The Thalsaline – Halle and salt around 1700

From the Middle Ages until the early modern period, Halle was a respected salt city. The production and sale of salt helped it to prosper, because the »white gold« was indispensable for seasoning food or preserving perishable foodstuffs. As a sought-after commodity, salt not only shaped the economy, society and identity of the city, but also the immediate living environment of its people.

For centuries, Halle extracted its salt from the old Thalsaline. This is where the brine wells and boiling huts were located, where salt workers produced granular table salt from liquid brine and sold it to traders. The salt works were run by the so-called »Pfänner«, who earned a good and reliable income. They traditionally had great influence on the fate of the city.

In 1680, the archdiocese of Magdeburg, to which Halle belonged, fell to the electorate of Brandenburg. The electors and later kings of Prussia as the new sovereigns were very interested in the salt from Halle. They soon established their own salt production with different heating material, improved technology and streamlined distribution – first in a few boiling huts on the Thalsaline, and from 1721 in the newly built Royal Salt Works outside the city gates. As a result, the familiar world of Halle’s Pfänner, salt workers and dwell men was increasingly shaken.

Discover the Thalsaline around 1700 with our online exhibition in the four chapters »Tradition & Change«, »Man & Work«, »Production & Technology« und »Trade & Transport«, explore virtual models of historical salt boiling huts from the Chamber of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities of the Francke Foundations and follow the transformation of a pre-modern working world.

From today's perspective, the Thalsaline appears to be a confusing place. But even for the people back then it was not always easy to see through the special conditions there. These had developed in the Middle Ages and had hardly changed until the end of the 17th century. The changes around 1700, however, confronted the traditional working world of the Halle salt works with new, more efficient forms of economic activity and finally heralded the slow end of the old Thalsaline. The time of the »modern« state-owned salt companies had dawned.

Since the Middle Ages, salt was extracted from an enclosed area within the city walls of Halle, called the »Thal« or »the Halle«. Here, to the west of the market square, were four brine wells: Deutscher Brunnen, Gutjahr, Meteritz and Hackeborn. All the wells – up to 35 metres deep – carried brine of varying quantity and quality. Around them, about 110 boiling houses crowded into a very small space. These were called »Kothen« in Low German, which means small simple huts. In these Huts, salt workers and their servants boiled the brine to produce table salt.

As city and regional rulers, the archbishops of Magdeburg basically owned the rights to the Thalsaline. They gave the brine in varying proportions mostly as fiefs to wealthy citizens of Halle, who thus became owners of a certain amount of brine. In 1479, as a result of intense inner-city conflicts, the archbishop confiscated a quarter of all Thal estates – the »Quartsole« and some boiling huts – for his own purposes. These sovereign rights were also claimed by the Hohenzollerns as new sovereigns in 1680.

The ceremonial »Lehntafelhalten« at the end of the year served to officially confirm new brine owners. In the presence of representatives of the court, the town and the salt works, all the ownerships were carved into wax tablets with a stylus. Each well had three of these elaborately bound wooden tablets with the same content: one each for the Thal court, the sovereign and the town council.

Brine owners were not allowed to have their brine boiled into salt without further ado. Only Pfänner – many of them successful merchants – were entitled to do so. To do so, they had to be married townspeople with their own house and household in Halle, own a boiling hut and have an amount of brine. That is why most Pfänner were also owners of brine amounts. Those who did not have a boiling hut or brine amounts could lease both from other owners for a fee.

As independent entrepreneurs, the Pfänner organised themselves into the Pfännerschaft, an early form of cooperative with its own assets, coat of arms and seal, in order to run the saltworks collectively for the benefit of all. They were responsible for the maintenance of the saltworks and issued instructions to their workers. As many Pfänner were usually represented on the city council, they formed a weighty factor in Halle's city affairs.

The solemn »occupation of the Thal estates« determined each year anew which persons belonged to the Pfännerschaft. Those who wanted to be Pfänner and earn an income from the sale of salt, went to the town hall shortly before the end of the year. There he had to explain to a commission of the sovereign and representatives of the town and the salt works in which boiling hut he wanted to let boil. Only then was he granted the boiling right.

