Louise manor

On the other side of the river from Bachman Manor, there was the Small Meadow and Louise Manor, which belonged to the merchant Wachsen. Louise Manor was established in the eastern part of the city – at the end of Liepų Street, behind the railway in 1783 by the merchant Christian Wilhelm Wachsen. Wachsen’s residential house was built near the railway and had arched cellars. The lands of the manor stretched until Dangė river and were referred to as the Great Meadow and the Governor’s Meadow (the Small Meadow was situated on the other side of the river, between the city’s windmill and the brickyard of Joniškė). Christian Wilhelm Wachsen was born in Kolberg, Pomerania, circa 1747. He moved to Klaipėda in 1773 and, at the age of 26, became a great citizen and joined the Merchants’ Guild of Klaipėda. On the property of Louise Manor near Dangė river Ch. W. Wachsen had built a wind oil mill, warehouses and linseed drying premises. At that time Klaipėda was famous among sea traders as the port of the greatest potential and revenue. The major trade revolved around wood, as well as grain and linseed. Ch. W. Wachsen was hoping to conquer the market with linseed. Since the entire coast of the Curonian Lagoon was taken by wind sawmills, preparing wood for exports, Ch. W. Wachsen purchased land near Dangė river, behind the city in order to build his own berth. He had dug a special bay into his land near the great warehouse and windmill, in order to be able to load his production on ships right from the warehouse. In 1779–1781 Ch. W. Wachsen ordered two marine sailships from the shipbuilder Ch. Heinrich. One of them had the capacity of as much as 400 tonnes. A year later Ch. W. Wachsen purchased another marine sailship. In 1800 he had married Louise Witte-Schultze, the daughter of the post and bank director Johann Christian Witte and a very rich widow, thus becoming one of the richest men in Klaipėda. He was a very educated and respected man. In 1802 his home in Klaipėda on Friedrich Wilhelm Street 6-7 hosted a ball, attended by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III, the Queen Louise and the Russian Emperor Alexander. Among the greatest works of Christian Wilhelm Wachsen was the restoration of Klaipėda Theatre in 1803.
In the 19th c. the manor or parts of the estate were managed by a number of different people. In 1898 on the land of the Louise Manor near Dangė river, Friedrich Kraus from Frankenthal (Pfalz) established a joint stock wood processing company. 1900 marked the construction of a plywood plant near Dangė river, in front of the brickyard. It used to produce plywood for furniture, doors and casein. It was also planned to produce plywood for cigar boxes. The entire raw material – black alder and other deciduous wood – used to be imported from the forests of the neighbouring Lithuania, while the majority of the production used to be sold in Germany. In the eve of the World War I the plywood factory used to employ about 200 workers. In 1917 this factory, as well as Smeltė plywood factory was purchased by J. Bruning & Sohn, AG, from Berlin. In 1919 the owners changed again – both factories were purchased by a Dutch company A. Bisdom u Zoon from Eindhoven. In August 1923 the factory was nearly destroyed by a fire, but it was quickly rebuilt and equipped with modern equipment. In 1925 the factory employed 600 workers, working on two shifts. It used to produce special plywood for Deltim planes and gliders, processing 100 cubic metres of raw material and producing 30 cubic metres of production every day. This factory and Smeltė company were the largest plywood factories in Eastern Europe, equipped with modern machinery. The factory operated until the World War II.