Why we claim 1794

21. listopadu 2022

A few years ago, we added the English "since 1794" to our logo. This refers to the year when the merchant Ignaz Rõsler started the first industrial production of knives and small metal goods in Mikulášovice.

Few projects like Rosler's are built in places where the conditions are not right. Rõsler took advantage of the fact that the region had a tradition of hundreds of years of small craftsmen making and sharpening knives. He re-organised the knifemakers' work, streamlined it, and then sold it well. Today we would say he was good at marketing. But his success was not just marketing and salesmanship.

Knife making is not as simple as it might first appear to the layman. Experience is gained through long practice and passed on from generation to generation. And that is exactly how it was in Mikulášovice and the surrounding area until the Second World War.

Nazism, the occupation of the Sudetenland, the extermination of the Jews, the war, the liberation and the forced removal of the Germans significantly damaged it. However, not only old machines and drawings remained in the local cutlery factories after the war. Some professionals who did not get along with the Nazis and were not covered by the expulsion order also continued to work. Thanks to this, the local tradition of knife-making was not interrupted.

When the state merged all the knife-making into one enterprise, which in 1956 was called Mikulášovice Metal Industry, Mikov for short, nothing was built on the greenfield. It was just a new name for an old tradition of the place with the prefix Czech Solingen.

These are all good reasons why we carry the year 1794 in our logo. We are proud of it, but we also know that it is a commitment.