In museum circles there is the term “iconic exhibit”. The spacesuit with which Neil Armstrong executed his important step for mankind, Alan Turing’s Enigma decryption machine, Lenin’s railway carriage in which he travelled to the Russian Revolution. Sort of. Just below it in world history would be the first picking machine used in German hop growing, the Bruff D, built in 1955. If it were offered to our museum, we, Wolnzach, would also have a problem. Where to put it? The Bruff was a monster 25 metres long and 8 metres high. Landowner Otto Höfter had to build a new hall in the small Hallertau hamlet of Neuhausen to house it.

Fortunately, one almost has to say, the machine no longer exists. But picking machines still pose a certain problem for a hop museum. They mark a major change in the history of hop growing and are therefore an indispensable part of the collection concept. But unlike picking baskets or metzenzeichen, they take up a lot of space, a lot of space. And not only that. When the German Hop Museum was once built, the Wolf picking machine shown in our permanent exhibition had to be placed very precisely at a very early stage so that the necessary foundations for its heavy weight could be made in time. And the machine also had to be placed in the building long before construction was completed. No door in the museum would have been big enough to carry it through. So it had to go through the (still unglazed) picture window.

A brand new Allaeys Compact, circa 1962, in the production hall of the Allaeys company in Poperinge.

To a certain extent, picking machines are also the reason why the German Hop Museum will soon be able to open a new display depot. For years the old “Rennerstadel” depot had become too small. There had long been no more room for picking machines in particular. As early as 2013, a freshly acquired Themilco Hopmatic, a rare piece from the 1960s that we came across rather by chance, had to be placed under the canopy outside the door. Covered with a makeshift tarpaulin, it has since withstood wind and weather.

The machine that we had been looking for intensively for years, unlike the Themilco, did not fare any better. The Allaeys company, like Milleville-Themilco once based in Poperinge in Flanders, had been supplying its picking machines to the German hop-growing industry with great success since the mid-1950s (more about Allaeys…) . Technical landmarks such as the inclined vine pull-through or the long vine pull-out arm go back to the Allaeys brothers. Their most important invention was probably the compact picking machine. Such machines, unlike the Bruffs, Rotobanks and also the first Allaeys types, were no longer hall-spanning monstrosities that degraded even the richest hop farmer to a poor wretch. Instead of 60,000, the price was only 20,000 Marks, instead of 8 x 25 metres height x length only 3.50 x 3.50 metres, instead of 50 staff only 3.

After Allaeys had introduced the “Junior” in 1959, they followed up shortly afterwards with a model with the evocative name “Compact”. In contrast to the previous model, it now had an inclined infeed and a long infeed arm. When the No. 1 of the series went on trial in the Hallertau in 1961, the first seven machines immediately changed hands. In the following years, the “Compact” became the most successful Allaeys model in Germany, with 464 machines sold. Although it came from abroad and, unlike the English machines, was never reproduced under licence in Germany.

Allaeys Compact machines, ready for delivery to German hop growers.

Our “Compact” was discovered around 2017 by picking machine expert Peter Mayer-Diener on the outskirts of Au i.d. Hallertau. It had been standing there abandoned for almost 20 years, in the typical picking machine shed that the previous owners had once placed in the green meadow. Hop farmer and master wainwright Johann Schreck and his wife Maria had bought it in 1962 together with the hop grower Anton Buchberger from the agricultural machinery dealer Schleibinger in Osterwaal, after the cultivation area had been extended to 6000 hop plants in 1960, i.e. to about 1.5 hectares. The common hall for the machine stood exactly half on the land of the Schreck and Buchberger families. In 1974, daughter Christl married agricultural machinery mechanic Erich Heinzmann and continued to run the farm on the same scale. Until 1990, when Allaeys Compact picked its last vines. The hop vines were grubbed up, the farmland leased out. And it became quiet around the “Compact”. Until it was rediscovered.

After agreement had been reached with the previous owners, members of the Hop Museum Society, with the support of the machine expert Walter Reith, who died much too early, brought the machine to Wolnzach. A special feature, apart from its excellent condition, was its almost unchanged original construction. Unfortunately, this gem had to stand around outdoors for years and provided shelter for numerous songbirds and pigeons during this time. With the completion of our new show depot, industrious club members have now sacrificed a lot of free time, cleaned the machine and finally put it back into operation. It is now waiting for visitors in the new depot. We hope that the time will come in summer when we will be able to demonstrate the machine.