In 1908, Hermann Gebauer founded "Mechanische Weberei Altstadt GmbH (MEWA)" with 20 employees in Ostritz-Altstadt near Görlitz in Saxony, which initially produced cleaning cloths for cleaning machines and systems. The company founder had the idea of not only producing and supplying cleaning cloths, which were needed in large quantities to remove grease and oil from machines, as a service provider for the rapidly growing industrial plants, but also to wash them after use and deliver them back to the plants. The idea caught on. Large companies such as Siemens, AEG, Bayer, Henschel and the Reichsbahn took advantage of the offer. Hermann Gebauer set up his own laundries in the 1920s and 1930s. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, MEWA employed 1,200 people in 14 companies. After the end of the war, Gebauer rebuilt the largely destroyed branches in Munich, Neu-Isenburg, Mönchengladbach, Stuttgart and Hamburg from Nuremberg. As early as the 1950s, Gebauer was able to offer its customers the usual service again with 400 employees. MEWA cleaning cloths were now woven in Hamelin, Lower Saxony.

After the death of the company founder in 1953, his wife Charlotte Gebauer initially took over the company. In 1962, Käthe Draub, the widow of his son Werner Gebauer, who had died during the war, became managing director. She was also the one who moved the administrative headquarters from Hamelin to Wiesbaden in 1965 and expanded the company's range to include workwear in 1968. This marked the beginning of the industrial processing of textiles. In 1982, the company moved into its own modern administration building on John-F.-Kennedy-Straße in Wiesbaden. In 1974, MEWA founded a site in Belgium, followed by Austria in 1975 and France in 1978.

Since 1979, the third generation has been at the helm of the company with the granddaughter of the company founder, Gabriele Gebauer, and her husband Rolf Beisse. In 2014, they retired from the business and moved to the Supervisory Board and Board of Trustees. The new Management Board is now made up of the heads of the Group's divisions, Jürgen Gerdum, Michael Kümpfel, Bernhard Niklewitz and Ulrich Schmidt. Today, the company is active in the product areas of workwear, cleaning cloths, foot and oil collection mats, washroom services and articles for occupational safety. The range of services still includes the provision, delivery, collection and care of textiles as well as their maintenance. 4,900 employees serve over 172,000 companies in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, the Netherlands and Hungary.