Hemp tradition on Lake Constance – History of hemp cultivation in Germany & Switzerland

He encounters us on streets and paths, the names of which reveal his presence in earlier times and preserve the memory of him – in "Hanfackerstraße" or "Hanfäckerweg", in "Hanfbühl" or "Hanfwies", in "Hanfmühl" and "Hanftalstraße", in "Hanfländer" or "Hanfland", which is often found in the Austrian Vorarlberg, namely in Nenzing, Frastanz, Feldkirch, Götzis, and Altach. Places in Austria with the names "Hanefrötz" or "Harrötz" or "Harröst" indicate that the so-called "Hanfröste" for the extraction of plant fibers took place there.
We at HANAFSAN also connect to his history. Thus, we carry the Old High German word for hemp – "Hanaf" – in our brand name.
When looking into the past, images from earlier times come to life: The old cargo sailing ships, called "Lädinen", transport valuable cargo over Lake Constance, equipped with robust sails certainly made of hemp and flax, and are moored in the harbors with tear-resistant hemp ropes!

Hemp Cultivation in Constance: From the Middle Ages to Modern Times

In the town by the lake with its famous "Council of Constance", trade in linen made from flax and hemp flourishes. It is the most important trade and export good and is known far beyond the Lake Constance region. The raw bleached Constance linen, the "Tela di Constanza", is sought after by merchants and stands for high quality! From the early Middle Ages, flax and hemp rents testify to the use of the two fiber plants for linen production. The merchant customs order from the end of the 14th century even mentions only werg and hemp, but no flax, and even in the 15th century, hemp cultivation in the Lake Constance area is documented. Excursus: The "Werg" has a low fiber quality and is produced as waste during the work (at the "Werk") to produce the valuable long fibers. It consists partly of short and coarse as well as haphazardly arranged fiber pieces and can be contaminated with dirt and shives. The "shives" come from the woody core tube of the stem, which is surrounded by the fibers and are formed as relatively uniformly broken, short wood-like particles during the debarking of the plant stem.

Hemp is Ubiquitous

Remarkably, in Constance around 1500, hemp yarn was explicitly designated as unsuitable for linen and its use, except for cloth in domestic use, was prohibited by a council meeting! The inspectors of the raw linen were strictly instructed to reject any cloth in which they discovered hemp yarn. Thus, only flax remained as the preferred raw material for linen intended for export. But when exactly did this change occur? The chemical examination of fiber samples from twisted sealing cords and woven sealing ribbons on Constance documents at the textile research institute in Weimar revealed that in the first half of the 13th century, hemp predominated, but from the middle of this century, flax took over. Presumably, flax also played a primary role in the upswing of the linen trade in the Lake Constance area under the leadership of Constance. The old linen frescoes found in Constance, depicting women processing hemp and weaving, could indicate that hemp yarn was not used for export but for personal needs in woven "house cloth".

Displacement by Flax and Cotton

In 1446, the swinging of hemp and werg was banned in the city, consequently, both must have been in use and were presumably neither absent from the market nor from linen! After the ban on Italian hemp yarn in Ulm in 1473 and the increasing use of flax in St. Gallen, the decisive shift away from hemp in favor of flax likely occurred in Constance in the course of the reform of linen weaving around the turn of the century. Hemp yarn was thereafter only allowed for the production of house cloth, and upon purchase, it had to be confirmed that the yarn was not intended for trade linen, coupled with harsh penalties for forbidden trade. The werg was inspected upon arrival at the warehouse and then released for retting and spinning or for trade. In Constance, the sales areas were clearly separated. Hemp yarn was offered in the square in front of St. Stephen's Church in front of the "House to the Knight", the good yarn at the yarn market, where the yarn house was located in the middle of the 16th century. Cotton fibers were also found in the sealing cords on Constance documents, already since 1260! However, it was not used as a fabric until a century later.

