Blechhammer (Bodenwoehr)

Tin hammer Bodenwohr municipality Coordinates: 49 ° 16 ′ 45 ″  N , 12 ° 19 ′ 31 ″  E
Height :	378 m above sea level NN
Residents :	793  (May 25 1987)
Location of Blechhammer in Bavaria
Tin Hammer (2017)

Blechhammer is a district of the municipality of Bodenwöhr in the Upper Palatinate district of Schwandorf .

geography

On the cut-off date of the census on May 25, 1987 Blechhammer had 793 inhabitants in 205 buildings with living space or 340 residential units. Blechhammer is located on the north bank of the Hammersee , about 1.5 kilometers northeast of Bodenwöhr. In the meantime, there is the only train station in the municipality of Bodenwöhr (Bodenwöhr Nord), which is served by the Upper Palatinate Railway and individual regional express trains in both directions every hour on the Schwandorf – Furth im Wald railway line . The journey time to Schwandorf is 10 to 15 minutes, to Cham 20 to 25 minutes and to Furth im Wald about 40 minutes.

history

Hammer mill and hammer mill settlement

Blechhammer was founded in 1760 by the smelting works chief administrator Johann Joseph Arnold near the Warbrucker Weiher (formerly also Marbrucker or Mayrbrucker Weiher). Arnold had a sheet metal hammer mill built here with a tinplate factory. This tin hammer hut was 67 ¾ feet long and 59 feet wide, including the wheel room under the roof of the hut . The height of the building was 12½ feet (19½ feet at the Radstube). The traditional measurements are based on what is known as the “Münchner Maß”, after which a foot corresponds to a length of 29.185 cm. In the hut there was a grate for the fresh fire (also known as a tin fire) and a coal bar for the fuel required.

To accommodate the workers and their families, a "Blechhammerleutewohnhaus" with 12 rooms and 12 chambers was built. A cattle shed was built next to the house. The builder of the house was the master mason Johann Andre Ippisch from Rötz . The other buildings on the Blechhammer were built by master bricklayer Johann Peter Albl from Bruck . All carpentry work was done by the master carpenter Georg Heinl from Bodenwöhr. The tinplate factory also included a tin house built in 1760, which stood about 80 m above the Hammerweiherdamm between the pond and the road to Blechhammer. There the produced sheet was tinned .

Usually seven workers worked at the tin fire, where the iron was forged into sheet metal. They were the sheet metal master, the equalizer, the stove smith, the Urweller (a hammer smith who had to give the master a hand), the apprentice and two cork lifters. The term "Kölbel" or "Stürzel" was used to describe corrugated pieces of iron that were cut off from the forged bar in order to straighten them and turn them into sheets. Most of the “tin people” came from Leupoldsdorf in the Bayreuth margraviate . Before the iron sheet could be tinned, it had to be smoothed (straightened), trimmed and stained. 100 plates were always processed at the same time and then coated with tin or a tin-lead alloy. The pewter required for this came from Stadtamhof , fine English pewter was delivered in blocks from Hamburg, the cooking copper came in pounds from Regensburg.

The "Bodenwöhrer Blech" quickly became very popular and was packed in barrels, etc. a. Delivered to Straubing , Regensburg and Ulm , but also to Hamburg , Vienna , Salzburg , Trieste and Venice . The barrels for shipping came from the Bodenwoehrer cooper Christoph Frimberger. Remnants that were not suitable for tinning were processed into furnace tubes by local tube makers and mainly sold to dealers from Schönheide (Saxony). All products manufactured in the factory were marked with a branding iron with the Bavarian coat of arms.

