| The building next to this seemed like a house or office building. I could have gotten in through a broken window, but left it alone for now. |
 The office building on the right and that's the big hall on the left. |
|
Walking back towards the backside of the factory and following the stream. On the other side of the stream were more sheds, all locked. I found an open door into the rooms with new brickwork I had seen before
through a gap in the wall. It is a practice space for a masonry school.
A lot of it is quite nice. There was also a |
 That man is not wearing much. :-) |
 Lehrbauhof = Learning construction yard. |
| Time to go home. Leaving the grounds through the gap in the fence was
scarier than entering. I could not see the road so I did not know if there
was any silent traffic like cyclists or pedestrians. I waited till I at least didn't hear any cars approaching, climbed through the fence and walked away without notice. |
 Front gate. The sign says "Betreten des Grundstücks verboten. Eltern haften für ihre Kinder!" (No trespassing the grounds. Parents are responsible for their kids!) |
 The outside of the factory, the round corner. |
| As I finished by taking some pictures of the outside of the building a
police car passed by, but they were not interested.
Not by far have I seen everything, though I have been walking around
there for about four hours. # |
|
Update December 2006: I received an interesting e-mail from Johannes Hildebrandt, a grandson of the former director of the plant, Dr. Willy van Delden: As you already conjectured, this plant has been THE employer in Ahaus for many years, and it was my grandfather, who managed the reconstruction of the almost totally destroyed plant after the second world war and thus "reanimated" the town Ahaus. He became honorary citizen of Ahaus in 1958, and you can still see the house where he and his family lived (it´s Kreuzstraße 2) or walk through the Van-Delden-Straße towards the former textile plant (that´s the way my grandfather used to take every day). My personal memories of the plant are mainly resulting from my childhood, when my grandfather showed me round, and I remember the noise of the looms and the characteristic smell of jute everywhere. It was interesting (and also sad) for me to see what happened to this part of the history of Ahaus. As I heard the textile plant has been completely demolished in the meantime. |
