Historic craftsmen's village

Crafts Village with Rope-Making Workshop The old Hartmann rope-making building was opened as a rope-making museum in May 2003. Inside, there are numerous old tools, implements, and machines used in this craft, which are still used today to demonstrate rope-making techniques to interested visitors. Together with the blacksmith’s shop and the stonemason’s workshop, the rope-making workshop forms the crafts village.

The “Historic Crafts Village” features a permanent exhibition highlighting the enduring significance of Rüthen green sandstone as a versatile building material for both local and regional architectural, artistic, and cultural history. The exhibition vividly illustrates the geological structures, mining regulations governing prospecting, the development of quarrying techniques, and the ways the stone has been processed and used throughout the ages. This also includes a reconstructed old blacksmith’s shop for the production of the tools and equipment needed by stonemasons and quarrymen—both in the past and today—for stone extraction and use. This informative and engaging ensemble of buildings dedicated to industrial history is complemented by the original Rüthen “Reeperbahn” (= the Alte Seilerei Hartmann rope factory) located right next door.

The craft of rope-making (reepschleger or reepdreger) was one of the many non-guild trades even many centuries ago. In the town’s 19th-century occupational and trade statistics, the rope-making trade in Rüthen is documented as having six workshops in 1848, three in 1885, and two in 1900. One of these long-established workshops was the Hartmann Rope Spinning Mill, which was already being operated by Franziskus Hartmann at the beginning of the 19th century. With the death of his grandson Josef Hartmann in 1937, the rope-making trade in Rüthen finally came to an end.

The massive rope-making building, still visible at this site, made of brick, roofed, and massive rope-making building—featuring 25 windows—was built in 1914 with a length of 60 m. Today, retaining its original appearance, it stands as an industrial architectural monument that has become extremely rare even beyond the region.

This rope factory primarily manufactured products tailored to the needs and orders of the agricultural sector, such as sheaf bands, cattle halters, horse and plow ropes, braided 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 stages of scutching and combing. In the subsequent manufacturing process, the individual strands were then twisted into cords, which—depending on the need—were subsequently shaped into the desired end product through multiple strands using further precisely coordinated twisting processes carried out with rope-making harnesses and trolleys. In this way, the hemp strands became a cord, the cords became a rope, and the ropes finally became a rope of the appropriate strength: work processes that, in the era before electrification, required a great deal of physical strength and special skill.

Guided tours available upon request
Registration: Tourism and City Marketing Rüthen Hochstraße 14 Rüthen Tel. 02952 / 818172 / 173 Email: tourismus@ruethen.de
For more information and maps, visit:
https://www.bergfex.de/sommer/ruethen/