When the town changed, there was also movement in the Pfännerschaft. This is particularly evident in the Brandenburg-Prussian period after 1680. Around 1700, most Pfänner still came from a Pfänner family or had married into one, but there were more and more newcomers: professors from the Friedrich University founded in 1694, for example, but above all Prussian civil servants.

The physician and university professor Friedrich Hoffmann, for example, worked with salt out of medical interest and published on the subject. As a Pfänner, he was keen on innovation and experimentation and was one of the first members of the Pfännerschaft to convert their boiling huts to run on hard coal.

The exclusive position of the Pfännerschaft was also evident in the Thal House, first mentioned in 1464, with its magnificent rooms. Not only did the Thal Court meet here, but it also provided a dignified ambience for meetings and festivities of the Pfänner. The Thal House was demolished in 1882, but the interior furnishings of the courtroom and banqueting hall were saved. Today, the historic rooms can be seen in the Talamt of the Moritzburg Halle, a free replica of the former Thal House built in 1904.

The salt count represented the rights of the sovereign to the saltworks. As the highest judge, he presided over the Thal court, which met several times a year to hear violations of the Thal Law: from negligent handling of fire to embezzlement of brine to homicide. He was assisted by several lay assessors. In addition, the salt count appeared at traditional ceremonies and public events as a representative of the saltworks and the Pfännerschaft. He was thus an important mediator between the peasants and the authorities. Among the most famous salt counts in Halle were Friedrich Hondorff (1628–1694) and Johann Christoph von Dreyhaupt (1699–1768).

Three senior well masters stood by the salt count as administrators. They supervised the brine wells and the entire salt production and were elected annually by the city council. Subordinate to them were the sub well masters, who supervised the correct distribution of the brine to the boiling huts as well as necessary construction measures and mediated in disputes. In addition, four Thal supervisors were responsible for the maintenance of the wells and well houses as well as the paths and buildings in the Thal.

With the death of its last administrator, August of Saxe-Weissenfels (1614–1680), the Archdiocese of Magdeburg – to which Halle also belonged – became a secular duchy in the dominion of the Electorate of Brandenburg in 1680. Now the Brandenburg electors and later Prussian kings from the House of Hohenzollern were the ruling sovereigns.

Until 1680 there were no salt works on Brandenburg soil. That is why the electors had to import their salt at great expense, mainly evaporated salt from Lüneburg, but also sea salt from the Atlantic coast. Now, however, this time seemed to be over at last. For Magdeburg's newly acquired territory had no fewer than five productive salt works, including the salt works in Halle. Above all, its salt was to supply the provinces of Electorate Brandenburg in the future, end the long dependence on Lüneburg and fill the state coffers.

Brandenburg's subjects, however, were dissatisfied with the salt produced by the Pfännerschaft of Halle. It seemed too coarse and not as brilliantly white as the Lüneburg salt, which was boiled in lead pans. The Pfänners also declined the offer to lease the sovereign shares in the Thalsaline and to boil salt for Brandenburg in the name of the Elector.

In order to be able to compete with the quality of Lüneburg salt, the »Great Elector« Friedrich Wilhelm decided to set up his own salt production. The proposal for this came from the Brandenburg finance official Christian Friedrich von Kraut, the son of a Pfänner. Kraut was appointed salt director and managed the electoral boiling plant. From then on, there were two salt companies directly next to each other on the Thalsaline: the old Pfänner's salt works and the new state salt works with their own boiling huts, separate administration and sworn salt workers.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Halle's importance as a salt town dwindled and with it the value of the old salt works. This was not only for economic reasons. For the Pfänners were increasingly distancing themselves from their salt works, which offered a small, reliable income, but hardly any prestige. More social prestige was promised by the civil service, with or without a title of nobility.

The waning interest of the Pfänners is one of the reasons why the Thalsaline gradually lost touch around 1700. New technologies, production methods and trading opportunities were now being introduced by the competition – the new state-owned salt works of Prussia and Electoral Saxony. The Pfännerschaft reacted to this too late.

