Brewer with an ETH PhD

When Fritz Schoellhorn died on February 2, 1933, he was much more than a local brewer. In an obituary in the NZZ He was honored on February 5 of that year – he was described as a “successful industrialist, meritorious promoter of science, brilliant organizer, raised the reputation of the Swiss brewing industry, honest employer”.

Among the speakers at the abdication in the parish hall in Winterthur was Heinrich Hürlimann, director of the Zurich brewery of the same name and probably also a competitor, as well as a machine operator of the company heap of goods, but also Emil Bosshard (1860-1937), former rector of the ETH Zurich. This university had awarded Fritz Schoellhorn an honorary doctorate in 1928, five years before his death, and Emil Bosshard was a driving force behind this honor.

The Haldengut Brewery it’s history. She was born in 1994 by Heineken taken over, the brewery in Winterthur was closed in 2002. A great-grandson of the former patron, Andreas Schoellhorn, lives just a few hundred meters from the «Haldengut». When the brewery was taken over and closed, he made sure that the extensive company archive was in safe hands. Important evidence of his great-grandfather’s work can still be found in his library. They tell of the challenges of a growing company and give impressions of the life of an industrialist and his family at the beginning of the 20th century.

Johann Georg Schoellhorn (1837–1890), the father of Fritz Schoellhorn, came to Switzerland in 1875 from Bad Waldsee on the other side of Lake Constance. He was a supplier of malt, malting barley and hops and took an interest in the ailing Winterthur brewery. When he died in 1890, his son Fritz, only 27 years old, was left to carry on the business, now known as United Swiss Breweries AG the breweries Tivoli in genef, Bavaria in St. Gallen and heap of goods in Wintertur. The operations in St. Gallen and Geneva were abandoned. From 1904, Schoellhorn focused on the company founded in 1842 Haldengut Brewery in Wintertur.

One of the biggest problems brewers faced in the mid-19th century was the large fluctuations in quality. The main causes were a lack of knowledge about yeast and the lack of effective cooling technologies. Fritz Schoellhorn benefited from technical developments in mechanical engineering and new scientific findings. Last but not least, he received an honorary doctorate for this scientific work ETH.

For the technical equipment of the Haldengut Brewery the local cooperation with the Sulzer brothers’ machine factory was an ideal situation, for example for the use of the cooling machines patented in 1876. People used to work with natural ice, and that sometimes came from very far away, for example from the Klöntaler See, 80 kilometers away.

Fritz Schoellhorn worked his way through the already extensive worldwide literature on beer brewing and attended the brewing academy in Weihenstephan in Bavaria. Collecting books soon exceeded his capabilities, so in 1913 he founded the Association for the History and Bibliography of the Brewing Industry in Berlin, which still exists today, and undertook the task of compiling an extensive bibliography himself. to give. He completed this work in 1928. It reflected the knowledge of the time in many languages.

Beer only became a popular drink in the course of industrialization, before that people mainly drank cider and wine in this country. The Haldengut Brewery owes its name to the estate of the Ernst family in the Weinhalden van de Lindberg in Winterthur. In a study published in 1922 on the brewing industry in the canton of Zurich, Fritz Schoellhorn documented the history of no less than 57 breweries, six of which were in Winterthur.

In the difficult times after the turn of the century and the First World War, Fritz Schoellhorn also became the father of the later beer cartel: as part of a customer protection agreement, the breweries promised among themselves not to hijack sales outlets. Over 90 percent of all beer was then sold through pubs and no new pubs were allowed to be opened to protect against alcoholism. Marketing was not necessary and was not allowed, together they promoted Swiss beer. The so-called beer cartel existed from 1935 to 1991, limited mutual competition, but was not actually a price cartel. On the contrary, the breweries were accused of endangering agriculture and public health with cheap beer.

His great-grandson’s bookcase also contains two large-format photo albums: they contain about 90 photographs taken by Fritz Schoellhorn by the first photographer on the site before the First World War: Hermann Linck. Like himself, his father had emigrated to Switzerland in the late 19th century and set up a photography business that thrived on the growing industry in Winterthur and Zurich, but also on the need for self-portraits among the affluent bourgeoisie.

These photos are a unique testimony as they document the brewing process step by step using the technology of the time. Of course they show the brewery from its best side. Not only is the brewing process shown from the malthouse to the brewhouse to the keg filler, horse-drawn carriages, the first motor vehicles, the dining room, the sick room and the executive office are also shown – and as a curiosity a swimming pool for the workers who can use the waste heat of the brewing process used.

But Hermann Linck also took family photos: in one photo we see Fritz Schellhorn on horseback in front of the shop entrance. Two other photos show the father with his three sons in uniform and his wife Lilly Schoellhorn-Sträuli (1868-1933) with their two daughters.

Behind the facade of entrepreneur and cavalry colonel was a sensitive and open person, who sometimes came across as a bit harsh. Fritz Schoellhorn also published poems for his circle of friends, for example in the collection that appeared in 1913 On the threshold of the autumn of life: «Life passes so quickly, there is no rest and no rest: you are amazed at how your friends age; Your mirror coolly tells you, ‘You too’.”