Switzerland & St. Gallen: Center of Hemp and Linen Trade

In neighboring Switzerland, alongside the rising abbey of the Monastery of St. Gallen, the city also developed into a regional center and received market rights in the 12th century. There, they also specialized in the production, refinement, and distribution of high-quality linen cloths made from flax and hemp, so that St. Gallen replaced Constance as the leading linen city in the Lake Constance region by the mid-15th century. The flourishing linen industry reached its peak around 1714 with an annual production of 38,000 cloths, produced by an estimated 35,000 women throughout Eastern Switzerland and neighboring Vorarlberg, who worked for the St. Gallen embroidery exporters. In the middle of the 18th century, the cotton industry displaced the linen trade, and St. Gallen specialized in the production of muslin fabric. At the beginning of the 19th century, the first embroidery machines were developed here, allowing the embroidery of the poor rural population to become a lucrative sideline. By around 1910, the embroidery industry was the largest export sector of the Swiss economy with 18%, over 50% of the world production came from the Gallus city, and about one-fifth of the population in Eastern Switzerland lived off the textile industry.

The Predominant Linen Industry

Since the 13th century, the domestic production of linen from flax or hemp also allowed the peasant farmers in the Swiss Thurgau to earn a meager supplementary income. Merchants in Constance and St. Gallen bought the bales and distributed them throughout half of Europe. Many patrician families from Constance and family businesses from St. Gallen thus became quite wealthy, so that many castles in the vicinity can be traced back to their ownership. However, only the merchants became rich with the linen trade, while the peasant farmers remained poor. Thus, J. A. Pupikofer wrote in 1837 in his "History of Thurgau": "Only as a home manufacture can linen production still exist. If the time and effort required for it were to be calculated at day laborer prices, the costs would exceed the selling price of the linen by double or triple. Only because the farmer can use some time and effort, which would otherwise remain unused, for linen preparation, he has not yet given up linen production. However, it is to be expected that if a more advantageous occupation offers itself, the linen trade will be lost."

Poverty in the Population

The population in Thurgau has always struggled with poverty and depended on linen production, as there was no other industry. Most of the land was previously fiefs of the lords and monasteries, and a large part of the yield went as rent and tithe to Constance, to the St. Gallen monastery, or to the monastery on the island of Reichenau.
With the payment of the so-called "tithe", which has its origin in the Bible, the spiritual "landlord", i.e., the monastery or the bishop, was fed, later such tithe rights often passed to the nobility. The so-called "small tithe" was levied on hay, fruit, flax, or hemp, and since it was usually converted into a fixed payment in the form of money or goods, people felt it was less burdensome. The "great tithe", on the other hand, was levied on wine and grain, meaning the farmers had to give up every tenth bucket of wine and every tenth sheaf, which they felt significantly!
At the beginning of the 19th century, the cotton home industry finally replaced the linen trade, in which many children worked with their nimble and skillful hands. Eventually, production increasingly shifted to industrial spinning mills and weaving factories, so that by around 1900, about half of the Thurgau workers were employed in textile factories.

Vorarlberg & Austria: Hemp Cultivation Between Tradition & Modernity

Vorarlberg – a journey through the last centuries. Vorarlberg was also considered a stronghold for textile manufacturing, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, and thus the cultivation of hemp has a long tradition there. Especially the farmers in the district of Lustenau cultivated it to provide fibers for the production of clothing and cloth in the numerous textile companies, such as in Götzis and Altach. In the local oil mills, the valuable oil was pressed from hemp seeds, and the remaining fibers were used as bedding in agricultural stables. However, with the advance of cotton and the decline of the textile trade, hemp also disappeared from the fields of Vorarlberg, although it had been used for rope making for centuries and was also cultivated there for that purpose. And today? – After it is increasingly cultivated again in fields in Upper and Lower Austria and Burgenland, hemp is also gradually experiencing a visible comeback in Vorarlberg. A small business in Lustenau sets an example: Rootz in the interview

Sources:
Wielandt, F.: "Das Konstanzer Leinengewebe" – Geschichte und Organisation; from Konstanzer Stadtrechtsquellen, published by the city archive of Constance; Verlag der Verlagsanstalt Merk&Co. Kom.-Ges. Constance on Lake Constance, 1950.
Pupikofer, J. A.: "Geschichte des Thurgaus", 1837
Giger, P.: "Geschichte Tägerwilens"
www.swiss.city-tourist.de / St. Gallen/historisch
www.textilmuseum.ch
www.historisches-museum.tg.ch

Image source: © Tabea Walch / Hanafsan