Conveying, boiling, packing – the path from brine to salt required several tightly organised work steps in which various professional groups were involved day and night. In addition, there were auxiliary workers and craftsmen such as carpenters, pan smiths and basket weavers who supplied the saltworks with tools. Thus the salt trade provided a livelihood for many Hallensians. Yet it was always a back-breaking job, usually dirty and sometimes dangerous. Technical innovations after 1700 brought relief, but increasingly cost jobs.

The Thalsaline was slow to recover from the consequences of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648). As late as 1680 it was still producing just half as much salt as before the war. When the plague finally ravaged Halle for the last time around 1682, salt workers were among its victims. The pans remained cold for most of the year, and at last more than 20 boiling huts were without salt workers and servants. Three years later, however, things were looking up again.

The well workers (»Bornknechte«) – divided into »Haspeler«, »Radtreter«, »Störtzer«, »Zäpffer« and »Träger« – were at the beginning of salt production. Haspeler and Radtreter laboriously pulled the brine out of the wells by means of muscle-powered hoists, which was immediately collected by the Störtzer and Zäpffer in large troughs and filled into tubs for transport to the boiling huts.

The hardest and most dangerous work of all the well workers was done by the brine carriers. Two of them carried the brine in heavy barrows over slippery wooden walkways from the wells to the salt huts. There they poured the brine into barrels and walked back to the well, where the next tub was already waiting for them.

As a wage, the well workers received a »Gerente« for life, i.e. a certain amount of brine, which was also boiled. From the proceeds they could not only earn their living, but also pay servants to do the work for them in case of old age or illness. By the beginning of the 16th century at the latest, the well workers were organised into their own brotherhood.

The most technically experienced workers in the salt works were the salt boilers, who were also known as »Salzwirker«. They were employed for a limited period of time by their Pfänner, which was extended if necessary. They performed their strenuous work inside the boiling huts at the pans, surrounded by heat, brine fumes and acrid smoke. They were often assisted by their wives and children, but also by hired servants.

The Pfänners paid their boiling masters a fixed weekly wage even in the case of illness or when there was no boiling and the pans remained cold. Since the boiling masters were also responsible for selling the salt, they were allowed to demand a precisely defined tip from the trader – the »salt guest« – for each piece of salt. From this income, the master paid not only his assistants, but also tools, boiling ingredients and minor repairs. He kept the rest for himself.

The salt workers – together with the loading workers – formed the »Salzwirkerbrüderschaft im Thale zu Halle«, which still exists today. In the 18th century, the name »Halloren« became established for their members. The Halloren developed their own traditions and customs, such as Whitsun beer, flag-waving and fishermen’s jousting, which are still practised today.

The salt boilers or Halloren enjoyed some special rights that were guaranteed to them in the Thal orders. These included fishing and birdcatching, which ensured their livelihood on days without salt production, and the manufacturing of smoked sausage and pickled eggs. From the 17th century onwards, they were also employed as corpse bearers for a fee.

In addition to these rights, the salt boilers also had duties: In the event of war, for example, they had to defend a part of the city wall. During floods, they had to seal the brine wells and bring the salt to safety. After a flood disaster, it was part of their job to drain the riverbed. And if a fire broke out in the salt works or the town, the workers had to interrupt their work and help extinguish the fire with other salt workers at the site of the disaster. The brine proved to be an ideal means of doing this.

When the salt was dry and ready for sale, carrier (Träger) carried it in wicker baskets from the boiling hut to the loading place, where the carters were already waiting. They wore a bag-like bonnet to protect their heads. Before the carrier handed the salt over to the packaging staff (Läder and Stöpper), they used a brushwood broom to remove the soot particles that had settled on it during the drying process in the boiling hut.

The loaders and their servants loaded the carts and wagons of the salt guests, saving as much space as possible. To do this, the solid pieces of salt were broken into smaller chunks with the help of a hoe and then piled up. Large, four-wheeled carts for long transports held about 60 whole pieces of salt, and the number of horses harnessed varied depending on the quantity loaded.

