On Sunday, May 7th, the Dornbirn “Stadtspuren” will be officially opened.
Dornbirn. Almost 40 years ago, Klaus Fessler and Werner Bundschuh first discussed the future use of the abandoned industrial buildings in Dornbirn and brought up the idea of an industrial museum. Now the time has come: Next Sunday, the “Stadtspuren”, a kind of walk-in open-air museum on Dornbirn’s industrial history, will be opened.
Industry worthy of preservation
It was a long way to get there. “In the mid-1980s I drew up a first concept – but at that time, due to the high unemployment caused by the decline of the textile industry, people in Dornbirn had other concerns than cultivating industrial history,” says Klaus Fessler. It is also thanks to the art historian Christoph Bertsch and his publication “Fabrikarchitektur in Vorarlberg” that the textile companies that were closed one after the other were at least partially preserved for posterity. “It was only then that the awareness arose that industry is also worthy of monument protection. The Juchen site, which used to house the oldest spinning mill in the region, was the first to be placed under monument protection – meanwhile, seven objects along our path are under federal monument protection,” says Fessler, who continued to work on the concept of an industrial trail.
The undertaking received new impetus with the opening of inatura in the former Rüwerke works in 2003. “It became clear what potential industrial history has. The course for the future of our project was set with the inclusion of industrial culture, including the industrial path, in Dornbirn’s cultural model,” says city archivist Werner Matt. The concept, which has been revised several times, is based on the idea of focusing on the traces of Dornbirn’s industrial history that are still visible. “That’s where the name Stadtspuren comes from – the stations are located where buildings, machines, turbines, hydroelectric power plants or similar make history visible,” explains Werner Matt.
In the end, 15 stations were created along the waterways, on the banks of which the factory chimneys of Vorarlberg’s most important textile companies used to stretch upwards. The route follows the oldest weaving and spinning mills on the Dornbirner Ache and Müllerbach for a distance of 6.5 kilometers, but also leads past companies in the metal, electrical and food industries that are still producing. The stations can be recognized from afar by the yellow information boards, which tell the story of the city and its people. “With benches and rubbish bins, the stations get a quality of stay, at the same time we wanted to give the so-called culture of the little people museum quality,” explains Werner Matt.
The stations are only a part of the “city traces” – the industrial history can also be experienced using an app, which leads from station to station and provides further information and media. To activate the app, all you have to do is scan a QR code at the information columns. A book by the two co-authors Klaus Fessler and Werner Matt, which was published on Wednesday, offers more in-depth information about the “Manchester des Rheintals”. “We hope to have initiated something with the town traces and have many other ideas to keep Dornbirn’s industrial history alive,” reveals Klaus Fessler.
The concept of the city traces was developed together with Klaus Fessler, the city archive and city planning. Sigi Ramoser’s graphic design office “Sägenvier” in Dornbirn was responsible for the design.
