The family Gleissner now arrived in Vienna and brought one of my former
apprentices, Mathias Grünewald. Meantime some presses had been
completed, and we could begin to print. Gleissner's symphonies recently
had been much praised in a musical paper of Leipsic, and he proposed to
us to begin with a few of his works. Of course it would have been wiser
to begin with a good work by a famous man, whose name was sufficiently
popular in Vienna. I did visit Herr Doctor Haydn, but received the reply
that he could not compose any more and would only review old works
thenceforth.
Immediately at the commencement a stock of stones was needed. As we
could foresee that we should need some thousands of stones in the course
of time, Herr von Hartl decided to make a trip with me, by way of Munich
and Augsburg, to the quarries of Solenhofen that we might inform
ourselves on the spot about the best way to get stones.
A further inducement to make this journey was that he wished to examine
the estate of Niedau, which had been described as being very favorably
situated for the erection of manufactories. Herr von Hartl already had a
large spinnery in operation. This, and perhaps the printery, he planned
to establish in Niedau, because there both workers and property were
cheaper. He intended to leave only the business offices in Vienna.
The establishment of this spinnery had so important an effect on my fate
as well as on the future of lithography that I must describe it here.
When I arrived in Vienna, Count von Saurau had just gone to Petersburg
as Austrian Ambassador. Being a patron of home industries, he had
advanced ten thousand gulden some time before to an expert spinner named
Mistelbauer, to erect looms for manufacturing fine English and French
stuffs in Austria, a work for which Mistelbauer was perfectly qualified.
When the Count departed, Herr von Hartl took charge of several of his
interests, among them the Mistelbauer spinnery. Thus at the next Vienna
Messe (market-fair), Mistelbauer visited Herr von Hartl to make an
accounting. The goods that Mistelbauer had brought convinced Herr von
Hartl of his skill and technical capacity. The details of his processes,
and his ingenuity in operating so many looms with so little capital,
indicated to Herr von Hartl that increased capital would bring
enormously increased results. As the spinnery company had as good as
decided that a good part of their own products should be further worked
by themselves, Herr von Hartl considered it a lucky circumstance to meet
a particularly good weaver and also a cotton-printer, who alleged that
he could print the home-made cottons exactly as well as the English
printers and possibly at smaller cost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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