Historic craftsmen's village

Craftsmen's village with ropery
The old Hartmann ropery building was opened as a rope-making museum in May 2003. Inside there are numerous old tools, equipment and machines of this craft, which can still be used today to demonstrate the way ropes are made to an interested public. Together with the smithy and the stonemason's workshop, the rope-making workshop forms the craftsmen's village.

In a permanent exhibition, the "historical craftsmen's village" shows the great importance of Rüthen's green sandstone as a versatile building material for local and national architectural, artistic and cultural history. The geological structures, the mining regulations, the development of mining techniques, the forms of processing and possible uses of the stone through the ages are presented here in a vivid form. This also includes a reconstructed old forge for the production of the tools and equipment required by stonemasons and quarrymen in the past and today for the extraction and use of stone. This ensemble of buildings rich in knowledge and experience is complemented by the directly adjacent original Rüthen "Reeperbahn" (= Alte Seilerei Hartmann).

Many centuries ago, the craft of rope-making (reepschleger or reepdreger) was one of the many professions outside the city. In the town's professional and trade statistics of the 19th century, the rope-making trade in Rüthen is documented with six businesses in 1848, three in 1885 and two in 1900. One of these long-established workshops was the Hartmann rope spinning mill, which was run by Franziskus Hartmann at the beginning of the 19th century. With the death of his grandson Josef Hartmann in 1937, the rope-making industry in Rüthen finally died out.

The massive, brick-roofed ropery building with 25 windows, which can still be seen here, was built in 1914 over a length of 60 m and today, in its original appearance, is a very rare industrial monument, even beyond the region.

This ropery mainly manufactured products according to agricultural requirements and orders, such as sheaf bands, cattle halters, horse and plow ropes, band ropes for hay and grain carts, hauling ropes of various lengths and thicknesses, etc., but also occasionally ship ropes, fishing nets, bell ropes and always a large number of twines and clotheslines for general household use. All rope-making products were made from hemp, most of which was supplied in bale form from Russia.

However, before the ropes, cords and lines were given their desired shape in length and diameter, long threads first had to be spun from the raw hemp after the hackling and combing stages. In the subsequent production process, the individual threads were then twisted into cords (twisting), which were then shaped into the desired end product as required in multiple thread paths by further precisely coordinated twisting processes using rope harnesses and carriages. In this way, the hemp threads were turned into a cord, the cords into a rope and the ropes into a correspondingly strong rope: work processes that required a great deal of physical strength and special skills in the time before electrification.

Guided tours on request
Registration: Touristik und Stadtmarketing Rüthen Hochstraße 14 Rüthen Tel. 02952 / 818172 / 173 E-Mail: tourismus@ruethen.de