A piece of local history: the Thurnau shoe factory

The heyday of German shoe production is already several decades past. Known for their shoe production are Primasens and Burgkunstadt in Upper Franconia. The Thurnau shoe factory has been forgotten. But the Institute for Franconian Regional History at the University of Bayreuth is now bringing it back into regional memory. On the weekend of 2 and 3 April, a pop-up exhibition on structural change in northern Bavaria will now take place in Thurnau.

"For the fact that the company only had 100 employees, we received a lot of feedback," explains Benedikt Martin Ertl, research assistant at the Institute for Franconian Regional History. In the local daily newspapers, he and the project team had called for contemporary witnesses to come forward who could tell something about the Thurnau shoe factory. "There is little material in the public archives," he explains. "But through the contemporary witnesses we got some originals, such as catalogues, an excerpt from the trade register from back then and many photos."

(Interviews with contemporary witnesses Kriemhild Geißler and Gaby Förster. Photos: Benedikt M. Ertl)

The exhibition was then conceived with these sources. "The company has not existed for 30 years," says Ertl. "But since many of the seamstresses who worked there came from Thurnau or the surrounding communities and some of them still live there today, we were able to gather a rich treasure trove of exhibits."

In 1945, the shoe factory in Thurnau was founded by two war widows. The aim at the time was to produce something that everyone could use at that time.

The shoe factory was particularly exciting, he said, because it was no longer even seen in Thurnau's townscape. "Many of the younger people from the region have never even heard of it." This is about to change, because there used to be smaller factories all over northern Bavaria that are not only part of Franconian history, but also part of many family histories.