St. Oswald-Riedlhütte – History
The history of St. Oswald monastery
To begin with, there was nothing here but forest. Nobody is quite sure when and how the first villages came to be created between Rachel and Lusen. During the rough timeframe, in around 1000 AD, only clerical dignitaries were able to read and write and these were based far away in Niederalteich Abbey. The first mention of the town was in the urbarium of the Counts of Windberg, whose castle was close to the town of Vilshofen but is unfortunately little more than a ruin today. Their successors were the Counts of Hals.
As the story goes, in 1319 the Count was enjoying a hunting break in the area when he fell from his horse but was miraculously healed at a spring. As a way of giving thanks for this miracle, he dedicated a chapel to honouring Saint Oswald. The patron saint of this chapel, St. Oswald was an English king and martyr who made his name by spreading Christianity in our country.
Landgrave Johann von Leuchtenberg, Vice-Sovereign of Lower Bavaria, heir and successor to the Counts of Hals near Passau, whose line ended in 1375, built a small church above the Brunnenkapelle chapel in 1389 and founded a monastery on the same site in 1396. On its foundation, the founder handed over the parish of the nearby town of Grafenau, which remained under the control of Sankt Oswald until 1803, 6 villages, a sawmill and the extensive forests extending as far as Rachel and Lusen.
The small monastery was occupied by Pauline monks from Italy – the first to settle in Bavaria. However, the harsh, relatively difficult conditions in the high-altitude forest found little favour with them and they moved out again after 35 years in 1431.
On the request of the Counts, the Augustinian canons took over the abandoned monastery. Sankt Oswald suffered greatly on the back of the Landshut War of Succession in 1504. The county of Hals came under the sovereignty of the dukes and as the Augustinian canons were also unable to cope with the forest and the harsh climate, in 1581 the duke asked the Abbot of Niederalteich to take the monastery of Sankt Oswald under Benedictine care. The monastery then experienced an incredible upturn and became the clerical centre of the Central Bavarian Forest for the following centuries.
Valuable salt was transported over to Bohemia for centuries on the ducal “Goldener Steig” trading route from Vilshofen through Sankt Oswald, as well as on the “Blauen Säule” on Lusen Mountain. 1803 brought deep-rooted governmental and cultural changes following the Napoleonic Wars, which included the forcible dissolution and expropriation of many Bavarian monasteries. The monastery in Sankt Oswald also fell victim to dissolution, and the area lost its long-standing cultural centre in the process. The state took possession of the forests, and the subjects of the monastery became lumberjacks and farmers.
Our ancestors had to work incredibly hard to wrestle fields and meadows from the forest. In return, the forest provided them with fuel, quartz and potash for producing glass.
The history of the Glasfabrik Riedlhütte
With the construction of the trade route (Goldener Steig) in 1365 – 1366 under Karl IV. from Bergreichenstein via Innergefild, Pürstling, Blaue Säule, Waldhäuser, Draxlschlag and Grafenau, higher-altitude pristine woodland between Rachel and Lusen also became accessible for the first time.
As early as 1417, the neighbouring glassworks in Schönau below Lusen is mentioned in the land register of Etzel von Ortenburg. “Haderpeck” is listed as the owner of the glassworks. This leads us to believe that the Glasfabrik Riedlhütte was also founded in 1420 as the “Hütte am Reichenberg”.
Its first mention in written documents was in 1450 when Peter Zmizlik from Schilchenstein in Bohemia raided and looted the glassworks in a robbery.
Another documented reference as the “Glashütte am Reichenberg” exists in the Bärnstein work register from 1488, with the glassworks owners listed as Jörg Glaser and Ruedel Glaser.
In 1503, on Ägiditag, the “Hütte am Reichenberg” entered hereditary lease under Duke George the “Rich” in Landshut. In official documents reference is made to the fact that the old original letter of inheritance was burned, which means that the glassworks estate must have existed in this size considerably earlier.
The estate extended from Rachel to Plattenhausen, and then over to the Schreyerbach and across to the Große Ohe, encompassing an area of forest approx. 3,200 hectares in size.
In 1527, the first glassworks owner appeared with the name Georg or Jörg Riedl, who then named the glassworks “Riedlhütte”.
The Riedl family owned the Glasfabrik Riedlhütte for some 90 years.
In the years that followed, several different owners took the reins. During the 30 Years War, the estate was frequently looted and almost completely fell into ruin.
In 1652, the Riedlhütte glassworks was sold to the master glassmaker Hans Wilhelm Poschinger from Frauenau.
Poschinger had the Guglöd glassworks closed down and relaunched operations at the glassworks in Riedlhütte. His son Wilhelm Poschinger only operated the glassworks until 1684 and then sold them to Peter Durstweckhl from Zwiesel.
In 1695, the Riedlhütte glassworks were sold to Zacharias Hilz, master glassmaker in Schönau. The Riedlhütte therefore fell into the ownership of one of the most well-known and largest glass-making families in the Bavarian Forest. The Hilz family owned the glassworks estate until its sale to the Bavarian State in 1832, some 137 years in total.
