Translations:Johannes Eckart (Da VII 10)/10/en

Development of the Canning Factory

In the Franco-German War 1870/71, Johannes volunteered for military service and became orderly. The war was followed by the foundation of the German Empire on January 18, 1871. According to the memories of the family, Johannes proudly carried his nearly one-year old second son Fritz, born on February 22, 1870, around the square Gärtnerplatz; the child wore a black-white-red jacket. In the aftermath of the war, Johannes Eckart again turned his attention to the topic of preservation. One problem of that time were the limited possibilities for cooling food. Even though there were underground ice houses, filled with big blocks of ice in the winter, the storage of food in these houses was cumbersome and very limited. This situation only changed when Carl von Linde invented the ice and cooling machine in Munich. The brewery Spaten established the first trial machine in 1871. This was a spectacular success. Refrigeration methods were also interesting for Johannes Eckart, but he thought that cans would be a more suitable way of preserving larger quantities of vegetables in particular. The production of cans had started in 1804, when the Frenchman Nicolas Appert made his process of long-term preservation of food in airtight containers available to the public. In Germany, the first canning factories were founded from 1840. In North Germany, centers of canned food production had developed in Lübeck and Braunschweig. In South Germany, Johannes Eckart was one of the first to succeed with his experiments, learned to master the technique and added a department for canning vegetables to his fruit juice factory. In 1872, Johannes Eckart bought the neighboring house at Gärtnerplatz 1. This is where he lived with his family on the second floor, while the factory was in the rear building.