Factory Grounds @museum.de

Wilhelm Weinacker started building the factory in 1891. As the nephew of Emil Theodor Lother, Mahlberg’s first cigar manufacturer, he was very familiar with the tobacco business. For years, Weinacker had worked in his uncle’s factory. Later, after Lother’s death, he put his knowledge to good use and established a business of his own.

Today, the factory grounds represent a superbly preserved example of the cigar industry that once flourished along the southern reaches of the Upper Rhine. The building complex includes the factory, a small gas shed that was required to light the rooms before the arrival of electricity, the coach house with living quarters for the coachman above, the factory owner’s villa, and the stables for the horses, along with the tobacco storehouse. The foreman’s house was diagonally opposite, on the other side of the road.

Now, let’s start our tour of the factory floor.