As of: February 13, 2024, 5:01 a.m
By: Julian Baumann
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Ruins tell of times gone by.
Remains in a park in Stuttgart are a reminder of a once-thriving industry in the state capital.
Stuttgart - Baden-Württemberg is home to Heidelberg Castle, probably the most famous ruin in the world.
The Ländle is also home to the largest ruin in Germany, in the Swabian Alb.
Remnants of once impressive buildings still have a very special appeal today;
However, they do not always have to be the former residences of kings or counts.
From an economic point of view, the state capital Stuttgart is primarily
known for the
automotive industry
and
mechanical engineering .
However, there is not much left of an industry that once flourished in the city;
except for former buildings and ruins that still tell of it.
In the
Leibfriedschen Garden
not far from Stuttgart's
Pragsattel
there are the remains of a once impressive country house villa that the chocolate manufacturer
Eduard Otto Moser
had built in 1875.
There isn't much left of the building today and the park around the former villa has become very overgrown.
Nevertheless, the remains bear witness to a time when
not only automobile manufacturing was dominant in
Stuttgart , but also the production of chocolate.
There is also another villa in Stuttgart that has fallen into disrepair, but will soon shine in new splendor.
Today there is not much left of the former country villa of an important Stuttgart entrepreneur.
© IMAGO/Lichtgut
In 1875, a chocolate manufacturer had a country villa built in what is now Stuttgart
Around the same time that
Gottlieb Daimler
and
Wilhelm Maybach
patented their grandfather clock, the world's first high-speed gasoline engine, the first chocolate factories appeared in Stuttgart.
In fact, there were seven large manufacturers in the Swabian capital in the 19th century who competed with each other but also with the manufacturers in Paris and sold their products to distant countries.
Eduard Otto Moser, born in Stuttgart in 1818, is considered one of the first manufacturers in what was then Württemberg.
In 1856 he founded a “confectionery and chocolate shop” on Tübinger Strasse.
Chocolate city Stuttgart
Originally there were eight important chocolate manufacturers in Stuttgart in the 19th century:
Roth
,
Moser
,
Friedel
,
Alfred
Ritter
(all Cannstatt),
Eszet
(Untertürkheim),
Haller
(Obertürkheim),
Waldbaur
(Stuttgart-West) and
Schoko-Buck
(Stuttgart-East ).
At the end of the century, the Roth company, founded in 1841, merged with Moser, founded in 1846, to form
Moser-Roth
, which is why there is often talk of seven well-known Stuttgart chocolate manufacturers.
The Moser-Roth brand is now produced by Storck and sold at Aldi.
© IMAGO/Manfred Segerer
With the exception of Alfred Ritter, the manufacturer of the world-famous
Ritter Sport
brand , none of the companies mentioned no longer exist today.
However, Ritter moved to the small town
of Waldenbuch
in the Böblingen district in 1930, so none of the brands are still based in Stuttgart.
However, the Eszet slices are still manufactured by Stollwerck today, Moser-Roth by Storck since 1902, and sales are carried out by the discounter Aldi.
The Villa Moser was commissioned in 1875 by the chocolate manufacturer Eduard Otto Moser.
© Johann Wendelin Braunwald/Wikipedia
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Moser's business quickly became a success.
A few years later, he began manufacturing chocolate and sweets
on
Calwer Strasse and continued to expand the business.
At the peak of his success, the chocolate manufacturer had a villa built on the site of today's Leibfried Gardens.
This was intended as a counterpart to the previously built
Villa Berg
, as it says in the chronicle of the building now usually
called
Villa Moser .
At that time, the property belonged to the independent city of Cannstatt and was far from the gates of Stuttgart.
Villa Moser art station makes the former villa and park accessible
In addition to the country villa itself, Moser also had an extensive landscape park built on the site, which was characteristic of the time.
The chocolate manufacturer himself did not enjoy his villa for long, as he died in 1879, four years after its completion.
After the death of his wife, the building initially passed to a private owner and was rented by Robert Bosch GmbH
in 1943
.
Bosch provided apartments for employees.
A year later, Villa Moser was destroyed to its foundations by a bomb attack.
The remains of the former villa in the Leibfriedschen Garden in Stuttgart can be visited through the Villa Moser art station.
© IMAGO/Lichtgut
Today there are only remains of the Villa Moser in the Leibfried Gardens in Stuttgart.
The once impressive landscape park has become heavily overgrown.
“Today the Villa Moser is one of the last complexes of its time in Stuttgart and the only one in public hands,” says the chronicle.
In 1993, the architect Hans Dieter Schaal designed
the
Villa Moser art station for the
International Horticultural Exhibition
, which made the ruins and their park accessible via walkways.
Not far from the former Villa Moser, sports car manufacturer Porsche opened its new branch in 2022.