MOC day 26 - Heritage
wenckechodan, Jan 26, 2018
- Description:
- I created this layout for MOC 6 day 26 - scrap about something from the 20th century. It's the story of how our family business came to be.
My great-great grandfather Wilhelm Tews was born in 1867. He had already worked as a coachman with cooper-master Frank in Szczecin for 17 years, when Frank handed over the management of his company. Wilhelm disapproved of this new leadership, and decided to start his own business after two years. His determined wife Auguste, whom he had married in 1896, supported him very much in this project. And thus, Wilhelm founded "Wilhelm Tews Fasshandel und Fuhrbetrieb" on April 1st, 1913. The tasks (purchase of used wooden barrels and buckets at shopkeepers) and the clientele were familiar to him from his time as an employee. The young company did not have a permanent head office, but several storage bins in Szczecin, mainly "Am grünen Graben".
The company was doing well; at that time many goods, such as herring, butter, margarine, salt and sugar, were packed in barrels.
That same year, Erich Tews, born in 1899 as son of Wilhelm and Auguste, took the apprenticeship to the cooper at the age of 14. Erich had had an accident as a child, in which he had lost a finger. He had not been quite inculpable: the prankster had clung to the back of a car and was so secretly catching a ride. As the car drove through a very narrow gate, the car - along with Erich's hand - scraped along the wall. Erich never fully recovered from the accident, as the scars did not grow and his hand crippled so that he could not fully open it. Wilhelm was therefore determined that his boy could physically never work as hard as he did it himself. And his boy should have it better than himself anyway! Since Wilhelm had always envied the tailor that worked inside sheltered from every possible bad weather, he wanted Erich learn the trade of the tailor. Asked at the "job interview", if he wanted to start learning the trade, Erich replied: 'Nope, don’t really feel like it!' Wilhelm condemned the lout to drive with him on the coachman’s seat. Around that time, Wilhelm ran into his old boss, the cooper-master Frank, and told him about Erich's latest iniquity. Frank replied that Wilhelm had a company now and that Erich should take it over eventually! Therefore, he should learn the trade of a cooper! Wilhelm thought much of his counsel, and this is how Erich began the apprenticeship at cooper-master Haupt in Szczecin. He graduated in 1916 and worked until 1917 in his father's company until he was drafted into the military.
At this time, the company had 1 team of horses and no other employees.
105 years later, the company has seen many changes – losing everything in World War II, building up the company from scratch in Rostock, seeing it through the Cold War in socialist East-Germany, and through the tremendous turnaround when Germany was reunified. Barrels were taken over by pallets, which are now being superseded by cases and wooden containers. The ownership is now in the 4th generation, with the 5th one already working as employees to follow into their ancestors’ footsteps. Though we don’t own a team of horses anymore, we do have two trucks and roundabout 20 employees.
Credits:
Quickpage: paulakesselring_QuickandEasy
Elements and paint: dinsk_DearestDiary and lynnemarie_BonAppetit
Alpha: lbw_lookforward
Font: Kingthings Trypewriter 2
jaharvey likes this.
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- Category:
- Month of Challenges 6
- Uploaded By:
- wenckechodan
- Date:
- Jan 26, 2018
- View Count:
- 421
- Comment Count:
- 3
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