The Gerlach Family

The family has been documented in Lübbecke since the early 17th century.

Eduard Gerlach was a trained pharmacist. In 1868, he took over his father’s long-established general store and expanded it to include a drugstore. There, he sought a practical solution for protecting feet from sores and blisters. After several years of research and experimentation, he succeeded. In 1882, he launched the world’s first industrially manufactured foot care cream under the name “E. Gerlach’s Praeservativcreme.” This laid the foundation for the globally successful family business “Gehwol.”

In 1875, Eduard Gerlach had a stately residential and commercial building constructed on the south side of Lange Straße, modeled after Berlin architecture. Numerous tasks, including the plastering of the facade, were carried out at the time by craftsmen from Berlin. The ironwork also came from Berlin. It had to be transported by horse-drawn carts from Kirchlengern to Lübbecke, as there was no rail connection here yet.

When the residents of Lübbecke were given the opportunity to purchase family plots at the new cemetery in 1839, the Gerlach family was one of the first to take advantage of this opportunity.

Another highly respected figure in Lübbecke was the postmaster Friedrich Ludwig Gerlach. He was a farmer, treasurer, tax collector, moneylender, bankruptcy trustee, and innkeeper all rolled into one. He was the grandfather of Eduard Gerlach, the druggist and founder of Gehwol. His gravestone, a stele featuring a butterfly, is one of the oldest gravestones in the cemetery.