Franz Köcheln's oil mill

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The oil mill of Francis Simmer was a windmill that line the Stephanitorsbollwerk west front of the old town of Bremen was. The remains of the foundations made of large-format bricks were discovered during an emergency excavation in 2012 . The mill, which belonged to Franz Daniel Köcheln (* June 30, 1778; † August 21, 1864) stood in the area of ​​the Weserbahnhof , built between 1857 and 1859, in front of the former gates of the Stephaniviertel in the far west of the old town. It processed rapeseed into rapeseed oil from 1810 to before 1863 .

Dendrochronological examinations on a post showed that it was felled in 1756. Other oak beams that had been torn out unnoticed could be dated to 1532. They probably belonged to the Stephani bulwark. Finally, it was possible to prove that the foundation belonged to the oil mill of Franz Köcheln, who had received his building license in 1810 during Napoleon's rule over Bremen from 1806 to 1813. The application and other files related to the mill are preserved in the State Archives . According to the application, there was only "one completely missed facility to Wolfskuhle" in Huckelriede until the Köcheln mill was built . Should be processed rapeseed whose oil to Holland should be executed. Since no master builder dared to tackle this innovative work in Bremen, in 1810 Köcheln hired a master miller from Groningen who brought his assistants with him, of whom Köcheln highlighted a certain Berend Erling (* 1780) as “extremely skilled”. Bremer were only used for the rough work.

Erling stayed in Bremen and supervised the mill operations. Since this position offered him no livelihood, he also optimized and repaired other Bremen mills. The Bremen carpentry , however, tried to forbid him to work and summoned him to appear on September 23, 1828. But Erling refused and went before the Senate. Köcheln issued him a certificate for this, and twelve Bremen millers and mill owners certified Erling to do better and cheaper work than the members of the Bremen carpentry workshop. On October 8th, the Senate named Berend Erling "Freymeister", with which he was able to work without the guild . In 1832 he bought the site of the Giephaus Bastion , and on July 9 of the next year a building application for a 27 m high cap windmill followed , which was completed in 1833 and which he moved into in 1850. His great-great-great-grandson Berend Erling works at the Rolandmühle in Bremen today .

In the Bremen address book from 1858 the mill appears with the address “Beim Bindwams. Simmer, Fr., Oelmühle ”. Today's road at Beim Bindwams takes a different course. The entry “Koecheln, Fr. D., Kfm. U. Dispacheur, Comptoir Wall 39 g. “So Köcheln was a merchant and dispatcher , so average commissioner, with which he was responsible for the property settlement of ship accidents.

But new upstream buildings of the Weserbahnhof disrupted the wind currents, so that the number of revolutions of the mill blades fell sharply. The building, which was no longer profitable, was demolished in the 1860s. This probably happened before 1863, but the mill is still indicated in a cadastral plan in 1901.

The brick foundation ring, which was excavated in 2012 and was preserved up to a height of over 2 m, had a diameter of 12 m and was octagonal on the outside. Inside there was another cylindrical foundation. The bricks were quite large and measured 28.5 by 12 by 9.5 cm. A row of post foundations made of pine and spruce ran through the interior, which was the foundation of the stamping mill. The foundation was destroyed after a few months, but a three-dimensional model was able to be completed by the Denkmal3D company . The mill had eight stamping mills with proposal / lookup block and pile-driving rig and release ram on. Lateral foundation projections were interpreted as fire places (suggestion / reference), the massive, slightly decentralized wall cylinder as the substructure of a pan mill for two wheels.

literature

  • Dieter Bischop : Franz Köcheln's oil mill in front of Bremen's gates , in: Historische Archäologie 2/2014 (Vers. 2 - 02.26.2016), pp. 47–52 ( online ).
  • Dieter Bischop: Franz Köcheln's oil mill in front of the gates of Bremen , in: Messages from the German Society for Archeology of the Middle Ages and Modern Times 28 (2014) 47–52. ( online )

Coordinates: 53 ° 4 '58.2 "  N , 8 ° 47' 11.8"  E