Transcript: #9 Houses of the factory owners and embroiderers

Marcel Anderwert

This part, the Holderen, belonged, together with the church, to the center of the newly founded community in 1669. Slowly the buildings developed from the bottom north of the road up to the church. All these houses were used for weaving and later embroidery. The village fire of 1890 destroyed the church, the vicarage, and the houses south of the road. The present church, the vicarage, and the two factory owners' houses south of the road were rebuilt. At the same time the Kirchgasse on the north side was built. Here, too, the textile past can still be seen in the houses. You are standing in front of a typical embroidery building. Walter Kellenberger is just introducing his business to us himself:

«I attended the embroidery school and learned punching there, the production of punched cards. Then I started working for Karl Lendenmann in Wald where the Spar-shop is now. After about eight years I was able to lease Fischer's machine in the Oberstädeli. After that Bruno Sonderegger quit (he became a sacristan in the protestant church) I also took his machine on lease. In 1976 I bought this house here and embroidered with two machines. Then I had to give up the others. I continued to embroider until I retired.»

In this part of the village, behind the former Kellenberger embroidery, was the weaving mill of the Langenauer brothers. While the eldest of the three brothers, Jakob, was politically active, one of the younger brothers, Fredi, ran the weaving mill in Rehetobel, the other, Walter, the twisting mill in Heiden belonging to the company. The company dissolved in the nineteen-eighties, and the production rooms were converted into flats.

An attractive kind of Art Nouveau stable building, the so-called «Gaden», was demolished to make space for a new residential building. In the original building the textile production room was on the upper floor of the cowshed. Agriculture and industry went hand in hand. We follow the road to the end passing former weavers' and embroiderers' houses to the last location, No. 10.