Alte Seilerei

The cable car building, constructed of solid brick, covered, and featuring 25 metal windows, was built in 1914 with a length of 60 meters and, in its original form, stands today as an industrial historic landmark that has become extremely rare even beyond the region. The building was renovated by the Förderverein Heimatpflege u. traditionelles Brauchtum Rüthen e.V. in 2002–2003 and opened as a rope-making museum in May 2003. Inside, there are numerous historical displays, tools, equipment, and machines from this ancient craft, which are still used today to demonstrate rope-making to interested visitors.

Group tours are available by appointment through the Rüthen Tourist Office as part of guided city tours. Many centuries ago, rope-making was already one of the numerous non-guild trades and crafts that supported the town of Rüthen’s largely self-sufficient economic system. For example, local rope-making businesses (reepschleger or reepdreger) are documented in the town’s citizen registers and tax records from 1648 and 1759.

In Rüthen’s 19th-century occupational and trade statistics, the rope-making trade is documented as having 6 workshops in 1848, 3 in 1885, and 2 in 1900. The last remaining rope-making workshop ceased operations in 1937 due to increasing mechanization, the spread of industrially manufactured ropes, and the unstoppable dominance of chains and steel cables. This rope factory primarily manufactured products for agricultural use, such as sheaf ties, cattle halters, horse and plow lines, lashing ropes for hay and grain transport, tow ropes of various lengths and thicknesses, etc., but also, at times, ship’s ropes, fishing nets, bell ropes, and always a large quantity of twine and clotheslines for general household use. All rope products were made from hemp, most of which was delivered in bales from Russia.

However, before the ropes, cords, and lines could be shaped to their desired length and diameter, long strands first had to be spun from the raw hemp following the processing steps of scutching and combing. In the subsequent manufacturing process, the individual threads were then twisted into cords, which—depending on the need—were subsequently shaped into the desired end product through multiple precisely coordinated twisting processes using rope-making harnesses and trolleys, involving multiple strands of thread. In this way, the hemp fibers became a cord, the cords became a strand, and the strands finally became the rope of the appropriate strength: work processes that, in the era before electrification, demanded a great deal of physical strength and specialized manual dexterity from the rope makers.