Hahnemühle FineArt, Inc. is a

paper manufacturing A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags, and other ingredients. Prior to the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt ...

company in the Relliehausen district of Dassel, Germany. It is a significant producer of

coated paper Coated paper (also known as enamel paper, gloss paper, and thin paper) is paper that has been coated with a mixture of materials or a polymer to impart certain qualities to the paper, including weight, surface gloss, smoothness, or reduced ink ab ...

for inkjet printing, artist's paper for traditional painting and printing techniques, and filter paper for industry and research.

History

The company traces its origins to the construction of a paper mill by Merton Speiss on 27 February 1584 in Relliehausen at the source of a river in the Solling (a range of hills). This is but one of many such paper mills known to have existed in the vicinity of Dassel between the

Weser The Weser () is a river of Lower Saxony in north-west Germany. It begins at Hannoversch Münden through the confluence of the Werra and Fulda. It passes through the Hanseatic city of Bremen. Its mouth is further north against the ports o ...

and the

Leine The Leine (; Old Saxon ''Lagina'') is a river in Thuringia and Lower Saxony, Germany. It is a left tributary of the Aller and the Weser and is long. The river's source is located close to the town of Leinefelde in Thuringia. About downriver ...

rivers, but it is the only one to have survived over the centuries. On 30 August 1769 the descendants of the Spiess family sold the mill to Peter Johann Jacob Heinrich Andrae from Osterode for 4,500 Reichsthaler. Andrae suffered an early death, and the mill passed to his son. On 13 August 1884 Oskar Andrae sold the firm to H. J. Heinemann of

Hannover Hanover ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Lower Saxony. Its population of 535,932 (2021) makes it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-l ...

who immediately began the construction of a new production facility. Unforeseen difficulties and costs forced Heinemann to give up the factory, and it was sold in 1886 to Carl Hahne who renamed the mill into “Büttenpapierfabrik Hahnemühle”. In 1902 Hahnemühle was converted into a limited company (GmbH) and merged with Schleicher & Schuell, a company from Düren. In 2004 Hahnemühle was demerged from Schleicher & Schuell and operates independently since then. During the Second World War, the company created paper for the

SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt The Reich Security Main Office ( , RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and , the head of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS). The organization's stat ...

's efforts to produce counterfeit British banknotes as part of

Operation Bernhard Operation Bernhard was an exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British Banknotes of the pound sterling, bank notes. The initial plan was to drop the notes over Britain to bring about a economic collapse, collapse of the Economy of the United Kingdom ...

. Today, the firm employs approximately 200 employees worldwide in the production of paper for painters, graphic artists, illustrators, bookbinders, photographers and printmaker as well as for the production of specialty papers in industrial applications (such as filter membranes for chemical and biological analysis). The paper factory is especially known for its artist papers for painting and printmaking. Hahnemühle is the inventor of Fine Art InkJet Paper with a special ink-receiving layer surface treatment suitable for today's inkjet printers. This is particularly suitable for photography, computer art, and painting and photo reproductions.

References

* Wolfgang Hein / Wilhelm Willemer: ''Neutral geleimte Papiere für wertvolle Objekte''. In: ''Dauerhaftigkeit von Papier: Vorträge des 4. Internationalen graphischen Restauratorentages, veranstaltet von der Internationalen Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Archiv-, Bibliotheks- und Graphikrestauratoren (IADA)in Zusammenarbeit mit der Niedersächsischen Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen und dem Niedersächsischen Staatsarchiv Bückeburg 1979'', Klostermann, Frankfurt/Main 1980. * E. Tacke: ''Urkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte der Papiermühle Relliehausen während der Zeit der Papiermacherfamilie Spieß 1584-1789.'' In: Jahresbericht des Vereins für Geschichte und Altertümer der Stadt Einbeck und Umgebung 21 (1953/54), pp. 48–56 * 425 Jahre Hahnemühle 1584-2009 {{DEFAULTSORT:Hahnemuhle Companies established in the 16th century Organizations established in the 1580s 1584 establishments in the Holy Roman Empire Manufacturing companies of Germany