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Picture: Rebuilding of Brauerei Heinrich Reissdorf.
At this point there were only a total of 50 pubs & taverns in all of Cologne, and Brauerei Heinrich Reissdorf was supplying 5 of them. The normal working day in the brewery lasted for up to 16 hours.Hermann Josef Reissdorf slept at night in one of the few undestroyed areas in the brewery on old hop bags. Unfortunately the reconstruction had some setbacks, such as threats of arrest and house arrest by the English Occupation. But a little luck and some fate helped overcome the setbacks and all the hard work was rewarded. Already in May 1946 the brewery was able to bottle beer again.The Vorwährungszeit starting in October of 1946 however made ingridients scarce. Due to the lack of fine ingridients breweries developed "Ersatz Biere".
These replacement beers were called “Hopfenblümchen” or "Gerstenstroh”, the Reissdorf beer line of these was called "Colonia-Quell". During this time breweries succeeded in upgrading to better quality equipment again. The English Occuptaion did not allow the production of "Vollbier" (Full Beer) at this time. This allowed breweries from other zones to bring their beers in the Cologne area. Because of these regulations only a few breweries remained in Cologne.
These regulations finally changed on June 20th 1948 and ended the dark chapter in German brewing history. A new, strong Deutsche mark was served a foundation and engine for the further development of Brauerei Heinrich Reissdorf.
Picture: Delivery trucks in 1950.
From this point forward the city Cologne had a new life, the debris was to a large extent removed, Ford built cars again and FC Cologne won its first game. The former Cologne mayor Konrad von Adenauer became first Federal Chancellor and in the year 1950 Cologne celebrated its 1900 year old city anniversary.
