Untitled Document

14th CENTURY

In the course of the rapid expansion of trade in the late Middle Ages, more and more merchants dealt in the commodity called ‘paper’ that was growing in importance for public and intellectual life. The Nuremberg councillor Ulmann Stromer (Stromeir) mulled over the advantages of making his own paper and, with the help of skilled workers from Italy, transformed the ‘Gleismühle’ by the gates of his home town into a paper mill. The dates noted in his diary, 24 June 1390 (start of work on the waterwheel) and 7 and 11 August 1390 (oaths sworn by his Nuremberg foremen), are the first assured records of papermaking on German soil.

The wording of Stromer's diary entries suggest that he regarded papermaking as a largely unknown and secret art, that he had to prevail against the clan of immigrant Italians, and that he had to overcome many technical difficulties. Stromer’s mill - illustrated in the world chronicle of Hartmann Schedel in 1493 - was initially designed with two waterwheels, 18 stamping hammers (i.e. six holes) and 12 workers using one or two vats.