Weddige and the Goat Herder
Martin Möllers is a typical example of the common people in Weddige. He was born the son of a tailor in a house on Butterstraße worth just 125 Reichsthaler, while the value of the unfinished brick building MM27 was estimated at 200 Reichsthaler at the same time (1816). Möllers appears in some later records as a "day labourer".Goat herding is one of his odd jobs. He collects the animals, which are kept in the city as the "poor man's cow", and supervises them on the communal land. In 1859, he sells his house, apparently without any direct heirs, before dying of "consumption" a month later.The window from the 1950s, modelled on Weddiges' drawing, comes from the "Barönchen". The goat herder Mäten (Martin) Möllers (1795-1859) is also incorrectly associated with Münstermauer 27. However, the so-called "goat staircase" is the cattle ramp of the butcher Engelbert Brüning and can be dated to after 1860. The popularity of the original by the local writer August Vollmer led in 1913/14 to the idea of erecting a monument to him on the market square, which was ultimately rejected.
Weddige, His Family and His Birthplace
Weddige depicts the already crumbling Münstertor without its former extent, with his back to the "Barönchen", his birthplace. The house was sold in 1874 by Ludwig Weddige to H. C. von Weyrother, a colonial goods merchant, and subsequently served as an inn across several generations. Of particular interest from a local history perspective: from 1885 to 1895, the garden housed the first studio of the well-known photographer Joseph Wenning, who also photographed the Brüning family. The Barönchen building is today owned by Hermann Klaas, the investor behind the Emsgalerie.Ludwig (Louis) Weddige (1811–1890) was of great importance to Carl Weddige as his elder brother, as we know from numerous family letters. He accompanied the seventeen-year-old Carl when he set off to begin his studies at the Academy of Art in Düsseldorf. Later, whenever Carl found himself in financial difficulty — which was not infrequent — he could ultimately always rely on his brother, who was well connected in the region and also helped secure commissions or find buyers for paintings. In 1850, during the division of the communal lands (Markenteilung), Louis purchased the Hengemühle estate. Nearby, in the forest, lies the family burial site. One of Louis's sons later extended the holdings to include land in Holsterfeld. Both properties remain in the possession of the Weddige family to this day.The extract from the original land register shows the places that were important to Weddige during his childhood: his birthplace in Münsterstraße, the house at Markt 14, where his great-aunt Schilgen — a doctor's widow — resided, and his grandfather's Bentlager Hof, the home of Judge Coeverden.Münstermauer 27 is situated, much like the residences of the street paver, the cloth shearer, and the goatherd, in the poorer lanes of the town.
Weddige and the Town Wall
By Weddige's time, the town wall dating from 1320 had been largely demolished. The rear wall of the Brünings' wall house has since been rebuilt as well. The painter believed he had still found a remnant of it. In the sketch of the Hohe Lucht, however, one can make out the ruin of a powder magazine from around 1600. The course and gradual expansion of the town walls have been thoroughly researched.Of particular significance for the history of the town is the view, visible in the background, of Rheine's oldest textile factory, dating from 1835. The era of the Wollwebergasse — the weavers' quarter — had come to an end. The factory chimney was not demolished until the 1980s.
Weddige and the Old Cemetery
In the sketch of the Old Cemetery (in use since 1807), one can make out the jumble of modest crosses in iron or wood belonging to ordinary folk. Among those buried there were Anna Eilker and Henrich Brüning (both † 1827) from Münstermauer. Carl Weddige's parents were also laid to rest here, though these early graves can no longer be located. From a later period, there exists a photograph of the simple funeral cart used by the gravedigger, who lived behind the church. Wilhelm Sträter, by contrast, was afforded an elaborate funeral procession.Stone grave markers and ornate family vaults — such as that of the Timmerman family — only began to appear from the mid-nineteenth century onwards and have survived to the present day. Graves of ordinary people are no longer to be found.
