Bricks were already used as a building material by the Sumerians in ancient times. The long service life of brick buildings due to the durability, compressive strength, weather and atmospheric resistance of the material has proven itself over thousands of years. As the raw materials clay, loam and water are available in almost all areas of the world, brick buildings can be found in numerous cultures.

As early as the 16th century, the Counts of Nassau founded their first brickworks in Wiesbaden in the area between today's Kaiser-Friedrich-Platz and Burgstraße. The reason for the state's promotion of the more resistant building material was the numerous fires, such as the conflagration of 1547, which had caused devastating destruction among the buildings in medieval Wiesbaden, most of which were made of wood and clay.

As the first brick factory was operating uneconomically and the energy required for production was being generated by burning large parts of the ducal forests, the lordship decided to lease the brickworks at the beginning of the 17th century. Hans Georg Schramm was recorded as the first tenant. He took over the production of the bricks for 50 guilders a year. However, the duke subsidized the Wiesbaden manufactory as well as his other brickworks through reduced timber prices, so that it is not possible to speak of profitability for the duchy.

Due to the increasing demand for bricks in the expanding Wiesbaden, sales improved over the decades and in 1740 Johann Friedrich Gottron already had to pay a rent of 50 guilders. He increased the productivity of the brickworks and eventually wanted to buy it. The deal failed due to opposition from the duke, who had had two more brickworks built in the meantime to meet the growing demand in the town. Over the years, these brick and roof tile factories were taken over by the Ritzel family, who already ran a brickworks in Bierstadt.

The principle of production has not changed over time. After the raw material has been extracted and prepared, it is shaped, dried and finally fired. Until the 19th century, these steps were largely carried out by hand. Although the industrialization of Europe began with the spread of steam engines in the late 18th century, the automation of brick production only began with the invention of the screw press and the ring kiln by the engineer Friedrich Eduard Hoffmann in the middle of the 19th century. In 1870, standards for the size and composition of bricks were issued in Prussia for the first time in order to achieve more extensive production and easier transportation. Mechanization, which reached its peak with the first fully automated brick production in 1909, led to large industrial companies replacing the smaller brickworks.

The Portland-Zement-Fabrik Dyckerhoff & Söhne in Wiesbaden benefited from the automation of brick production from its foundation in 1864. Between 1872 and 1900, nine ring kilns with 18 chambers each were built, with a daily output of 60 to 65 tons per kiln. However, the company did not use the technology for brick production. Instead, the process was used in the production of cement. Nevertheless, this development contributed to the decline of the Wiesbaden brickworks in the 20th century, as concrete increasingly competed with brick as a building material.

The construction of the spa facilities, the first hotels and the Kurhaus (Kurhaus, old) in 1810 in the immediate vicinity of the original production sites led to the closure of the brickworks in the new city center. This increased the importance of the brickworks in the now incorporated districts. Until the beginning of the 20th century, for example, the Bücher brickworks, which closed in 1904, and Ritzel, which was relocated to Igstadt in 1905, were of considerable economic importance for Bierstadt. In the area of today's Waldstraße, at the Kahlemühle and at the former railroad station in Dotzheim as well as in Schierstein, numerous ring kilns were built due to the proximity to clayey soils, in which companies such as Linnenkohl, Nicolei-Rossel or Hotter produced the bricks for the Wiesbaden buildings from the Historicism period.

Around 1900, there were 22 brickworks and ring kilns in the Wiesbaden city area alone. During the First World War and the subsequent economic crises, traditional companies such as Beckel (on the site of today's Hessian Main State Archives) on Mosbacher Berg, or Peters in Schierstein (today the street name "An Peters Ziegelei" still commemorates the company) had to cease production.

In the years of reconstruction after the Second World War, however, the ten or so intact Wiesbaden brickworks experienced a final upswing. Paul Schillo even reactivated a disused brickworks in the 1950s. However, due to the replacement of bricks by more modern building materials such as pumice, lime sand and aerated concrete blocks as well as concrete, all the factories were eventually forced to close.

On July 17, 1968, the brickworks on Erich-Ollenhauer-Straße between Biebrich and Dotzheim, founded by the Schauss brothers in 1884 and later taken over by the Speicher family who had married into the family, ceased operations. Only a post in the gateway to the factory, which was demolished in 1970, still reminds us of the last brickworks in Wiesbaden and the long tradition of brick production here.