A footed egg made in Fenne from the Sarre/Lorraine area (E)
To be continued
By Erhard Maroschek, Tyrol
At the borderline between France and Germany, there have always been glass works, from very reputable ones like Baccarat or St. Louis to smaller ones like Wadgassen or Meisenthal, some of their activity lasting for centuries. In 1855, it was still called „cette belle industrie”, but now many regions do not produce glass anymore.
In 2003, a congress was held by German glass producers, researching the influence of glass industry on the region. Dr. Eva Mendgen, Saarbrücken gave a survey about the range of products and the firms, here as an excerpt:
Many of the towns and villages owe their existence to glass making, which was exported worldwide.
Art and luxury glass: Meisenthal, Saint Louis, Baccarat or Wadgassen
Household glass, uranium glass: Fenne
Glass for watches and spectacles: Goetzenbruck, Vallerysthal-Troisfontaines
Industrial flat glass: St. Ingbert
Peter Nest, Saarbrücken, reported about the glass works in Fenne: The factory in Fenne was founded on 15th April 1812. Proprietors changed, the Raspiller family from the Vosges owned and directed for 80 years. On 7th May 1903 it was sold to Leo Hirsh/Paris and Leo Hammel/Frankfurt, who already owned the glass works Dreibrunnen (Troisfontaines) in the Vosges. On the 6th of May 1909 another fusion between the former Raspiller works and Dreibrunnen formed the „Vereinigte Fenner Glashütte und Glasfabrik Dreibrunnen, Hirsh und Hammel AG“. Later renamed in „Glashüttenwerke Dreibrunnen AG“ it was reformed 1934 to „Saarglas Aktiengesellschaft Fenne-Saar“ and fusioned into „Röchling’sche Eisen- und Stahlwerke GmbH Völklingen“ – a steel concern- and finally closed on 1th September 1939, the employees were offered to work on in the steel factory.
Products were pressed and cut glassware for gastronomy and household, the catalogue listed 300–400 different articles, and the output capacity is reported up to 100.000 pieces a day.
So it is no surprise, that finally a paperweight related object, attributed to the Fenne works, came to light at last. The picture is included by kind permission of Dawo Auction House, Saarbrücken. Thanks to Gerd Mattes in Vienna for asking me: have you ever heard of Fenne?
After reading this, the author, publisher and paperweight collector Bernd-Ingo Friedrich from Eastern Germany sent me the picture of a Fenne paperweight shown above.
(14.11.2011.)
Courtesy of Peter Nest, Saarbrücken
Taken from: Die Glashütten im Warndt. Hrsg. Heimatkundlicher Verein Warndt e.V. Völklingen-Ludweiler 1999.
See also Das „Fenner Ei“ (in German).
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