The complex with perfectly preserved interiors of factory halls and wooden construction with a rich museum collection create an industrial monument unique in Europe. The building, constructed in the years 1824-26 according to the design of Wojciech Lange for Adolf Fiedler, has maintained its classicist shape and interior layout. Opened in 1992, the Industrial History Museum has become an important cultural centre not only for the Kalisz region.

History of the structure

Opatówek became a town in 1338 after receiving a privilege from the hands of Casimir the Great. The Cienia River (also called Trojanówka) which flows through Opatówek and connects with Pokrzywnica, a tributary of the Prosna River, as well as the light sandy soils were conducive to settlement. From the 14th century until 1793 the town was owned by Gniezno archbishops as a part of the vast Opatówek estate. For centuries Opatówek was an agricultural town, in which the archbishop’s castle was located. In 1793 the archbishop’s estate was confiscated and became the property of the Prussian state. In 1807 the Opatówek estate became the property of General Józef Zajączek (of the Świnka coat of arms) as a result of a donation made by Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon’s general, in the years 1815 to 1826 was the first governor of the Kingdom of Poland. It was thanks to him that the town started to develop economically. A rental and local government reform was carried out. A new palace was built, a park was established, and new buildings were built in the manor yards. A Gothic church founded in the 14th century by Archbishop Jarosław Bogoria Skotnicki was reconstructed. It was thanks to General Zajączek that the Fiedlers, who built a cloth factory in 1824-31, were brought from Germany to Opatówek. The factory complex included a fullery and a carriage house at 2 Poniatowskiego Street, a cloth factory warehouse and factory workers’ houses at 11/17 Wolności Square and Kościelna Street. Bricks for the needs of the factory under construction were produced by a local brickyard started in 1820. In the 1820s Opatówek was located in the Kalisz industrial district. Thanks to subsidies and loans from the state treasury it was possible to establish cloth and weaving factories in Kalisz and a cloth factory in Opatówek. In the first period, skilled craftsmen and artisans were brought in mainly from Thuringia, Saxony and Bohemia. Other branches of industry also developed successfully, such as tanning, dyeing, soap and candle factories, piano manufactories, breweries, cake factories and oil mills. Many of these survived until the recent transformation in the late 20th century. The chairman of the Kalisz Voivodeship in the Government Commission of Internal Affairs of the Kingdom of Poland, director of the Department of Industry and Crafts, Józef Radoszewski, owner of the Opatówek estates after the death of General Zajączek, greatly contributed in matters of industrial development. The establishment of a cloth factory accelerated the development of Opatówek. In 1824, Adolf Gotlieb and Edward Fiedler came to Opatówek from Sohland, Saxony, where they owned a Trading House. After signing a contract, they received an initial loan of 180 000 zloty from the government. In the years 1824-26 a factory complex was built consisting of: a spinning mill with 10 assortments of machines, a shearing mill with 100 scissor machines and 2 cylinder transversal machines, a Dutch fullery, a cloth laundry, a weaving and dyeing mill. In the first stage, the factory owners employed 477 workers. At the beginning the weaving mill had 40 manual workshops and 5 experimentally introduced mechanical looms. The factory produced fine and medium cloth. In the early days it was the first and largest cloth factory in the Kingdom. The quality of cloth manufactured in Opatówek could successfully compete with Dutch, French and English products. The factory supplied cloth for the needs of the 28 000 Polish army of the Kingdom of Poland. The quality of the cloth was recognized with the Great Gold Medal at the Exhibition of Domestic Industry in 1828. The Fiedlers exported their fine cloth to Russia, Estonia, Mongolia, and China. Production of cloth on such a large scale activated surrounding villages, manors, and farms in domestic sheep farming. The factory survived repression after the November Uprising and a period of stagnation due to tariff barriers. After Opatówek lost its city rights in 1870, the factory was owned by Fiedler’s son-in-law - Ferdynand Nitzsche and Repphan from Kalisz. In 1880, the cloth manufactory employed 550 workers, had 3 steam machines with 50 horsepower each, 2 water wheels with 8 horsepower, 100 manual cloth looms and 40 mechanical looms, and 10 spinning machines. However, a process of stagnation followed which deepened at the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the factory was in decline. The plant finally ceased operation in 1937 and the equipment was sold off. During World War II, the buildings housed military warehouses and a purification facility for military equipment. A concrete plant operated in the west wing built in 1831. After 1945, unfortunately, some of the buildings of the complex were demolished. In the eastern wing there was a fertilizer warehouse, a collection point of the Horticulture and Apiarian Cooperative, and a furniture warehouse of a factory from Jarocin. The floors of the halls were converted into apartments. The western wing was occupied by the “Cepelia” Handicraft Cooperative. In 1969, a fire broke out in the north wing, consuming the interior woodwork and roof truss. In 1981, the decision was made to adapt the eastern and northern wings of the factory, largely devastated and destroyed, to the Industrial History Museum. The renovation took 10 years. In 1997 the municipal office in Opatówek handed over the western wing, built in 1831, to the museum.

Description of the structure

Opatówek is located on Kaliska Upland, 10 km east of Kalisz, on the Cienia River, on the road from Kalisz to Łódź and Warsaw and the railroad line.

At Poniatowskiego Street and Wolności Square, the buildings of the Cloth Factory were constructed (a fullery, a carriage house and a warehouse), and at Kościelna Street and Wolności Square 11/17 houses for factory workers were built. The buildings were erected east of the parish church complex and on the north side of the Cienia River. The main building of the factory was built in classicist style. The monumental, four-storey building has a basement floor and consists of three wings: the eastern wing from Poniatowskiego street, northern from Kościelna street and the western wing. The foundations of the building were placed on oak piles that were discovered during adaptive renovations for the museum of industry. The oak piles were to stabilize the marshy ground. Individual wings were topped with gable roofs with an apex. The elevations of the building were plastered with partially rusticated plaster. There are regularly spaced rectangular windows on all floors, which were intended to evenly illuminate the building’s interior. The eastern elevation is accentuated with a triaxial false avant-corps divided by a jerkin head in the middle and topped with a jerkin head in the eaves part. The cornices and corbels were preserved during the renovation. Interior with wooden beam ceilings supported by two beams and columns Pine, larch and oak wood was used in the construction. These ceilings had to bear the weight of the machines and withstand the vibrations generated during their operation. Part of the structure has been restored (especially in the north wing, which burned in 1969). Rows of columns divided the production halls into 3 aisles, the outer ones along the walls were for machines arranged in a row. The middle was used as a communication route. On the side of Kościelna Street there is a two-storey building built around 1830, connected with the main building, where originally there was a weaving mill. In the courtyard, there is a fullery building built in 1824 and an adjacent carriage house with an L-shaped ground plan. A large two-storey building with a residential attic was built at the market square, now Wolności Square, around 1830, intended as a warehouse for finished products and apartments for skilled workers. In the interwar period the building housed a school. Currently, it has a residential function.

The activity of the Industrial History Museum in Opatówek has saved the machines and industrial devices related to the textile industry from the 19th - 20th centuries and exhibits related to agriculture, steam machines, printing equipment and old products of industry, the history of Polish and European musical instruments, mainly pianos. The creation of the museum has also allowed to save a unique monument of industrial architecture from the beginning of the 19th century.

Visitor access. The site is accessible to visitors. Museum interiors can be explored during the opening times of the museum; objects accessible from the outside.

Compiled by: Teresa Palacz, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Poznań, 31.03.2020

Bibliography

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