoyed the patron. Whenever he entered the machine room and the windows were open, he regularly shouted, «What stupid camel* has opened the windows again?»

(*The other meaning of the German term ‘Kamel’ is ‘fool’, ‘moron’, ‘idiot’.)

Jeanne Devos

Now look down the Schulstrasse. In the house on the right there was also a textile factory in the two lower floors. You recognize the high basements. The Schulstrasse was built around 1900. A short time later, rather identical houses were erected to the south of the road. Three houses are the same as those we have already seen before. They were all built with an embroidery workroom in the basement and a flat on the upper floors. What were the working hours like in these embroiderers' houses? Former embroiderer Walter Sonderegger Senior knows all about it:

«In the old days, the hand embroiderers worked until Saturday evening, usually into the night. In any case no one finished work at six o'clock p.m. unless he was still working as a farmer and had to look after the cattle. My father sometimes had to deliver a completed piece very urgently. That meant very long working days. Little has changed these days either. Suddenly there is a great haste to finish a work. My wife and I often worked late into the night. In the past it was extremely hard to earn some money. Sometimes I embroidered until two o'clock in the morning, and then my wife took over and kept the machines running until morning. The working hours were long. In the old days some embroiderers skipped work on some Mondays. They hung out drinking in the pubs. It also happened that the threader boy who helped the embroiderer had to open the shutters in the embroidery room on Monday morning even though no one was embroidering. So, the middleman assumed that the embroiderer was at work which was not the case.»

And the farmer Oskar Egli also knew the working hours of the embroiderers:

«They all had been self-employed and could divide their working hours according to their needs. That's why some worked longer and others less. In good times the hard-working embroiderers earned quite well, unlike those who often only started embroidering on Wednesday and sometimes lost their jobs.»

Marcel Anderwert

Now continue down the Schulstrasse. At the end of the garages on the right turn into the small road and walk to the house on the right with the two ‘side towers’. (Location 7) It used to be the headquarters of my grandparents' and parents' company Tobler & Co. AG until the new building has been completed.