Fürst and Hausner weaving mill and knitting factory

   
According to the Registration of Operating Assets of Jewish Businesses, the Fürst and Hausner textile factory was established in May 1920. However, the history of the building itself is older. In 1883, the builder Franz Lang drew up plans for the adaptation of an older three-storey building, probably a spa. Wilhemine Deppe had the ground floor divided into living spaces with their own stoves, and another nine living spaces were created upstairs. The business plan probably did not end in success, because in 1890, the Jihlava master builder Ignac Lang designed a remodelling of the building for the Prague manufacturer Alfred Epstein (1846 Prague – 1919 Vienna). The building was thus adapted for textile production for the first time. The ground floor housed a weaving room, yarn warehouse, bobbin room, press room, finishing room, and finished products warehouse. To the south of the original building, Lang designed an L-shaped staircase without a landing. On the first floor, there was a large hall of about 300 m2serving as a workshop, and one flat of about 150 m2. In the production part, all floors were connected by a cast-iron spiral staircase. An 1890, cross-section drawing shows the factory as a three–storey building covered with a saddle roof. In the following year, 1891, Ignac Lang drew up plans for an extension in the factory courtyard. The extension included a stable, a sump, and a boiler house with a new boiler to power the machinery. In 1892, a hall for a weaving mill with 26 looms and seven dormers on both sides was designed in the thermally insulated attic. A spiral staircase coming from the ground floor ended in the attic. From the plans drawn up by Ignac Lang in German it is noted that the factory owner, Alfred Epstein, also owned the neighbouring plot intended for a house. The manufacturer Epstein and his wife Rosina (née Bettelheim, 1850 Bratislava – 1890 Jihlava) had four sons born in Vienna, the two youngest were twins. It is likely that only one son, Paul Epstein (21 July 1875 Vienna – 1943 Terezín), lived to adulthood, but he did not return from a concentration camp.

After the First World War, the factory was acquired by new owners – business partners Fürst and Hausner – who operated a weaving and knitting mill called Istra. The owners Ferdinand Hausner (1883–1957) and Josef Fürst (unknown – 1927) also had a business in Vienna and their Jihlava factory specialised in fashionable knitwear and chenille goods, mainly in the Parisian and Viennese styles. The plans for the reconstruction have not survived, but there is correspondence about looms with Josef Vítek, a manufacturer and wholesaler in Postřelmov. After the death of Josef Fürst in 1927, Siegfried Bloch became the new business partner. At the end of the 1920s, the factory building was raised by two floors featuring large industrial-style windows.

This superstructure can be seen in the amateur film made by Walter Hausner (1914–2003), son of Ferdinand Hausner and Wilhelmina Bloch, a member of the Amateur Film Club in Austria. In order to preserve the film heritage, the film reels were smuggled out in textile crates along with other family belongings when fleeing Nazism. Wilhelmina Bloch did not live to see this, as she succumbed to cancer in 1937. Ferdinand Hausner and his son Walter left Vienna by air in March 1938, just before the Anschluss of Austria. To get out of Austria, Ferdinand married his girlfriend, fashion designer Claire Rennai, who had a visa to the United States. Walter, on the other hand, travelled to England with a plan to set up another factory for the family textile company, but was interned as an enemy alien. Later, when Walter was serving in the British Army, he met the singer Irene Jones (1921 London – December 2014 Oxford, USA) performing for the troops. They married, emigrated to America in 1948, and settled near New York. The business partner Siegfried Bloch died in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1941, while his wife Irma survived the war in Prague.

In 1939, the factory still employed 150 workers (8 Germans, 68 Czechs and 1 Jew) and had a turnover of CZK 4,368,365 and a profit of CZK 391,061. Subsequently, in 1940, the factory Istra Edmund Steinhauer, Emanuel Massni a spol. was Aryanized and the production continued to focus on knitted, fashionable, and chenille goods and scarves. Steinhauser and Massni lost their factory in 1946, and as early as January 1947, plans were drawn up for a new lift, along with a boiler room and showers. Water was still flowing through the millrace in front of the factory. The private ownership of the company ended in 1948 with its nationalisation and incorporation into the national enterprise Knitting Factories (Pletařské závody) Jihlava. There is no more record of the millrace during the 1961 remodelling of the factory into a warehouse – it probably disappeared when Höck's mill was demolished. The factory was then used by the nearby Bytex company, and in approximately 2014, it was converted into flats and offices.

FK
Literature and other sources 

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