"Urban Reconstruction" in Sauerland in the second half of the 18th century

Abstract

It is indisputable that many privileged towns in Germany fell into an economic crisis in the late 17th and 18th century, which was caused especially by the growth of various industries in the rural districts. It appears, however, that not a few of them succeeded in overcoming difficulties and getting back their prosperity after all. In order to study how the towns could pass through a serious crisis, we take the case of three towns in Sauerland-Altena, Ludenscheid and Iserlohn. Down to the middle of the 18th century these three towns owed their prosperity to the wiredrawer gilds, which were substantially under the controle of a small number of privileged mercantile enterpreneurs called "Reidemeister". The gilds saw, however, their existence menaced not only by the growth of the iron industry in the rural districts but also by the international competition on the European market, and tried in vain to regulate the wiredrawing trade for the purpose of saving themselves from a pressing danger of decline. As the result Altena had gone to decay with the gilds. Though in the other towns Ludenscheid and Iserlohn, on the contrary, a new industry, i.e. compound metal industry, which branched off from the iron industry, was developed by independent handicraftsmen and grew into the key industry of these towns, while some of the merchants, who had made a monoply of the wiredrawing trade before, turned to a needle manufacturing, others to a trade in products of new industries in and around the town. This process of urban reconstruction in Sauerland in an economic aspect, however, can not be necessarily regarded as transformation from traditional town community to a modern industrial city in the strict sense of the word, because the structure of the town community in a politico-social aspect had not yet lost its characteristic of an exclusive corporation. The urban reconstruction in Sauerland shows, therefore, an indistinct structural change of the town community in a transition period.