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Ill. 13: Title Page of J. Chr. Schäffer’s ‘Versuche und Muster ohne alle Lumpen oder doch mit einem geringen Zusatze derselben Papier zu
machen’ aus dem Jahre 1765.
that other fibre materials appropriate for paper making had
to be sought after.
René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1673–1757) and Jacob
Christian Schäffer (1718–1790), superintendent in Regensburg,
are to be mentioned as pioneers in this field. The
careful examination of wasps’ nests caused Réaumur in 1719
already to reflect on alternative papermaking methods. It was
wasp nests too, that influenced Schäffer to conduct extensive
experiments for decomposing plant fibres with a self-construed
small hand-driven stamp mill in such a way that they
could be used – at least in combination with a certain portion
of rags – for papermaking. Schäffer published in six volumes a
total of 81 different paper samples which he had produced
nearly without addition of rags amongst other things from the
fibres of cottonwood, herbs, potatoes, sawdust, planning
chips, osier and aspen wood, hops, cirrus, and grape-wine as
well as moss (lichen), etc. (Ill. 13). All this was already announced
by him in another article in 1761.
Even though his experiments were not suitable for a
large-scale production, he became rewarded by Emperor
Joseph II therefore with a golden chain of grace, while in
contrast the tradition-conscious papermakers ridiculed him
because of his improvements.
The idea to utilize already used paper once again in a recycling
process emerged in that time, too. The jurist Justus
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Claproth (1728–1805) made in 1774 the proposal to de-ink
print products no longer needed by means of turpentine oil
and fuller’s earth. Markgrave Karl Friedrich (1728–1811)
from Badenia ordered a test of this method in the paper
mills in Niefern and in Ettlingen but it proved inefficient.
More success in the fight against the scarceness of raw
materials was given in France to a method which following
the example of the textile industries was soon employed in
papermaking, too. The chemist Claude Louis de Berthollet
(1748–1822) applied elementary chlorine discovered in
1774 and described according to the theory existing at that
time as ‘dephlogisticized salt acid’ and made in 1785/86for
the first time bleaching experiments on a larger scale. A
short time afterwards papermakers, too, picked up the
method of chlorine bleaching according to which the gas
was piped on the rags enclosed in bleaching chambers. Until
then paper fibres had exclusively been bleached by boiling
with potash lye or by exposing to sunlight but by the
new method dyed textiles, too, could be treated as strongly
as necessary for the production of white paper. First patent
applications for that bleaching method go back to Taylor
(1792) and Cunningham (1794). It arrived to the Germanspeaking
world in 1793 through a publication of Johann
Gottlob Tenner and was already implemented in 1803 in
the Dombach paper mill near Bergisch Gladbach. But chlo-