One place in Germany has been famous for precious jewelry for more than 200 years: the town of Pforzheim, north of the Black Forest, also known as ‘Gold Town’.

The foundation of the jewelry industry in Pforzheim can be traced back to 1767, when on 6th April of that year the Margrave Karl Friedrich von Baden issued an edict permitting Frenchman Jean François Autran to set up a watch factory. Permission was granted the same year for the factory to be extended to include the manufacture of jewelry and steel products. It was not long before the Margrave’s approval for watch and jewelry manufacture was joined by private commercial initiatives which brought about such rapid expansion that Pforzheim soon became the most important manufacturing town in the margraviate of Baden. The town was even known abroad as ‘Little Geneva’.

The boom lasted right into the 20th century. In 1913 half of the inhabitants of Pforzheim were still engaged in the jewelry and watch making industry, and just before the start of the Second World War the jewelry industry could still count 24,000 employees. Allied bombing raids during the war almost completely destroyed Pforzheim’s jewelry industry, but the trade made an astonishingly rapid recovery in the post-war years: by as early as 1953, Pforzheim was once again the world’s largest supplier of jewelry and silverware.

Today Pforzheim has more than 118,000 inhabitants, making it the eighth largest town in Baden-Württemberg. More than 11,000 people are employed in the jewelry and watch making industry in the town and the surrounding district of Enz. The ‘Gold Town’ of Pforzheim accounts for just under 70 percent of the total sales of the German jewelry and silverware industry and around 80 percent of all the pieces of jewelry exported by Germany come from Pforzheim.

Four family names in particular continue to be the bearers of Pforzheim’s tradition of jewelry making: Wellendorff, Scheufele, Mohr-Mayer and Leicht. The names are famous both within and outside of the industry. It is thanks to the Mohr-Mayer family, for example, that the magnificent Fabergé eggs are still being produced. The sophisticated art of enameling has been passed down from generation to generation.

But the preservation of the centuries-old specialist know-how of the jewelry and watch making industries was not restricted to the four famous families. A number of institutions stand testimony to this: the very first vocational school in the world – the school for goldsmiths and watchmakers founded in 1768 in an orphanage – is the center for training in all aspects of jewelry and watch manufacture. Since the early 1990s, Pforzheim’s University of Applied Sciences in Design, Technology and Business has included a special institute for jewelry technology.

Jewelry from Pforzheim isn’t only popular with those who buy it: many of the tourists who visit the town are there just to look and admire. There is much to see: within the Reuchlinhaus is the world-famous museum of jewelry, which gives a unique perspective of 5000 years of European jewelry making. A purpose-built jewelry shopping arcade called “Pforzheim Jewelry Worlds” was opened in 2005: it has shops and exhibition spaces. There’s even a Porsche made of gold on show! “Jewelry Worlds” will celebrate its first anniversary on 17th June 2006, right in the middle of the football World Cup. The anniversary will be marked by a fabulous “Golden Night”, when there will be a glint in many an eye.

Contact:

Stadt Pforzheim
Stadtverwaltung
Marktplatz 1, D-75175 Pforzheim
Telefon: +49 (0)7231 39-0
Telefax: +49 (0)7231 39-2303

E-Mail: Poststelle@stadt-pforzheim.de
Internet: www.pforzheim.de