Five Fingers on a Machine: The Records of Chemnitz’s Knitting Industry

DDUJA KNIT JOURNAL · GERMANY · INDUSTRY & ARCHIVES

Research and writing: DDUJA KNIT Read the Korean original ↗

Period the 1851 machine works · Schubert & Salzer, founded in 1883 · a 1907 glove machine · small circular hosiery machines around 1920 · a 1932 company share
People Gottfried Martin Hilscher, Carl August Schubert, Bruno Franz Salzer, and the technicians and workers whose names are rarely recorded
Objects A flat glove-knitting machine, a 1900 view of a machine workshop, a company share, and the surviving factory site

Put on a glove and bend each of its five fingers. Cutting a hand shape from one flat piece of fabric is very different from machine-knitting the separate tubes and joins that let the fingers move. A 1907 glove machine by G. Hilscher, now held by the Chemnitz Industrial Museum, makes that difference visible. The museum’s description says that the five fingers were prepared and then connected one by one to the glove’s length. If we imagine that the machine simply “turned out a complete glove,” we miss the small engineering decisions that made a three-dimensional object: the separate knitted fingers, the order in which they were joined, and the construction of the hand and wrist. [1]

A district built around machines

Chemnitz’s story begins well before the glove machine. A 2013 article by the Chemnitz Industrial Museum traces an early machine works for knitting machinery to Gottfried Martin Hilscher in Altchemnitz in 1851. The museum says the company gained international standing in 1880 with a machine of its own design based on the Cotton system. That description is a museum’s retrospective account, not the same kind of evidence as a production ledger from 1880. “Cotton” here refers to the machine system associated with the British inventor William Cotton; it does not mean that the machine was limited to cotton fiber. Confusing a machine family with a yarn material makes the industrial history harder to understand. [2]

In 1883, Carl August Schubert and Bruno Franz Salzer established a new company in a backyard workshop in Chemnitz. The industrial museum’s company map identifies hosiery machinery among its early products. It records a move to larger premises in 1884 and the use of the name Schubert & Salzer Maschinenfabrik Aktiengesellschaft from 1904. A separate museum study says the firm became a joint-stock company in 1889 under the name Chemnitzer Wirkmaschinen-Fabrik AG. These dates need not be treated as rival founding years: one concerns a change in legal form, another a later name. [3]

The museum’s research describes Schubert & Salzer’s focus on Cotton-system flat knitting machines and their role in supporting larger-scale hosiery and tricot production west of Chemnitz. “Supporting” is a claim about the relationship between machinery supply and regional industry. It does not mean that one company knitted every stocking in the area. Hilscher and Schubert & Salzer were separate businesses, and the 1907 glove machine in image 1 was made by Hilscher. Keeping those companies distinct matters when a photograph risks blending two different histories together. [1][2][3]

The industrial museum site also holds another layer of the district’s story. Its account of the building says Schubert & Salzer took over Hugo Schreiter’s foundry business in 1907. The foundry made cast components for knitting machines, tulle machinery and machine tools. Casting iron components was not the same process as knitting gloves or stockings, but both processes belonged to the same local production system of buildings, metals, yarns and specialist work. The museum records that the foundry stopped production during the economic crisis in 1930. That is not evidence that the entire Schubert & Salzer company disappeared that year. [4]

Names, companies and workers

Hilscher’s name survives as the manufacturer of the 1907 glove machine. The museum study identifies Gottfried Martin Hilscher as the founder of the works in 1851. The company map documents the business across several periods, so we should not turn the founder’s life into a claim that he personally supervised or designed every component of the 1907 machine. The sources at hand do not identify him as the sole designer of that particular device. A name preserved in a company title is not the same as a complete record of the many technicians who made a machine work. [1][2][5]

Schubert and Salzer are recorded as founders of their own company. Its early hosiery machines connected knitting already practiced in homes and small workshops with a larger factory system. The museum’s research discusses both the Cotton-system machinery developed in Britain and the existing domestic production around Chemnitz. That is why the story should not become a heroic claim that the founders “invented knitting.” Their names appear in the company history. The people who machined parts, replaced worn needles, maintained machines and inspected finished stockings are much less visible. The available records do not let us reliably reconstruct each worker’s gender, wage or job title, and we do not fill those gaps with guesses. [2][3]

