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Roccafabrik, Hauptstr. 134
Cigars do not only come from Cuba

This house used to be the cigar factory Möllinger. Tobacco processing was the most important branch of industry in the 19th and 20th century. Factory owner Ringwald opened Denzlingen’s first factory in 1866. Soon ten more were built and gave work particularly to women and children. Tobacco processing attracted people from neighbouring villages which led to a rapid population growth. As cigarettes became more and more popular cigar production became less important and was unprofitable after 1955.

You are located on the grounds of the Rocca, a former factory. Up to the 1911 there was a wool weaving mill at this place. Eventually, Otto Möllinger from Freiburg acquired the property and set up a cigar factory where up to one hundred workers were employed. In 1960 the site was bought by the ROCCA KG, which manufactured chemicals for construction. 1966, the municipality bought the land and changed its use: the main building houses the Roccafé, a public media library and an event hall on the first floor. In the middle of the stream you find the so-called island house, which once served as the operations manager's house. Today it is used as a "one-world shop" and by the members of Malkreis.

At the place where a turbine for the cigar factory once generated the first electricity in Denzlingen, a water wheel with a diameter of 1,80 m and an output of four kilowatts is now turning again. Learn more about cigar manufacturing, which was the most important industry in the town in the 19th and 20th centuries.