The Stöppers were responsible for securing the load of salt for transport. To ensure that no salt was lost on the way, the carts and wagons were lined with canvas and sealed with straw. To protect the cargo from the wind and rain, the Stöppers stretched a large tarpaulin over it, which they supported with willow rods and wrapped with rope.

Like the salt workers, the carriers and the packaging staff belonged to the salt workers' fraternity and also received a monetary wage. Similar to the well workers, widows, surviving dependents and the sick were supported from a community fund.

Among the indispensable sidelines of the Thalsaline were the pan smiths, who were paid by the Pfänners. They made the large boiling pans from hammered sheet iron using rivets. A pan lasted about 20 full boiling weeks, after which a new one was needed. A lower quality »cross pan« could still be made from two used pans.

The freshly boiled salt was filled into special wicker baskets in which it could dry and be stored until it was sold. The baskets could be used several times, but had to be cleaned beforehand by basket washers in the Saale river. If new ones were needed, the Pfänner commissioned and paid a basket maker who had to make the baskets exactly to measure.

The wooden salt huts were constantly exposed to smoke, soot and brine vapours and therefore quickly became dilapidated. They had to be regularly repaired by carpenters or, in the worst case, torn down and completely rebuilt. An official Thal carpenter was appointed and sworn to maintain the well houses and other communal buildings.

Technical innovations and changes in work processes around and after 1700 permanently changed everyday life at the Thalsaline. They created the basis for early industrial salt production. This development was driven primarily by Prussian saltworks officials.

Modifications to the boiling houses and conveyor systems made the work easier and increased the salt yield, but also meant that fewer and fewer workers were needed. In particular, brine extraction with muscle power was gradually taken over by machines, and the transport of brine via pipes made brine carriers redundant.

Everyone's work at the Thalsaline depended on the amount of salt produced and the technology used. Political interventions, sales reductions and rationalisation always endangered jobs. Changes in the customary order and privileges were therefore mostly rejected by the salt workers.

The early modern period was not an era of groundbreaking technical innovations. Until the 18th century, the great inventions of the Middle Ages were instead developed further in order to use them more effectively. The spectrum of available energy sources was limited: Wood remained indispensable as a building material and the most important fuel, and machines could only be moved by the power of man and animal, water or wind. The salt works technology in Halle had also hardly changed over the centuries, and the salt was still extracted as it always had been. But with the introduction of hard coal in the state-owned boiling huts around 1700, a new era dawned.

Towards the end of the 17th century, the Thalsaline still extracted its salt almost as in the Middle Ages. The earliest illustrated description of it comes from Georg Agricola's (1494-1555) famous mining manual De re metallica. The precise explanations and woodcuts suggest that the Saxon physician and polymath probably knew Halle's saltworks from his own experience.

More than 100 years later, the Halle salt count Friedrich Hondorff (1628-1694) wrote the first standard work on salt production in Halle: Das Saltz=Werck zu Halle in Sachsen befindlich. In it, he describes in detail the ownership structure, legal system and work processes at the Thalsaline. Today, Hondorff's work gives us valuable insights into local boiling technology and salt production in the 17th century.

The salt was produced in the salt huts. These were simple half-timbered houses made of fir or spruce wood, straw and clay. Each hut had a large dug-in barrel, half of which stood in the alley and half in the house. So the brine could be poured in from the outside and taken out from the inside.

The heart of each hut was the boiling room. Here stood the boiling hearth, above which hung a pan made of sheet iron on a wooden frame. At the pan, the salt worker and his servants performed the strenuous, sweat-inducing work of boiling salt.

When the salt was ready, it had to dry for some time before being sold. To do this, it was carried to the salt place, a raised area at the back of the hut. There were also storage areas for straw and firewood.

The model of a large salt boiling hut from around 1700 is one of the few historical testimonies that can still give us a vivid impression of the old boiling huts on the Thalsaline. It was probably made as a teaching model for visual instrution in the orphanage schools. It was used to illustrate the typical construction of the salt huts and the traditional salt boiling process. The model is mentioned for the first time in the catalogue of the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities, which was newly established in 1741 and where it is still exhibited today.

