Excursion into the 50ties to 70ties

Soon, people will be talking of the German economic miracle

The women from the then Herrieden cigar factory

The men from Otto Schüller's furniture factory

Let's go to „Peters-Kerwa” to Lammelbach

The „Peters-Kerwa” iin Lammelbach used to be one of the most popular Kirchweih festivity places around Herrieden. The Birkel inn was a gathering point for young and old. Herrieden business people used to pay one round after the other, for customer binding, of course. Less respectfully, the process was viewed out in the villages: it was only called „client drinking orgies”. Several sturdy men able to hold their drink, walking on their own wobbly legs. would leave the „Peterskerwa” late at night without having paid even one Mark on their own.

In 1950, the people of Lammelbach then set their sights higher. „We need to have a tent” is what the hard-core guests decided in unison. In peak of summer temperatures, the tent was put up, water loss in the body quickly absorbed by drinking some beer. Several barrels are supposed to have been emptied while the tent was put up. For the Peterskerwa, there was also a real platter of freshly butchered meat. The German fried sausages were something people used to look forward to weeks in advance. And a pig was butchered and processed very differently to today. Cutlets, schnitzel? Hardly anyone had heard of it back then.

When, finally, the guests, especially the esteemed business people, had barely sat down on Sunday inside the tent it began raining cats and dogs. And since those who had erected the tent had never even considered that something could rain in on their „Peterskerwa”, they had totally forgotten to draw a drainage ditch surrounding the tent. The deluge that descended on Lammelbach on that summer's day in 1950 ran off everyone, right down to the last guest. Even the experienced „client drinking orgy” participants did not feel like it anymore, they only drank one more beer, paid it themselves and set out for home.

Bonn used to have its Adenauer, Herrieden its Baumgärtner...

...and the route to the Martin's hill could still be comfortably reached by shortcut across the fields. Even before Herrieden builds a new school and before its citizens erect a new residential development for themselves, the much lauded „manual and tension services” are asked for, applied to the canals and water pipes in the inner city – and these, among many other things, had been organized by one man: Fritz Baumgärtner.

Please take a seat again at the Hirschen Cinema

Come on in, the Hirschen cinema awaits. Let's see what's on the program today. We are still back in the 50ties. For 10 pfennigs, we have bought a film-journal promising the „latest news from the world of film”.Today, Gloria film presents the flick „Franziska” with Ruth Leuwerik and Carlos Thompson. In the film-journal, we can read about it: „Franziska was outraged about his cheek. The daughter of Professor Thiemann is not to be chatted up in the middle of the street by some strange man.” We are not outraged but this movie is, perhaps, not for us after all. To be on the safe side, we decide on the „Die schöne Müllerin (the pretty female miller)”, she smiles so seductively.

Do you still recall that time when you could really melt away with soppy movies at the cinema, before there was television?

Soon, the 1. German Broadcast Association is going to open up the gates for the „home cinema”.People will grab a beer, pour a glass of wine and provide something to snack on. The time of the pretzel sticks will arise. Yet, before the television is turned on, the door bell rings. It's the neighbors, they don't have a television of their own yet and they want to watch, too. „Melissa” for instance. Or one of the Durbridge thrillers like „Death on your heels”. Nobody is out in the streets, the entire nation seems to be united in front of the television screens and all of them are watching the same movie. These times have been gone now for ages, almost as long as the Hirschen cinema.

With the „Bulldog” to the blessing of the tractors and with the „Taunus” on a Sunday trip out

Blessing of the tractors at the market square

A proud car owner.
By the number plate you can see that Herrieden, back then, used to belong to the county Feuchtwangen, which then became part of the new Ansbach county with the district reform.

Images testify to the advance of farming

It has not been all that long when a cow was not only there for giving milk. On many farms, it also filled in for the horses. But these times have quickly changed. Plus, milking by hand is not longer practiced in the stables. Cows, since long, have become used to the milking machine.

How swiftly the new machines become outdated. There, the first binder mowers had sprung up and the farmers had often put their funds together to purchase one jointly. No sooner had the new device arrived, which brought so much advance in its wake, had been used a few years than the men were already looking for a new technology. Farmers from Neunstetten and Niederdombach came to Triesdorf. The new harvester-thresher had already been bought. Now, one still gets some instruction how to use it. The binder mowers remain in the barn.

When the governor came to visit from Munich

...when Alfons Goppel came to Herrieden to see what is going on, to find out about the progress, this was also the time when the drawing board hosted new plans for a residential development at the site of which, soon, the first excavators were already present. And, one or two years later, the first houses. Finally the entire Bayernring, the Frankenstraße and the Hohenloher Straße. The people of Herrieden call it the „New Development”. At that time, busy construction is going on at the other end of Herrieden also. Is that, then, the „Newer Development” or the former „Old Development”?

The Hohenberg Development: Construction started in 1966.

Our „Bockerla” says a soft good-bye at the end (former railway line Ansbach-Herrieden-Bechhofen

Toward the end of our imaginary excursion, we want to get on the „Bockerla” at Herrieden and travel back on it in style. We call the station and have to hear: „There is no people traffic here anymore at all”. Indeed, now we remember, in the end, only freight had been transported on the railway tracks between Bechhofen and Ansbach. People traffic had since long ended. Bygone the times when commuters and students took the rail bus each morning to Ansbach. Among those who did not travel along were sufficient numbers that used the „Bockerla” anyway. Some farmer used to know precisely when he had to get up, when he had to go to the stable, to the field and home for lunch. Because, at 6, the „Bockerla” left for Ansbach and hooted with delight, and back again at 9. Departure at 12 again, back again at 2.

At the end

We have now come to the end of our journey and, hence, back to the present. Maybe one or the other of you has taken a piece of the past along to preserve it in memory. In any event, it has been nice to take out old images and memories once more to make sure they do not get lost. Maybe there are some of our readers who simply feel like coming to visit our hometown. Suggestions for this, and information concerning the sights, can be found on these web pages.
Thank you very much for your interest.