Weddige and the Weavers
The cloth shearer Ross, one of the figures depicted in the sexton's tavern, is among the last of his guild, which can be traced back to 1632 in Rheine. He has a workshop in Coesfeld and supplements his income through smallholding on the outskirts of town. The cloth shearer's task was to cut away the protruding threads and fibres from finished woven cloth. Weddige shows us the stooped seventy-three-year-old with a large pair of shears, though not with the enormous iron scissors also used in the trade, the operation of which demanded considerable physical strength. In the textile industry, only the very final inspection of the fabric was later carried out by hand rather than by machine.Bernd Wilkens (born 1790) is one of the ordinary people whom Weddige sketched in his "Album Rheinense". Depicted here at around sixty years of age, he can be seen as emblematic of the decline of the wool weavers' guild in Rheine (cf. the Münstermauer map). Like his father before him, he trained as a cloth maker. Yet by the time he reached thirty, this trade no longer provided a sufficient living and he was forced to hire himself out as a day labourer, working amongst other things as a street paver. Burdened by debt, he lost the family home and now lives as a tenant at Münstermauer 22 in the most cramped of circumstances. Might the glass of schnapps allude to a further personal difficulty in this ordinary man's life? At any rate, he is a regular at the sexton's tavern.The loom from 1880 is currently housed in the attic of the Heimathaus Hovesaat.
Weddige and the Waschkeschapp
In 1852, Weddige shows us the original Waschkeschapp and the modest houses behind it. At the shallow stretch of the Ems riverbank, freshly prepared laundry was rinsed out, most often by poor washer-women or young girls. Afterwards, they would spread the washing out on the Ems meadows to bleach in the sun. It was not until 1975 that the high flood defence walls altered this natural hollow for good.For the Brüning family of craftspeople, the washing of laundry moved indoors from 1911 onwards, taking place in the newly built wash house of the yard, where a large copper boiler — the Manteltopf — was installed. This vessel also served the butcher for boiling sausages. Washboards such as the one from Münstermauer 27 remained in common use for a considerable time. The factory owner's daughter Clara Timmerman, however, was already given a washing machine and a wringer as part of her trousseau in 1911.
Weddige and the Textile Industry
Weddige is also a chronicler of early industrialisation. In Coesfeld, he shows us the chimney of the mechanical sizing mill used for the impregnation of warp threads (cf. the Hohe Lucht image). He dedicates a separate sheet to the first cotton spinning mill on the Mühlenkamp above the weir, built in 1845. He also produced early portraits of the textile pioneers Kümpers, Timmerman and Jackson, which are not shown here. The factory owners adopted the know-how of the wool weavers and retrained them in the weaving of cotton. This brought about a long-term solution to the economic hardship of the first half of the nineteenth century. However, wages for ordinary working people were generally insufficient, meaning that women's and child labour was commonplace. All members of the Slaghuis family, for instance, were employed in the textile industry. The shortage of housing for factory workers was initially addressed through the taking in of lodgers, as was also the case at Münstermauer 27. It was only the later construction of company housing that provided a more lasting remedy.
Weddige and the orphanage
With his drawing of the ossuary on the churchyard wall of St. Dionysius, Weddige gives us a clue as to the location of Rheine's first orphanage. It was used for the burial of bones that had been found.Due to its hillside construction, it has one floor that is accessible from below and serves as an orphanage. Engelbert Brüning lived here from 1827 to 1840 and completed an apprenticeship as a butcher.Opposite the house at Stadtkirche 7 (now Paulushaus), which was the orphanage from 1851 to 1915, was the Bentlager Hof, the parental home of Weddige's mother. The new orphanage built on the Ems in 1915 is now used as the Jacob Meyerson House.
Weddige and the Dionysianum
From 1826 to 1831, Carl Weddige attended the Dionysianum secondary school, then the Paulinum in Münster until he transferred to the Düsseldorf Art Academy at the age of 17. Secondary school teacher Löbker (born 1809) taught in Rheine until 1834, during which time he probably also taught Carl Weddige. Until 1909, part of what is now the Old Town Hall was used by the Dionysianum, as was the corner building opposite on Emsstraße. For many years, the majority of the pupils did not come from Rheine, but were boarded throughout the town. In 1861, this was also the case in the narrow Münster wall near the Brünings.
