Cotton – a thread of fate for the Zurich Oberland

Cotton and sea silk: raw materials of the textile industry. In 1731, Zurich-born natural scientist Johann Jacob Scheuchzer depicted them in their natural form. (Image: ZB Zürich)

This 1739 decree for the cotton market in the city of Zurich enforces customs duties for imported cotton and prohibits the awarding of spinning contracts to areas outside Zurich. (Image: ZB Zürich)

In 1555, Protestant refugees from Locarno found a home in Zurich. They brought with them new ideas for the textile industry. From a Neujahrsblatt in 1810. (Image: Johann Martin Usteri / ZB Zürich)

A homeworker at the spinning wheel, painted by Zurich artist Clementine Stockar-Escher, 1860. The spinning wheel helped spread yarn production to rural areas. (Image: ZB Zürich)

For centuries, not only was yarn processed in Zurich, flax was too, along with other home-grown plant fibres. Introduced from the Levant, cotton processing can be traced back to 1360 in the German industrial landscape. It gained traction in Zurich in the 15th century, because there was no obligation to join a guild: as an unregulated trade, the cotton and linen industries were accessible to everyone at the time. Simple products were made, such as cotton cloths that required few work steps.

From 1555, Protestant refugees from Locarno brought fresh momentum to the Zurich cotton industry, with additional sales channels and new forms of production and organisation. This triggered a surge in growth from 1590 to 1620.

The introduction of the spinning wheel, expansion of the product range and the spread of cotton processing from the city to the Oberland region led to a second period of growth (1660–1690). At the end of the 1780s, the import of cheap English industrial yarn drove the mechanisation of cotton spinning.

Weaving mills in Laupen, Wald, Zurich, around 1860. Suitable waterways and unemployed homeworkers enabled the textile industry to gain traction in previously remote areas. (Image: ZB Zürich)

In the mid-19th century, Wald, Zurich, was seen as “Switzerland’s Manchester” due to the number of weaving mills there. It is likely to be a manufacturing family in the foreground. (Image: Heinrich Zollinger / ZB Zürich)

This postcard depicts hamlets and neighbouring towns of Wetzikon. In the 19th century, textile factories were popular subjects as symbols of progress. (Image: ZB Zürich)

With windows letting in lots of light, Flarz houses, like the Freddi houses in Bauma shown in the image, were particularly suitable for home work. The Grünthal weaving mill can be seen in the background. Probably late 19th, early 20th century. (Image: ZB Zürich)

Flarz houses in Gibswil. These were typical houses in the Early Modern period for families with small farms who earned additional income from spinning and weaving at home. (Image: ZB Zürich)

The fire of Uster, 1832. By destroying the Corrodi & Pfister textile mill, an angry crowd were trying to bring about a ban on weaving machines. Instead, regulations were abolished. (Image: G. Werner / ZB Zürich)

A pre-industrial, natural idyll: view of Girenbad over the Töss Valley, 1826. (Image: Franz Hegi / ZB Zürich)

A grand yarn display: display cabinet from the company Heinrich Kunz for the 1883 national exhibition in Zurich. (Image: Romedo Guler / ZB Zürich)

In the late 18th century, the textile industry pushed ahead with industrialisation. Merchants in Zurich imported silk and cotton, which was then turned into sought-after end products by rural homeworkers – a process known as a putting-out system.

With the onset of the industrial revolution in the early 19th century, when factories replaced the putting-out system, the first mechanical spinning mills appeared in the Zurich Oberland. Napoleon’s Continental System of 1814, which prevented imports of yarn from Britain, encouraged this development. Mechanisation put many hand spinners out of work, giving factory owners a well-trained, low-cost workforce. A number of rivers, such as the Töss and the Aa, ensured an efficient supply of energy.

Sociopolitical upheavals like the Ustertag and the fire of Uster led to the removal of the professional and commercial barriers of the Ancien Régime. They also paved the way for economic prosperity and turned Zurich into Switzerland’s leading industrial canton.

Caspar Honegger (1804–1883), entrepreneur and design engineer. (Image: Art. Institut Orell Füssli / ZB Zürich)

This birthday card for an employee shows the legendary Honegger weaving loom from the Rüti machine factory on the left, and probably the air jet loom, developed in 1935, on the right. (Image: Heinrich Röttinger / ZB Zürich)

View of the Rüti machine factory around 1905. The factory was established in Rüti, Zurich, in 1847 by Caspar Honegger and produced weaving machines. (Image: ZB Zürich)

Photo of the Rüti machine factory around 1900. At its peak in the mid-20th century, the factory accounted for a quarter of the global market and employed over 2,000 people. (Image: ZB Zürich)

Heinrich Kunz (1793–1859), in a drawing by Emil Tissot-Zehnder. A tough, inflexible, but successful entrepreneur. (Image: Emil Tissot-Zehnder / ZB Zürich)

Adolf Guyer-Zeller (1839–1899). (Art. Institut Orell Füssli / ZB Zürich)

The monumental tomb of Adolf Guyer-Zeller at Bauma cemetery. (Image: Hans-Peter Bärtschi / ETH Library Zurich, image archive)

Three entrepreneurs shaped the push for industrialisation in the Zurich Oberland:

Heinrich Kunz (1793–1859), also known as the ‘Spinning King’, was one of Europe’s biggest cotton mill owners of his day. After his years as an apprentice in Alsace – the first letters to his family date from this period – he started to build spinning mills in the Zurich Oberland. He was very successful. As a factory owner he was tough and ruthless, including towards his workers – as a proponent of Manchester Liberalism.