As a forest-based glassworks, the site was self-sufficient. In the higher level areas of the estate, the old and rotten trees were turned into ash and the potash required for melting glass was then extracted from the tree ash.
Quartz, as the main raw material required for glassmaking, was collected in the rivers as pebbles and later mined in a quartz quarry in Guglöd. Only the lime and harbour clay had to be obtained from the Danube plain and via the Goldener Steig from Bohemia.
The glassworks were operated at three different locations in Riedlhütte over the centuries, as well as two in Guglöd and in Neuriedlhütte.
The production mainly focused on window and mirror glass, glass beads and small bottles.
The last glassworks owner from the Hilz family, Anton Hilz, sold the estate to the State of Bavaria in 1832.
The Roscher family, glass wholesalers from Regensburg, acquired the Riedlhütte glassworks from the State of Bavaria in 1834 with an agreement to acquire wood. Creating ash through wood burning was no longer permitted in the now state forest.
Roscher operated the glassworks in Riedlhütte at two sites and produced window and mirror glass here. In 1890, Roscher set up a new glassworks at the current location in line with the latest technology at the time.
Due to its isolated position, the Roscher family was unable to compete effectively with the competition. The glassworks was shut down and closed in 1905.
In 1908, the Glasfabrik Riedlhütte was taken over by Firma Nachtmann – owned by the Frank family from Neustadt an der Waldnaab. Initially, crystal glass was produced here for metalware manufacturers as well as unpolished glass for the glass-cutting works in Neustadt / Waldnaab and Riedlhütte. The glass lamp elements for the royal railways in Bavaria, Württemberg and Saxony were also produced in Riedlhütte.
In 1924/25, lead glass production was also launched in Riedlhütte. Business development was excellent during this period. Glassmakers and glass cutters were acquired from a range of locations: the Bavarian Forest, the Upper Palatinate, Silesia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria.
The main production consisted of lead crystal goblets, cameo glass articles, vases and bowls and camo rummers.
In 1930, the legendary “Nachtmann cameo rummer” with “grape” decoration was created and produced in eight different colours.
During the Second World War, luxury glass production had to be abandoned. The scaled-back operations were switched to the production of tank optical components, which were considered vital to the war effort.
After 1945, the Glasfabrik Riedlhütte then enjoyed a consistent upward trend. The mixed production of gift articles as well as crystal glass goblets was scaled back in 1960, with only lead crystal service glasses and flashed rummers produced from this point on.
The business was constantly modernised during this time, with the glass furnaces converted from wood and coal power to an oil-fuelled system in 1964.
From 1970, grid gas was used to fuel glass production, before the most environmentally-friendly electric glass melting system was introduced in 1977. From this point on, the factory’s lead crystal goblets were produced in part using machines.
At this point in time, the Glasfabrik Riedlhütte was one of the largest lead glass goblet producers in Europe. Over 60% of the goods were exported.
From 1964 onwards, grinding machines were also used for grinding and the environmentally-harmful acid polishing practice using hydrofluoric and sulphuric acid was replaced by the most modern process available.
The Glasfabrik Riedlhütte ran an outstanding training programme across all departments in the following decades, helping the number of employees to exceed 800 by the end of the 1980s.
The small glassmaking village of Riedlhütte developed into a centre of industry.
In December 2004, the almost 100-year Nachtmann/Frank era in Riedlhütte drew to a close. The Nachtmann Group, and with it the Glasfabrik Riedlhütte, was acquired by Riedel – Glas – Kufstein. After five years, on 23 December 2009, the new owner Georg Riedel from Kufstein closed the Riedlhütte site forever. This drew a line under almost 580 years of glassmaking tradition – the “glass heart” of Riedlhütte finally stopped beating. Today a memorial cross made of glass located on the Nachtmann site still pays tribute to the local glass industry.
The centuries of glassmaking tradition now live on in the area’s two small glassworks “Glasscherben Köck” and “Josephshütte”.
Through the first municipal edict in 1808, the local municipalities were formed from the monastery villages, and on the back of the second municipal edict of 1818, the current municipality of Sankt Oswald was formed. By resolution of 5 August 1957, the day of the patron saint of the church and the municipality, the State Ministry of the Interior awarded the municipality a coat of arms which shows “a silver glass cup floating above and between two crossed silver axes divided by blue and gold, and at the bottom a black raven sitting on three green mountains with a silver ring in its beak”. Thanks to the booming business at the glassworks, the former agricultural community has developed into an industrial and tourist hub over time, triggering the Bavarian Ministry for the Interior to give the municipality the dual name “Sankt Oswald-Riedlhütte” on 01.03.1979.
Sources: Municipal archive; Christa and Willi Steger “Riedlhütte im Wandel der Zeit”, published by Ohetaler Verlag, Riedlhütte