Station: [3] Trade: Shoemaker’s Workshop

M: Old-established Dotzheim locals may still remember the shoemaker Karl Steinbach. For decades, he practiced his trade in a workshop at the rear of a tenement in Rheintalstrasse. From leather processing machinery via the rack of shoes with the shoemaker’s lasts, all the way to the twine and shoelaces – today, his workshop is one of our museum’s genuine highlights.

F: Karl Steinbach and his workshop are just one example of the craft businesses that were once a feature of Dotzheim’s streets.

The 1913 trades statistics list bakers, butchers, barbers, roofers, bricklayers, house painters, watch-makers, laundries, master carpenters and even a printing house, a photographer and two midwives … and of course countless retail businesses, like coal dealers, food stores and dairies, dry goods and stationery stores. The stats include trades that have long since vanished, for example “cooper” and “wainwright”.

M: Incidentally, Dotzheim’s oldest bakery was right across from what is now the museum – inside the inn “Zum Engel”. Generations of Dotzheim folk had their break baked there. In the mid-18th century, one Heinrich Anton Leichtweiß took over the communal bakery. He came from the Rheinhessen region and married into a local family. If you’d like to hear more about his story, you can find out at our next stop, the “Leichtweiß Corner”. It’s just beyond the glass cases for our special exhibits, on the left-hand side.