Herrenhaus Innerfahrafeld

The former manor house of the Furthof file factory stands in the village of Furthof, part of Hohenberg in Lower Austria. Built as the Hammerherrenhaus, it once belonged to Jakob Fischer, who turned an old hammer mill into a file-making site in 1801. His son Anton took over in 1836, keeping production entirely by hand despite pressure to modernise. By 1872 steam hammers and English-made machines had arrived, yet the works still faced competition and labour disputes. After the Böhlerwerke took control in 1899, Furthof became the group’s sole file producer, reaching three million files a year by 1907. The building is now the only surviving structure from those decades of industrial activity. The house is worth seeing for its place in the story of Austrian industry. It shows how a small village workshop grew into a factory that shaped regional wages and trade. The Fischer family’s stubborn hand-forging methods clashed with later mechanisation, yet the site kept pace with new furnaces and hardening baths. After the Second World War the Russians ran the works at high output with little investment, leaving only the empty manor when production finally closed in 1982. Its survival marks the end of an era when files from Furthof were known across the empire. Visitors find a plain two-storey building with simple stone walls and rectangular windows. The roof is pitched, covered in dark tiles, and the main entrance sits on the long side facing the road. Inside, only a few original doors and floors remain, their worn planks showing decades of use. Outside, the surrounding meadows and distant hills give a quiet setting far from the noise of the old forges. The empty rooms echo the building’s past without any displays or signs, letting the structure itself speak of craft and change.