Caspar Honegger (1804–1883) was an innovator and builder of weaving looms. He had a ‘gift for machines’ and became technical head of his father’s small spinning mill at just 17 years old. He improved the mechanical looms used to create the famous Honegger loom, and became known all over Switzerland as a manufacturer from the early days of the textile industry.

Adolf Guyer-Zeller (1839–1899) travelled to cotton-processing and cotton-producing countries all over the world. In addition to his father’s cotton mill in Neuthal, which he took over in 1874, he founded a commercial textile business in Zurich.

Workers pose in front of the factory on the left, while on the right is a family with a carriage in front of the villa. The image shows the Bleiche weaving mill in Wald, Zurich, around 1880. (Image: Jacob Jucker / Swiss Social Archives F 5068-Fd-0262

Girl in front of a factory worker’s home in the Zurich Oberland, around 1905. (Image: Swiss Social Archives F 5068-Fa-0682)

Factory regulation for Ryffel spinning mills and weaving mill in Medikon (Wetzikon) and Glattfelden, 1878. Children had to show a birth certificate in order to work at the factory. (Image: From: Wetzipedia / By: Heinrich Ryffel / Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 CH)

The cotton boom brought immense wealth to factory owners like the Braschler family. The Braschler villa was the first building in Wetzikon with electricity. (Image: From: Wetzipedia / By: Wetzikon local history archive, scan / licence: CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 CH)

Textile factory owner Jakob Heusser-Staub had this villa built opposite his factory in Uster in 1917. (Image: Hans-Peter Bärtschi / ETH Library Zurich, image archive)

With the ever-increasing amount of raw cotton to be processed, cotton spinning became the dominant industry in the Zurich Oberland in the 18th century. Cotton spinning also spread to other areas, leading to the development of a major cottage industry even before the French Revolution.

Homeworkers also broke away from a purely land-based way of life, earning their living wholly or partly from spinning and weaving at home. They became accustomed to money as a means of payment, imported foreign consumer goods, as well as the influence of the global economy, and later wage labour in factories too. This new way of working created new relationships, with women, men and children becoming financially dependent on the factory owners as their employees. Factory regulations governed both pay days and working hours.

These new living conditions are vividly depicted in Jakob Senn’s autobiographical novel Hans Grünauer. Senn describes the adolescence of Hans Grünauer, a farmer’s son and homeworker.

The large spinning mill owned by the Guyer-Zeller family in Neuthal, a hamlet in Bäretswil, as it was in 1886. (Image: Johann Rudolf Ringger / ZB Zürich)

The Neuthal museum. (Image: © Museum Neuthal Textil- & Industriekultur / Luca Zanier)

This transmission tower was used to transfer the hydropower. (Image: © Museum Neuthal Textil- & Industriekultur / Luca Zanier)

Interior view of the spinning mill with a self-acting spinning mule. (Image: © Museum Neuthal Textil- & Industriekultur / Luca Zanier)

The weaving loom developed by Caspar Honegger. (Image: © Museum Neuthal Textil- & Industriekultur)

The textile industry boom in the Zurich Oberland lasted until after World War II. However, changing consumer habits, cheap imports from Asia and currency problems led to its decline. Factories became industrial museums, while production sites were turned into backdrops for industrial heritage trails (Zurich Oberland industrial trail; Winterthur industrial trail).

Taking the train to Neuthal, you can encounter a collection of looms in the spectacular industrial ensemble at the Neuthal factory. The site is unique in Switzerland and represents a typical 19th-century mechanical textile factory. It includes original operating and storage rooms, hydropower installations and turbines for driving the textile machines. Founder Adolf Guyer-Zeller’s factory villa and the hiking trails he had made for the benefit of his employees, are remarkable.

The globally unique collection of weaving and textile machines is therefore accessible to the public in an authentic environment. It allows us to maintain a culture of remembrance for industrialisation in Switzerland in the 19th century.

• Baumwollgarn als Schicksalsfaden: wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen in einem ländlichen Industriegebiet (Zürcher Oberland) 1750 bis 1920 by Reto Jäger, Max Lemmenmeier, August Rohr and Peter Wiher
• Das Schiffchen fliegt, die Maschine rauscht: Weber, Sticker und Unternehmer in der Ostschweiz by Albert Tanner
• Hans Grünauer by Jakob Senn, originally published under the title Ein Kind des Volkes
• De Flarzbueb: Aller Gattig Sache-Sächeli us em Tösstal by Rudolf Kägi
• Freitag oder die Angst vor dem Zahltag by Arthur Honegger
• Feld, Flarz, Fabrik: das Zürcher Oberland im Wandel by Cornel Doswald, Hanspeter Eckhardt, Claudia Fischer-Karrer and Barbara Thalmann Stammbach
• Die Industrielandschaft Zürcher Oberland by Cornel Doswald, Hanspeter Eckhardt, Claudia Fischer-Karrer and Barbara Thalmann Stammbach

Daniel Stettler, subject specialist/liaison librarian on economics
Image concept and research: Marco Geissbühler, trainee research librarian
October 2024

Header image: Weaving mills in Laupen, Wald, Zurich, around 1860. (Image: ZB Zürich)