9 6 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



establish the fact is as defective as it is of the early existence of 

 the Ravensburg mills. 



But it is incontestably established that the Nuremberg Rats- 

 herr Ulman Stromer built a paper-mill in 1390, which was the 

 first demonstrably in Germany. Through his carefully kept 

 notes many particulars of Ulman Stromer's life and business 

 transactions are known to us. They furnish information concern- 

 ing the introduction of paper-making, and further permit a deep 

 insight into the conditions of trade and industry at that time. 

 A happy chance has also permitted the picture of Stromer's paper- 

 mill to come down to posterity, and we contemplate with pleas- 

 ure the rude drawing that represents the high-gabled buildings 

 of this German factory of five hundred years ago. The view 

 (Fig. 1) is reproduced as exactly as possible from Hartmann 

 Schedel's Buch der Chroniken of 1493, which was printed by 



Anton Koburger and illus- 

 trated by Michael Wohl- 

 gemut and Wilhelm Pley- 

 denwurf with about two 

 thousand woodcuts. 



Ulman Stromer, born 

 on the 26th of January, 

 1329, was descended from a 

 distinguished Nuremberg 

 family, whose ancestor, 

 Conrad von Reichenbach, 

 having married into the 

 family of the Waldstro- 

 mers, resided thenceforth 

 in Nuremberg, and called 

 himself Stromeyr, abbre- 

 viated into Stromer. He 

 became a man of extensive 

 business and considerable 

 wealth, and the owner of 

 houses in the city and of a 

 landed estate, and eventu- 

 ally one of the most promi- 

 nent men in Nuremberg. With a brief interruption he sat in 

 the city council, and was for a long time one of the three chief 

 magistrates. In this capacity he often represented the city in im- 

 portant transactions, and served as its plenipotentiary in foreign 

 affairs, as, for example, in the conclusion of the accession of 

 Nuremberg to the Swabian Confederacy. Ulman Stromer often 

 made long journeys in the interest of his business. Like other 

 great dealers of Nuremberg, Augsburg, and the Tyrol, he was 



Fig. 2. — Interior of an Old German Paper- 

 mill. (After Jost Amman, 1568.) 