In 1768 the order to stop work on the tin hammer was issued due to a lack of wood and water. As a result, operations came to a standstill at times. The applications of two private interested parties to lease the Blechhammer were rejected by the Munich court chamber on June 23, 1770 because of their Protestant faith . For this reason, the Bodenwöhr mining authority again operated the sheet metal hammer mill itself. However, it was shut down again together with the tin-plating mill in 1772, but after a while it started up again as a fresh fire smithy. A major fire on the night of September 11th to 12th, 1777 completely destroyed the sheet metal works. The electoral mining college then demanded construction cost proposals from the Bodenwöhr mining office for the restoration of the destroyed buildings. On the basis of these cost estimates, the college ordered on November 27, 1777 the structural restoration of the burned Blechhammerhütte. In 1778/79 the tin hammer lay idle again and only served as a store of material supplies of sheet metal, tin, copper and furnace tubes. In 1780 the work was resumed, but in 1794 - after only 34 years of existence - the company had to admit defeat to foreign competitors and finally cease operations.

The "border dispute at the tin hammer"

Just one year after the founding of the Blechhammer, a violent dispute broke out over the “parish boundaries” between the parishes of Penting and Neuenschwand, who met each other. The first pamphlet came from the pastor in Neuenschwand on August 30th. Due to the counterclaim from Penting, the Reverend Consistory issued the order to the Bruck priest on March 1, 1762: to receive the residents of the Blechhammer because of Easter confession and communion in the church, and until the outcome of the dispute, all other parish functions there also to get, however. This dispute continued until 1779 before the parties reached an agreement and left the Blechhammer settlement to the pastor of Bruck.

The border of the Postlohe and with it that of the forest district Taxöldern has always been close to the Tin Hammer. In the north-west it was determined by the former Bohemian main road from Nittenau via Bruck to Neunburg, which remained so when the forest and hunting area Taxöldern left the Bodenwöhr mining authority in 1739. Thus the residents of Blechhammer - like the rest of the population of Bodenwöhr - would have had to be parish off to Neuenschwand.

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  Memorial stone 250 years of Blechhammer (2010)

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  Divers band (2010)

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  Tin Hammer (2017)

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  Tin Hammer (2017)

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  Tin Hammer (2017)

Development in the 19th century

Already at the time of the hammer mill there was a beer tavern for the hammer mill in the settlement. Since there was a lot of through traffic between the Buch-Erzhäuser mining area and between Neunburg vorm Wald and the Bodenwöhr ironworks, this was also popular with truckers. The tavern had various tenants who had to pay taxes to the cash register for every "worn out" pail of beer. In 1850, the then tenant Margarethe Lang built a summer house and a bowling alley.

In 1806 the miller Georg Oettl from Wenigrötz tried to buy the former sheet metal hammer, which he wanted to convert into a grain mill. His request of December 10, 1806 was not granted. Rather, the "Bergärar" converted the tin hammer building into a mill itself. In 1813 the grinding mill was relocated from the previous hammer mill in Bodenwöhr to Blechhammer. This grinding mill had an undershot wooden water wheel . In 1816, one of the existing cattle sheds was designated as a cattle shed for the grinding mill.

Work of the Divers family

The further development of the Blechhammer district is inextricably linked with the name of the Taucher family. This family was an old family of foresters from the Upper Palatinate who worked for several generations in the Treswitzer and later in the Brucker Forest. Wilhelm Taucher sen. was born on September 8, 1828 in Bergham (now Nittenau ) and initially worked as a royal forest assistant. In 1860 his resignation from the forest service was approved. By means of a swap agreement, he acquired the Bergschenke am Blechhammer with the subsequent land and converted it into an inn with an inn. With the expansion of the Royal Bavarian Eastern Railway , which passed the Blechhammer, many travelers came to the town. In addition, the railway line could be used for timber transport.

Gradually divers expanded his properties by exchanging and buying. In 1875 he leased the inn to Josef Mayerhofer. He himself bought forests and timber in order to set up a steam saw on one of his properties. This sawmill remained in the family's possession until 1909, but from 1898 it was leased to Hans Arnold from Bayreuth.

