Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/106

96 establish the fact is as defective as it is of the early existence of the Ravensburg mills.

But it is incontestably established that the Nuremberg Ratsherr Ulman Stromer built a paper-mill in 1390, which was the first demonstrably in Germany. Through his carefully kept notes many particulars of Ulman Stromer's life and business transactions are known to us. They furnish information concerning the introduction of paper-making, and further permit a deep insight into the conditions of trade and industry at that time. A happy chance has also permitted the picture of Stromer's paper-mill to come down to posterity, and we contemplate with pleasure the rude drawing that represents the high-gabled buildings of this German factory of five hundred years ago. The view (Fig. 1) is reproduced as exactly as possible from Hartmann Schedel's Buch der Chroniken of 1493, which was printed byAnton Koburger and illustrated by Michael Wohlgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurf with about two thousand woodcuts. Ulman Stromer, born on the 26th of January, 1329, was descended from a distinguished Nuremberg family, whose ancestor, Conrad von Reichenbach, having married into the family of the Waldstromers, resided thenceforth in Nuremberg, and called himself Stromeyr, abbreviated into Stromer. He became a man of extensive business and considerable wealth, and the owner of houses in the city and of a landed estate, and eventually one of the most prominent men in Nuremberg. With a brief interruption he sat in the city council, and was for a long time one of the three chief magistrates. In this capacity he often represented the city in important transactions, and served as its plenipotentiary in foreign affairs, as, for example, in the conclusion of the accession of Nuremberg to the Swabian Confederacy. Ulman Stromer often made long journeys in the interest of his business. Like other great dealers of Nuremberg, Augsburg, and the Tyrol, he was