The museum’s restoration report describes how, in 2009, it was offered four small circular hosiery machines made by Schubert & Salzer. The museum judged the “Standard” type, produced from around 1920, to be rare. This report is not testimony from a factory worker of the period; it shows how technicians today use physical examination and repair to interpret machinery. Making a machine work can reveal which parts moved and how they interacted. The operating speed of a restored machine today, however, cannot be treated as the average production rate of a Chemnitz factory in 1920. [6]

Reading the machines and records

Look closely at the 1907 glove machine in image 1 and the problem changes from a general idea of “mechanization” to a sequence of operations. The museum identifies it as a flat-knitting machine for gloves and says that the five fingers were knitted in advance and joined one by one to the glove’s length. The direction of the courses, the way a fingertip is closed, the angle of the thumb and the stretch needed at the wrist all affect how a finished glove fits. The photograph alone cannot tell us the fiber composition of the yarn, stitch count, size range or whether a particular seam was sewn. We do not attach a more detailed pattern reconstruction than the museum’s evidence supports. [1]

Schubert & Salzer’s early flat hosiery machines and its small circular machine from around 1920 show that a company could work with different machine forms and products. Circular machinery can readily produce a tube of fabric, but without a model-specific technical record we should not assume how a given machine formed the toe or heel of a stocking. Reducing the difference to “hand knitting versus machine knitting” also hides the path of the stitches and where a seam or finishing operation may be needed. When examining a finished stocking, trace the vertical lines along the leg, the shape of the heel and the closure at the toe. That is a useful starting point for asking how the machine worked. [3][6]

The 1900 guide illustration in image 2 and the 1932 company share in image 3 are different kinds of evidence. One presents an industrial workshop to readers at the turn of the century; the other documents corporate ownership more than three decades later. Neither stands in for the people who operated or maintained the machines. Image 4 shows the clock tower at the former factory site, while image 5 records the entrance to the surviving complex. A factory building can reveal how production occupied a place, but its architecture cannot by itself tell us what a particular machine produced on a given day. We need company maps, museum research and object records alongside the photographs. [2][4]

A short timeline

1851 · Gottfried Martin Hilscher establishes a knitting-machine works in Altchemnitz. [2]
1883 · Carl August Schubert and Bruno Franz Salzer found a company in a backyard workshop in Chemnitz. [3]
1889 · The company becomes a joint-stock company under the name Chemnitzer Wirkmaschinen-Fabrik AG, according to the museum’s industrial-history study. [2]
1904 · The company map records the later Schubert & Salzer Maschinenfabrik AG name. [3]
1907 · The museum’s G. Hilscher glove machine is dated; Schubert & Salzer also takes over a foundry business at the current museum site. [1][4]
1930 · The foundry at the museum site stops production amid economic hardship; this is not the same as the end of the entire machine company. [4]
1932 · The company share in image 3 provides a dated corporate record. [8]
2009 · The industrial museum assesses four small Schubert & Salzer circular hosiery machines, including a rare “Standard” type from around 1920. [6]

Looking again at a knitted object

The Chemnitz machines turn the broad history of industrialization into specific questions: how were separate fingers joined into a glove, how did a flat machine differ from a circular one, and which parts of production were visible in a company archive? The names of Hilscher, Schubert and Salzer survive. The names of the technicians who sharpened needles, the workers who tended machines and the people who checked finished hosiery often do not. When you next examine a machine-knit glove or stocking, look for the joins and shaping before assuming a machine made the whole object at once. Those details are where the history becomes tangible.

Editorial note. Hilscher and Schubert & Salzer are treated as separate firms. Machine system and fiber content are not conflated. Company claims, museum interpretation, dated objects and surviving architecture are identified as distinct kinds of evidence.

Reading the photographs Image 1 shows Hilscher’s glove machine as photographed at the museum in 2026. Image 2 is an illustration from a 1900 publication, while image 3 is a later scan of a 1932 company share. Images 4 and 5 show surviving factory buildings photographed much later; they are not views of the factory in operation. Each image is credited separately, with its source and reuse terms.

Sources and image credits

Bracketed numbers in the article refer to the records below. Every image also links to its own file record and image file, where applicable.