Diver's son Max Joseph, who had already received the concession to run the inn in 1879, acquired further ownership of the Blechhammer and made various improvements to the inn. Until 1889 he also operated the firewood trade at the Blechhammer. Between 1901 and 1906 he owned a large quarry with a crushing plant in Erzhäuser . In 1907 he was the owner of the local cement goods factory. He also owned a quarry with a crushed stone works near Viechtach . After working as a member of the board of directors of the Bavarian hard stone industry and tenant of the restaurant in Eichstätt station, 14 years later he opened a commission business for coffee, tea, cocoa and tobacco products in Blechhammer. Later he also offered grain, potatoes, fish, hay, straw, wild berries and poultry. His son Wilhelm Taucher jun. In 1924 briefly owned a specialty and haberdashery shop with an attached lemonade factory. This chapter in Upper Palatinate's economic history ended with his death in 1957.

The Second World War and its consequences

During the Second World War, Blechhammer was a so-called "forest warehouse" for the armaments industry. In 1943 the Messerschmitt-Werke relocated their aircraft production to the middle of a forest area near the village. Forced laborers, mostly Soviet prisoners of war, had to assemble Messerschmitt Bf 109 aircraft . The completed aircraft were brought over a forest path to the loading station in Blechhammer and then transported away. The camp was the target of Allied bombing attacks several times in the last weeks of the war.

From 1946 refugees, mostly from the Sudetenland, were housed in the forest camp. The information about the number of residents varies between 400 and 700. The barracks in which the people lived were five by ten meters in size and were used by up to seven people. There was also a school, an inn and a small church. In 1954 the last family left the forest camp. Today only a few traces remember u. a. a former transformer house, now used by the forestry authorities, to the warehouse. A hut used as a storage room stands on the foundation of the former church. A few ditches in the forest can also be seen that once housed assembly lines for the assembly parts from aircraft production.

The diving band

The diving band 2010 inside

The builder of the chapel named after him in Blechhammer was Max Joseph Taucher. With the construction, he implemented his mother Anna's heartfelt desire to build her own house of worship in the spacious property at Hammerweiher. The diving chapel was built from 1895 to 1896 in the neo-Gothic style and on August 9, 1896 by Dr. Leitner, Vicar General of the Diocese of Regensburg, inaugurated. The chapel is dedicated to the "Sorrowful Mother of God" and "Saint Anna". It has 40 seats, an altar and two bells. Anna Taucher could not live to see the realization of her wish, because she died on January 14th, 1896 in Regensburg. After the completion of the chapel, services were held here on all Sundays and public holidays, which were held by clergy of the Carmelite Order from Schwandorf and a Franciscan priest from Pfreimd. Parish fair was always celebrated on August 1st.

The auction of the Diver's property including the chapel on April 26, 1910 brought it into the possession of the Bayerische Vereinsbank . In 1914 the chapel was donated to the Catholic Church Foundation in Bruck. Their value was then estimated at 2000 RM. Structural changes in their environment later led to an impairment of the historical image. After the parish church in Bodenwöhr was rebuilt (1951), the diving chapel fell back to its original owner.

Church services were suspended during National Socialism and World War II. Masses were not celebrated again until 1946, initially according to the Greek Catholic rite for the inmates of the Ukrainian camp established in Blechhammer during the war. Since May 1946 it has again been the spiritual center for the local Catholic residents. The privately owned divers chapel is a listed building.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Official directory for Bavaria, territorial status: May 25, 1987, Munich, 1991 , p. 275
2. ↑ Bavarian State Office for Statistics and Data Processing (Ed.): Official local directory for Bavaria, territorial status: May 25, 1987 . Issue 450 of the articles on Bavaria's statistics. Munich November 1991, DNB  94240937X , p. 275 ( digitized version ).

References

• Wilhelm Blab: History and cultural development of a Bavarian mountain and hut town , Bodenwöhr, 1960
• Ignatz von Voith: The royal mining and steelworks office Bodenwöhr , 1840 pdf
• Chronicle 250 years of Blechhammer , Bodenwöhr, 2010

Web links

Commons : Blechhammer  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files