Is the detailed model possibly a replica of a very specific salt boiling hut? The house sign painted on the facade – a duck – at least suggests so, because a boiling hut called »Duckbird« actually existed. It is marked on the plan of the Thalsaline from 1746, in the middle of today's Hallmarkt. Even its ground plan and the location of the brine barrel match the model.

Like iron smelting and glass production, salt boiling also consumed vast quantities of firewood, which seemed to be becoming increasingly scarce. Therefore, resourceful minds were already trying to reduce consumption at the end of the 16th century by means of new boiling techniques.

In Halle, too, tinkerers and »project makers« experimented with wood-saving boiling cookers and alternative fuels, which was expensive but led nowhere. For fear of financial losses, many Pfänners later distrusted any promises of innovation and preferred to stick to the tried and tested method.

The salt works in Saulnot near Mömpelgard in Württemberg (today Montbéliard, France) was one of the pioneers in the field of salt boiling technology. As early as 1593, Heinrich Schickhardt (1558–1635), a master builder at the court, had developed boiling furnaces of a high technical standard, with air ducts and flues for operation with hard coal. It was not until 100 years later that this technology also found its way into Halle.

The Brandenburg Elector wanted to have high-quality salt produced in his boiling huts on a large scale, but as cheaply as possible. The cheap fuel was to be hard coal from his own mines in Wettin and Löbejün northwest of Halle, which could also be transported upstream on the Saale river to Halle. But the coal burned badly in the conventional boiling cookers and the smoke made the salt black and bitter. So the boiling technology had to be renewed from the ground up.

After many attempts, the boiling master Johann Bötticher (1639–1713) finally achieved a breakthrough in 1693. His solution was similar to Schickhardt's construction in the Saulnot salt works: a cooker with an iron coal grate, ash fall and controlled air supply, a brick chimney for the flue gases and a fume outlet above the pan. The latter led the boiling steam out into the open via a roof outlet. Bötticher's real invention, however, was the heat pipes on the drying floor of the boiling hut, heated by the waste heat from the boiling fire. This way the salt dried faster than ever.

With the new method, Bötticher succeeded in boiling impeccable salt that could rival that from Lüneburg: white, grainy and tasty. As a reward, he was appointed chief boiling master of the royal salt production. By 1701, all of the sovereign's boiling huts had been modernised in Bötticher's style. Not so with the Pfänners. Only a few were open to the new process and modernised their technology. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that all the Pfännerschaft's boiling huts were heated with hard coal.

The small teaching model of a salt hut from the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities of the Francke Foundations features all of Bötticher's innovations in a simple form. It thus corresponds to the current state of boiling technology of the time and represents the important experimental phase of Prussian salt production. It was made by the Halle pastor, educator and inventor Christoph Semler (1669–1740). In 1708 he opened a Mathematical and Mechanical School in Halle for prospective apprentices of the craft – the first »Realschule«, a school for visual instruction, in Germany. There, a teacher taught technical correlations primarily using models that Semler made especially for this purpose.

The electoral boiling huts on the Thalsaline stand at the beginning of the Prussian salt industry around 1700. The technology developed there created the basis for the state-owned salt works in Halle and Schönebeck. For some time, the local royal saltworks were the largest salt producers in Prussia, until they were overtaken by the Schönebeck saltworks in the 1730s.

The small salt-boiling encyclopaedia Verzeichnis Und Erklärung Der vornehmsten Wörter, Werckzeuge Gebäude und anderer Sachen So bey dem Saltz-Sieden Gebrauchet werden reflects the technical state of development of German salt works in the early 18th century. It is unclear who was behind the author named Janderson – a »lover of the salt works«. Possibly he was a Prussian saltworks official. Since he repeatedly mentions Halle, he must have been familiar with the conditions there.

Around 1700, the usual salt trade changed: new, more efficient salt works were built, traditional sales markets disappeared and other transport routes became established. The expansion of rivers made the supra-regional transport of goods cheaper and safer. With the establishment and expansion of state salt production in the state-owned boiling huts on the Thalsaline, coal mining and shipping on the Saale also gained momentum. However, the Pfännerschaft, which was now able to sell less and less of its expensively produced salt, remained excluded from this upswing.

