Weisbach House

The city of Plauen decided to completely renovate the factory building, which has been a listed building since 1935, and convert it into a museum. Local firm Neumann Architekten was awarded the contract in 2016. ‘We've been working towards this for a long time; back in the 2000s, we developed ideas for the building together with the family - especially with our friend and mentor Claus Weisbach. Ultimately, we are very grateful that we as an architectural firm were awarded this contract,’ summarises Roger Neumann. Around 40 per cent of the entire building was renovated in cooperation with the heritage office so that the ‘Factory of Threads’, a museum that brings together the collections from the Plauen Lace Museum and the Vogtland Museum, could move in. Today, art and architecture workshops are held in the remaining part of the house, and one of the Weisbach brothers lives there and looks after the house's garden as a landscape architect.

Andreas Stephan, Managing Director of Maler Plauen GmbH, who was entrusted with the painting work on the facade, describes the former condition of the facade as dilapidated. The bricks were visible and plaster was crumbling off everywhere. The first task was to secure the fabric of the building, remove the sponge infestation and restore the building structure from the outside. ‘One of the requirements of the Monuments Office also included the reconstruction of the late baroque plaster façade with its yellow-ochre colour scheme based on old documents and paintings from the first half of the 19th century. A stucco artist from Plauen also used these tools to recreate many stucco elements, including crowning, rocaille and acanthus leaves. A beautiful task with special requirements, for which a feel for historical building fabric was indispensable,’ says Roger Neumann. Andreas Stephan also reports on the special façade structure with window axes. Among these windows, there were also bricked-up blind windows, which were imitated in colour so that they looked like real windows. The master painter also redesigned this detail with line drawing work and imitation light and shadow.

Roger Neumann is also positive about Keim products: ‘Whenever possible, our office uses products from Keimfarben because we know they work inside and out. I've had to learn the hard way because paints have faded and there has been algae infestation. This is where the advantages of KEIM, such as resistance to algae, colour stability and fast re-drying, pay off. In addition, the mill race with fish and ducks is located on the north side of the building, so one of the requirements was to avoid leaching of chemical components from the facade. This was also one of the deciding factors in favour of using silicate paints.’

After a four-year construction phase, the renovated part of the Weisbach House was opened as the ‘Factory of Threads’ museum in November 2023. With over 1,200 square metres of exhibition space, visitors can now discover the world of lace and technology in the listed buildings and the new building. The ‘Factory of Threads’ was included for the first time in the recently organised Night of Museums in Plauen. The flood of visitors and the enthusiasm of the people of Plauen for their Weisbach House knew no bounds and was reflected in the long queue of people outside the museum. Roger Neumann summarises: ‘The restored oldest manufactory building in Saxony, which combines the tradition of Plauen lace with its use, is a unique selling point that every Plauen resident can be proud of.’