**The workforce of Haldengut Brewery in 1889, with director Fritz Schoellhorn sitting in the centre.** Wikimedia / Familienarchiv Schoellhorn Winterthur

The pioneering brewer with an honorary doctorate

Fritz Schoellhorn was a successful businessman, brewer and owner of Haldengut Brewery in Winterthur. He was even awarded an honorary doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) for his technical and scientific achievements.

Dominik Landwehr

Dominik Landwehr is a cultural and media scientist and lives in Winterthur.

By the time Fritz Schoellhorn died on 2 February 1933, he was much more than just a local brewer. In his obituary, which appeared in the NZZ on 5 February that year, he was lauded as a “successful industrialist, a worthy patron of science, a brilliant organiser, a promoter of the Swiss brewing industry, and a fair employer”. Among those who gave speeches at his funeral service at the parish hall in Winterthur were Heinrich Hürlimann, director of the Zurich brewery of the same name and presumably also a rival, as well as a machine operator from the Haldengut factory, and Emil Bosshard (1860–1937), former rector of ETH Zurich. Five years before his death, in 1928, Fritz Schoellhorn had been awarded an honorary doctorate and Emil Bosshard was instrumental in making that happen.

**Fritz Schoellhorn from an obituary, 1933.** Wikimedia / Familienarchiv Schoellhorn Winterthur

Haldengut Brewery is now consigned to history as it was taken over by Heineken in 1994, and the brewing operation in Winterthur was closed down in 2002. Just a few hundred metres from the site of the former brewery lives the former boss’s great-grandson, Andreas Schoellhorn. When the brewery was taken over and later shut down, he made sure that the extensive company archive was preserved. His own library still also contains important evidence of his great-grandfather’s work, providing an insight into the challenges of a growing business and the life of an industrialist and his family at the dawn of the 20th century.

**Painting of an aerial view of Haldengut Brewery, circa 1906.** Wikimedia / Familienarchiv Schoellhorn Winterthur

Fritz Schoellhorn’s father, Johann Georg Schoellhorn (1837–1890), moved to Switzerland from the German town of Bad Waldsee in 1875. He was a supplier of malt, brewing barley and hops, and acquired a stake in the struggling brewery in Winterthur. When he died in 1890, his son Fritz, then aged just 27, had to continue the business, which by then was operating as the Vereinigte Schweizer Brauereien AG comprising the breweries Tivoli in Geneva, Bavaria in St. Gallen and Haldengut in Winterthur. From 1904, Schoellhorn concentrated on Haldengut Brewery in Winterthur, which had existed since 1842, relinquishing the operations in St. Gallen and Geneva.

**On a shopping expedition with the boss: buying hops in the German town of Hallertau. Fritz Schoellhorn is on the right. Photo taken in 1906.** Wikimedia / Familienarchiv Schoellhorn Winterthur

One of a brewer’s biggest problems in the mid-19th century was the fluctuating quality of the product, which was primarily due to a lack of knowledge about yeast and the absence of effective refrigeration technologies. Fritz Schoellhorn harnessed technical developments in engineering and new scientific discoveries, and it was partly for this scientific work that he was awarded an honorary doctorate by ETH Zurich. For the technical equipment of Haldengut Brewery, Fritz Schoellhorn worked closely with the local engineering firm run by the Sulzer brothers, which turned out to be an ideal way of utilising the latest technologies, such as the refrigerator, which was patented in 1876. Prior to this, natural ice was used for refrigeration, which in some cases was transported long distances, for example from Lake Klöntal, 80 kilometres away.

**Cutting ice for breweries on Lake Klöntal, circa 1900.** ETH Library Zurich

Fritz Schoellhorn wanted to learn everything he could about brewing, working meticulously through the already extensive world literature on brewing and attending the brewing academy in the Bavarian town of Weihenstephan. Compiling information from books quickly became too much for him, which is why he founded the Society for Brewing History in Berlin in 1913, which still exists today, and set about publishing his own compendium, which he completed in 1928. The compendium was a multilingual compilation of the state of knowledge about brewing at the time.

**A peek inside the director’s office, 1913.** Wikimedia / Familienarchiv Schoellhorn Winterthur

Beer only became a popular drink with the advent of industrialisation; previously, people in Switzerland would mostly drink cider and wine. In fact, Haldengut Brewery got its name from the Ernst family’s farm, situated in the heart of the vineyards on the southern slope of the Lindberg in Winterthur. In a study on the brewing industry in the canton of Zurich, which was published in 1922, Fritz Schoellhorn documented the history of no fewer than 57 breweries, including six in Winterthur. In the difficult period after the turn of the 20th century and the First World War, Fritz Schoellhorn became the driving force behind the subsequent beer cartel, a consumer protection agreement under which Swiss breweries mutually agreed not to compete with one another. Well over 90% of all beer was sold through public houses at the time, and new ones were not allowed to open as a measure to tackle alcoholism. Marketing was not necessary or permitted; instead there was joint advertising for a standardised Swiss beer. The ‘beer cartel’ existed between 1935 and 1991 and limited competition between breweries, but was not a price cartel per se. Rather, breweries were accused of endangering agriculture and public health with cheap beer.

**Beer was gradually transported using motor vehicles instead of horses. Photo dated 1913.** Wikimedia / Familienarchiv Schoellhorn Winterthur

On Andreas Schoellhorn’s bookshelf, there are two large photo albums containing some 90 photographs his great-grandfather had taken by the only photographer operating in Winterthur before the First World War: a certain Hermann Linck. Like Schoellhorn, Linck’s father had also moved to Switzerland in the late 19th century, where he had set up a photography business and made a living from commissions from the growing industry in Winterthur and Zurich, but also from the need for self-representation among the prosperous bourgeoisie. These photos are a unique testimony as they document each stage in the brewing process with the technology used at the time. Naturally, they show the brewery in the best possible light. Not only do they depict the brewing process, from malt house to mash house to barrel-filling, they also show horse-drawn vehicles, the first motor vehicles, the dining hall, the infirmary, the director’s office, and interestingly, a swimming pool for workers, which used the waste heat from the brewing process.

Hermann Linck also took family photos: on one, we can see Fritz Schoellhorn on horseback in front of the company entrance. Two others show the father with his three sons in uniform, and his wife Lilly Schoellhorn-Sträuli (1868–1933) with their two daughters.

**Lilly Schoellhorn, wife of Fritz, with their daughters Hanna and Elsa.** Winterthurer Bibliotheken

**Director Fritz Schoellhorn on horseback in front of his brewery, 1906.** Wikimedia / Familienarchiv Schoellhorn Winterthur

Behind the sometimes gruff exterior, the businessman and cavalry colonel was a sensitive and open-minded man. He would also publish poems for his friends, such as the small volumes An des Lebensherbstes Schwelle (‘On the cusp of the twilight years’) in 1913: “Life flies by so quickly, there’s barely time to see it pass: You can’t believe how your friends have aged; ‘You too’ says the looking glass.”

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