Forster Feintuchwerke
Forster Feintuchwerke is an abandoned textile factory in Forst, Germany. It was built in 1884 and closed after the unification of Germany in 1992.
Forst, the small town on the Neisse, was once a proud textile metropolis. In 1895, almost 200 factories produced fabrics here, and in 1920 every fifth person in Germany wore a suit made from Forster cloth. During 1844 the first steam engine was installed in this town. This can be seen as the beginning of the industrial rise, meanwhile countless cloth factories and suppliers settled on the banks of the Neisse.
Adolf Noack and Hermann Bergami
In 1876 Adolf Noack rented a room in Forst and started producing cloth on four looms. It was a success and as a result the company continued to expand. Noack finally began to build a new factory in 1884.
The new area had space for several factory buildings and villas for the owners of the factories. The site even had its own connection to the Forster industrial railway. The following years were extremely successful.
In 1899 industrialist Hermann Bergami also built a textile factory on the same site. That didn’t stop Noack from expanding, and a new factory was built in 1925. At the end of the 1930s, around 400 thousand pieces of cloth were being produced on 190 looms each year.
DDR
After 1945 most of the factories were dismantled by the Soviets and transported to the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the Noack textile factory remained and by the order Nr 64 of the Obersten Chefs der Sowjetischen Militäradministration, it was nationalised as the ‘VEB Vereinigte Feintuchwerke’. From this, the VEB Forster Feintuchfabriken emerged in 1969, which one year later was merged into the ‘Textilkombinat Cottbus’. The old Noack factory, made from yellow bricks, was renamed ‘Werk I’ and the Bergami factory in red bricks ‘Werk II’.
Shortly after German reunification, in 1992, the factories were eventually closed. I visited the abandoned Forster Feintuchwerke in 2020. A year later the site and its buildings were sold to an investor, they will be reconverted soon.