For a long time, mainly wood was used as fuel on the Thalsaline. As there was not enough wood around Halle, it had to be bought elsewhere. For this purpose, a contract was concluded with Electoral Saxony in the late 16th century. This was the basis of Halle's salt trade until the 18th century: Electoral Saxony supplied firewood and – as it did not yet have its own salt works – received salt in return from the Pfännerschaft. Payment was made in cash.

The wood was floated to Halle on the Elster and Saale rivers and sold there to the Pfännerschaft, the city and the sovereign, whereby the quality determined the price. The firewood for the saltworks was stored in the wood yard west of the Saale, well guarded around the clock.

In order to preserve the quality of the salt during transport, it was not allowed to become damp under any circumstances. After boiling, it dried in the wicker baskets to form solid salt cones, which had to be crushed for transport and packed away protected from the weather. On land, it was transported on small carts, multi-horse carts and even on sledges in winter. If the journey was by ship, the salt was stored well stuffed in barrels and drums that protected it from the weather. Stamps or brands were used to control the movement of goods.

In Halle, salt guests were the name given to the carters and traders who came to the Thalsaline to collect the salt. Before their wagons were expertly loaded with pieces of salt, they sold the merchandise they had brought with them: butter, eggs and cheese from Electoral Saxony, grain from Bohemia, iron and canvas from Lusatia and Silesia.

Expertly packed, the wagons of the salt guests followed the old salt roads, for example via Saxony to Bohemia, once the most important market for Halle's salt. On the way, they stopped at the Saxon settlements of Leipzig, Dresden and Bautzen as well as Chemnitz, Plauen and Zwickau. There the salt was stored and distributed to the population. However, Halle's salt also reached Franconia, Nuremberg and Regensburg.

Transporting salt overland was difficult in the 1700s. The bumpy paths and roads in the Duchy of Magdeburg cost time and wore down people, animals and materials. To make it easier for traders and travellers to find their way, the Prussian King Friedrich I had special signposts erected along the country roads at the beginning of the 18th century. These wooden »arm signs« indicated the direction and distance of the designated places.

In the 16th century, the archbishops of Magdeburg had the Saale regulated and equipped with wooden locks. Until the Thirty Years' War, the locks were used to transport goods, but then navigation on the Saale almost came to a standstill. Attempts to revive the river after the war were initially unsuccessful. In 1693, however, Brandenburg's Elector Friedrich III ordered the renovation of the river structures. This included six new locks made of stone, among others in Gimritz, Trotha and Wettin.

The expansion of the Saale, Elbe, Havel and Spree rivers made it cheaper and safer to ship salt to the core provinces of Brandenburg-Prussia. That is why the state-produced salt was soon no longer transported with the state's own carts, but on the water with Saale and Elbe barges. This boosted the trade in salt, coal and wood around 1700. With the establishment of intermediate storage facilities – so-called »Niederlagen« – the Saale could now be used permanently as a profitable transport route.

Saale barges loaded with salt could easily sail with the current from Halle towards the Elbe. In the opposite direction, however, the barges had to be towed by human power on so-called towpaths with the help of a strong dew. These barges were usually loaded with coal for the salt works from the mines northwest of Halle near Wettin and Löbejün.

In order to be able to transport salt, fuel and packaging material quickly and cheaply between the saltworks and the Saale, an easily accessible transhipment point was needed. For this purpose, coal sheds and four salt magazines were built between 1700 and 1709 – the first buildings of the later Royal Saltworks in front of the Klaustor, which went into operation in 1721.

The significantly larger salt production of the state-owned salt works – with guaranteed purchase and well protected by a trading monopoly – gradually pushed the Pfännerschafts in Halle and elsewhere out of Brandenburg-Prussia's domestic market. From then on, they had to rely on selling their expensive and barely competitive salt abroad.

At the behest of the Prussian king, the orphanage received half a load of salt – just under 800 kg – from royal production free of charge every year from 1709 onwards. In 1727, the amount was increased to 50 bushels and confirmed in 1868. Until 1940, the Francke Foundations still obtained the equivalent of around 1,300 kg of free salt annually on this basis.