From the USA to Beyond: How Cathedral Stone Took Jahn to the World
Jahn’s “Coming to America” story is a good one, and the story of how we ended up taking Jahn back to the world is a good one too-- because it’s more about Heinz Jahn than it is me. I’ve worked with a number of characters over the years, and, I can safely say, I’ve never met anyone else like him.
Cathedral Stone Products founder Dennis Rude.
We left off the history at our first big break—which was the Ellis Island project. It took a long while, with a lot of trial and error, and successes and failures to develop a wide reputation for the mortars.
In 1983, I was the sole importer of Jahn products into the United States. I used them on my projects in the Washington, DC, Metro area, and I sold the mixes to other masons. Over the first few years, I was working all over—often in consultation with Heinz. The two of us travelled extensively, working in Germany, Holland, Lichtenstein and other places around Europe. He wasn’t a mason, but he was a problem solver and inventor. I remember working on the smokestack linings and buildings for Shell Oil. We set up monitoring systems to measure the size of cracks in the masonry. The goal was to record changes in the void sizes and to determine the time of day that the voids were at their largest size, which would be the perfect time to grout the cracks.
Jahn was just as dedicated to success as I was, but at first, I really struggled to deal with him. He was an ornery guy, and ornery for no reason as far as I could tell. I did not know his story then. I didn’t know his father had been a German soldier and never came back from the war. I didn’t know about his dirt-poor childhood in post-war Germany, playing with empty shell casing among the piles of rubble and brick from bombed out buildings. Maybe that’s why, in addition to his overall orneriness, he was such a suspicious character—he always thought people were trying to get things over on him. He had a dozen or so people in different countries importing his products, but none of those relationships lasted very long.
Working together, Cathedral Stone Products and Jahn developed proprietary techniques that changed the industry.
We made discoveries together—like developing a technique to use military surplus metal detectors to find rusting rebar, and how to properly blend colors to match certain stones. That was a long and painful process. We experimented with pigments, mixing techniques, different machines for blending—Jahn had never put much thought into these concerns. His stock mix was a typical brownstone shade; anything else we had to figure out custom colors. One of the first ones I did was for Yale University—they needed a particular shade of red. I spent a whole weekend blending pigments. I’d mix it up wet, apply a sample and force-dry it with a hair dryer until the color was just right. I delivered it, and Yale went silent on me. I didn’t find out until much later that the color match was a horrible failure. That’s how we learned that speeding up drying with a hair dryer changes the color of the mortar.
Heinz Jahn and his team in Holland.
The Jahn delivery van in Holland.
Jahn knew he’d created a better mousetrap, and he figured the world would beat a path to his door. He put a big picture of the Earth and the words “The World of Jahn” on all his packaging, but the world never really noticed.
I’d been importing for about a dozen years when Jahn broached the idea of my setting up US manufacturing operations. I was demanding so much product he couldn’t keep up. The last straw for him was when I messed up his vacation. Back then, it was common for Holland to pretty much shut down in August, when everyone went on vacation for a few weeks. I had placed an important order, and he said it would have to wait three weeks. I told him in no uncertain terms that that wasn’t going to work. I raised so much hell that Jahn, his son, and a few key guys worked through their vacation. I was a bit impressed with myself for making that happen—I think Heinz was too.
Current mortar mixers were installed in 2020 at the CSP headquarters in Hanover, Maryland.
A short time later, he offered to sell me the formula. The price was high, so we worked out a payment plan. But Jahn being Jahn, he waited until he had the last dime before handing it over. It took 20 years from the day we met, but I finally learned what it was that made this stuff work—and no, I’m not going to tell you what it is. Even sourcing the materials to make the mix here was difficult, and Jahn had reserved the right to test and approve each component, which meant a lot of samples were sent to Holland. We started manufacturing in 2004. Jahn didn’t approve of the mixer I bought—it was twice his capacity. He said I’d never need to make that much at a time, but we’ve outgrown that mixer several times over now.
As we grew, I knew I could take Jahn worldwide, but Heinz fought me on that tooth and nail. I relented on the world and focused on North and South America. Heinz let me have North America, but that was it. I wasn’t going to let South America go. We sent so many contract versions back and forth—I couldn’t guess how many times. He would cross out South America. I would add South America back in. He would cross it out again. And so forth. I think his lawyers finally gave up and let South America slip past Heinz. One day he mentioned a project he was starting at Utrecht University in Brazil. I heard his lawyers tell him that Dennis had Brazil, then I heard him go ballistic. “How did this happen?!” he bellowed.
Cathedral Stone Products has become the world’s source of Jahn products.
I still wanted worldwide rights. The only way I was going to become the world’s source of Jahn products was to buy his company—and I chased after him for a long, long time on that one. He’d agree, and we’d have a deal negotiated, then he would back out at the last minute. He did that four or five times. I finally gave up. Years passed.
One day, his wife got sick. This was hard on everyone. Despite his personality, we had grown close over the years. Our families even travelled and vacationed together often. Her cancer was a blow. We went to visit her—which had nothing to do with business, of course. We’d spent the day at their apartment, and as we got up to leave, Jahn said something in Dutch to his son, who spoke flawless English. “He wants to know if you ever still think about buying the company.”
I didn’t know it then, but Jahn was sick too. Cancer again. In the end, it happened the way it should between friends—no lawyers, just a handshake over dinner. We had the papers drawn up the next day, and it was done.
Dennis & Heinz in Holland.
Heinz underwent 30-some radiation treatments, but they didn’t work. Two years after we signed the contract, I was back in Holland. It was Thanksgiving Day, and I was there to say goodbye. He sold me one of his inventions—a machine to extract salt from masonry walls. I didn’t need it, but I paid him cash for it.
Do you know what that son of a gun did? He sent me a letter that said, “I think you have the impression that because you bought the machine you can use it however you like—not so. I expect royalties.”
He never once stopped being ornery—and I’m glad about that.
