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The mountains of Rhoen were a poor region of Germany at the turn of the century. Most of the people living there were farmers, the land was not particularly fertile, and many farm families supplemented their income by working for the Rhine river textile manufactures.

    It was during this period that Adolf Helmbold took the initial steps of starting his own textile mill. He was born on the 18th of September in 1872, the son of a small farmer. As a young man,  he attended the weaving school in Chemnitz, Germany where he received his first formal training in textile manufacturing. After having completed his schooling, Adolf worked in several textile mills along the Rhine river. Although he was offered several well paying jobs due to his education and experience, he decided to go back to the small Rhoen-village of Oberweid, his hometown.

    It was here at Oberweid that he founded the A. Helmbold Weaving Company on
January first of the year 1900. In the beginning, linens and other clothing textiles were manufactured on manually operated looms. At the start of the century, as mechanization evolved in the textile weaving business, Adolf Helmbold purchased several mechanically operated looms between the years of 1905 and 1910. They were purchased second hand and driven by power generated from a nearby water mill.

    The first mohair and wool fabrics were manufactured by A. Helmbold Company during these early years. These fabrics were distributed within Germany as well as exported to neighboring countries. In 1910 Adolf rented a former Goblin-Tapestry mill where the looms were driven by a gasoline engine, which allowed him  not only to better the quality of the fabrics being produced, but also to increase the production of Mohair fabrics.