Our history
Vault
Around 1450 the monks of the Franciscan monastery excavate a four-meter-deep cellar vault, which was used to store wine and beer. The cellar built above this House was destroyed in a town fire in 1581.
Immediately thereafter, the farmer (farmer) Cuntz (Conrad) Friedrich the core area of the half-timbered house standing today. A stonemason immortalized the date of construction of the new house: 1582.
Ackerbürger
Conrad Friedrich built a half-timbered house in the style of the Thuringian Renaissance, with a representative entrance hall with coffered ceilings, a winter-warmed plank room and ceiling paintings on the 1st floor.
Artist
At the beginning of the 17th century, the “lime cutter” and plasterer Burkhardt Röhl († 1643) owned the building for a good 40 years. Röhl created in the opposite upper church in the middle of the Thirty Years War
the
Mannerist Altar, the pulpit and the baptismal font. His work is also available in the form of a perfectly preserved Half relief Renaissance ceiling in the house to the palm tree in Arnstadt (photo) and in the
Sondershausen Castle
to admire. He was an outstanding sculptor.
Countess
Anno 1697 acquired Johanne Elisabeth of Schwarzburg (1662-1720), Countess and sister of Prince Anton Günther II, the house at the vicarage, and extended it to the south. The result was a Beletage, a baroque staircase, an exit to the basement and a black kitchen. This condition is essentially preserved to this day.
Johanna Elisabeth von Schwarzburg was also the sister-in-law of Auguste Dorothea, who had created the MonPlaisir collection in decades of work at the beginning of the 18th century.
Chamber of Wonders
The next owner was the superintendent Johann Christoph Olearius (1668-1747), preacher at the New Church in Arnstadt during Johann Sebastian Bach’s time. A numismatist and collector of curiosities, he set up a Baroque Wunderkammer in the house. His library of Luther first prints is located across the street from his home in the Upper Church Library. The rest of his collections are unfortunately lost.
IMA – Julius Möller Arnstadt
From 1822 the building was girls’ school, also the first Arnstadt savings association found accommodation in the rooms. From 1870 to 1991, the house was the production site of the Julius Möller Arnstadt glove factory (IMA), founded in 1864. The company earned an international reputation for fine Thuringian women’s gloves and employed 250 people in its prime. In 1905 the half-timbered house was extended by a factory designed in Art Nouveau style and the ensemble was completely plastered.
VEB glove factory Arnstadt
The glove factory Julius Möller Arnstadt was nationalized in 1972 and transferred to VEB Handschuhfabrik Arnstadt. Production shifted to sports gloves, work gloves and women’s outerwear, the company was a important
foreign exchange-generating company in the GDR and was taken over in 1991 by the “
Treuhand” destroyed. The photo shows nine female employees sewing winter gloves and mittens in the Factory in the 70s
.
Decay
From 1991 the buildings fell into disrepair. In 2005 we – Judith Rüber and Dr. Jan Kobel – acquired the half-timbered house and factory. The demolition of the dilapidated extension buildings created courtyard and outdoor spaces. Historical components that had been built over or had disappeared were reconstructed, and the entire infrastructure was extensively renovated.
Resuscitation
In the now detached factory building – instead of ugly steel balconies – two loggias were created. In total, over 1000 m2 of floor space was to be renovated. While the half-timbered house today allows visitors to experience German architectural history, the factory offers light and space in abundance.
Monument
In the half-timbered building, now the hotel, all the glove factory’s fixtures and alterations were dismantled, new floors were laid, the suspended ceilings were re-exposed and the boarding was removed. The photo shows theplank room in thecondition after gutting, only the old adobe wall and the supporting framework remained. New walls were made as half-timbered, part of the plank room was reconstructed and the interior walls were plastered with clay.
In 2007 we received the Federal Award for Craftsmanship in Monument Preservation, in 2013 the Thuringian Monument Preservation Award.
Arnstadt town hall
After eight years of renovation, the hotel opened in 2013. In 2021 the coffee roasting company Bohnenstolz moved in, since 2023 the two vacation apartments are available.
(Photo, from the construction period: interior insulation with
external wall temperature control according to Großeschmidt
the invisible
plastered
heating, which warms like a tiled stove)
