Baar, 22.03.2021

People going for a vaccination pass her by twice

The spinning mill on the Lorze in Baar has been history for 28 years. A somewhat weathered stone statue is the last testimony of an industrial epoch that made Baar widely known.

People on their way to be vaccinated who take public transport to the Zug vaccination centre in Baar will alight at the "Paradies" stop. A place name, which, according to the Zug name researcher Beat Dittli, probably goes back to the fact that the so-called ‘Höllhäuser’ (literally ‘hell houses’ – a reference to the nearby Höllgrotten caves) were built very close by. The spinning mill (Spinnerei) on the Lorze once built apartment buildings In the Paradies area. These buildings have now disappeared, although the Höllhäuser built from 1861 still stand along the banks of the Lorze.

The core business of spinning on the Lorze, which employed 500 men and women in its heyday, is remembered only by the stone woman carrying a spindle in her left arm:

If you walk towards the entrance of the vaccination centre, you will pass this female figure, which was unveiled in 1954, twice. The Spinner, as it is also called, was once part of a small fountain. The staff of the spinning mill at the Lorze donated this symbolic female statue in 1954. In that year, the traditional Baar company celebrated its 100th anniversary, and the statue was created by the sculptor Leo Iten from Unteraegeri.

On 3 September 1954, the "Zuger Volksblatt" wrote the following about the stone statue: "The fountain figure, which stands in front of a small pond with a fountain, represents a happy worker with a spindle." The statue created by Iten "symbolises in an excellent way the joy of work". On the same occasion, the spokesman for the workers also stressed that there was always good cooperation between them and the employer.

The spinning mill finally closed in 1993
The spinning mill employees who received their wages from the spinning mill at the Lorze 40 years later are unlikely to have praised their employer in this way." After the Spinnerei on the Lorze expanded strongly on its premises in 1983 and 1987, the end came in 1993. What followed was a long dispute between the former employees and the Personnel Welfare Foundation. According to an article in the "Neue Zuger Zeitung" on 13 January 2013, the dispute ended with a ruling by the Federal Court in 2011.

The stone figure at the old spinning mill in Baar
Photo: Matthias Jurt (Baar, 19 March 2021)

The last operator of the spinning mill on the Lorze, Adrian Gasser, had another problem. The builders hadn’t kept to the utilisation rate and, in 1987, the Baar municipal council ordered the demolition of the old spinning mill on the Lorze in two stages. The owner hesitated for a long time, however. This dismantling process did not take place after the end of the actual spinning mill, and, today, the ‘Spinnerei’ is part of the protected townscape. The six-storey main building is the largest of its kind in Switzerland. People are now being vaccinated in a commercial building upstream of the imposing factory building, however, where the canton of Zug was able to rent a larger area relatively quickly.

A Baar combination that has it all
An ice rink was to be built in this part of the spinning mill in the 1990s. This was planned by a cooperative that was closely associated with the then second division Zug team SC Herti. The planned ice centre in Baar could not be realised, however. This decision may have also given the woman with the spindle a continued existence on the site.

The worker statue is the last witness of a glorious history. She now stands far away from the hell in the Paradis.
By the way: According to the name researcher Beat Dittli, the name Paradis occurs 14 times in the canton of Zug. The combination in Baar, however, is likely to be unique:there, we have Paradis, Höll and Himmelrich (heaven) in close proximity to each other.

In the series "Seen around", we investigate weekly finds with a cultural background and a Zug connection.