Post mill Dornum

Post mill Dornum
Post mill Dornum
Location and history
Coordinates	53 ° 38 '46 "  N , 7 ° 26' 0"  E Coordinates: 53 ° 38 '46 "  N , 7 ° 26' 0"  E
Location	Germany  Lower Saxony Aurich district Dornum
Built	1626
Shut down	1962
Status	Mill technology available and functional
technology
use	Rye mill
Grinder	1 shotgun
drive	Windmill
Windmill type	Post mill stand mill
Wing type	Sail gate wing
Number of wings	4th
Tracking	Codend
Website	[1]

The post mill in Dornum in the Aurich district was built in 1626, making it the oldest surviving windmill in East Frisia . It was created during the Thirty Years War , shortly after the troops of Count von Mansfeld had occupied the county of East Friesland (1622-1624). It is not known whether a previous mill may have been damaged and a new one was therefore necessary.

The mill changed owners or lessees very frequently. Little is known about the millers in the first almost one and a half centuries. The initials TAM can be read on the weather vane of the mill with the year 1789 for Tebbe Abraham Mammen, who passed them on to his son Johann Tönjes Mammen 200 years after it was built. However, the son only kept the building for seven years and sold it, including its inventory, four gardens and four Diemat land, to Hermann Gottfried Mammen for 950 thalers. Another four owners are known by 1882. In that year (February 2) the post mill went to Johann Garbrandt Müller, who set up an inn in the mill house. However, Müller got into economic hardship and had to auction the mill. Two other owners are documented for 1893, before Heidine Hagena acquired the Dornumer Mühle a year later. Starting in 1911, she leased the building to Wilhelm Mülder, who finally acquired it as property in 1914. The Mülder family remained the owners until it was closed in 1960, three years after the Mill Closure Act against the ruinous competition among mills was passed. In 1962 the mill became the property of the East Frisian Landscape , which wanted to preserve it as the oldest technical structure of its kind in East Frisia and thus as a cultural monument.

With funds from the East Frisian landscape, the north district , the municipality of Dornum and the Dornum Heimatverein, the structure, which had been changed over the centuries, was returned to its original state. The municipality of Dornum took over the mill from the landscape in 1984, the last change of ownership to date. In 2008 an association for the post mill was founded to support the preservation of the monument. In 2012, after eight months of renovation, during which the mill was completely dismantled and reassembled, the reopening was celebrated.

The mill is made of wood and was built on a trestle or stand made of beams on a hill, which in earlier centuries promised a more flood-proof location. With the help of a codend (East French Low German for "tail"), the mill box (popularly also called "Dufkast", also called dovecote) is turned into the wind. The Dornum post mill has four sail gate wings, in earlier years also four louvre wings, the diameter of which (length) is approximately 20.5 meters.

Visiting the mill is only possible on selected days of the year, mostly on Sundays in the summer months. Members of the Dornumer Mühlenverein then offer guided tours. On the other days, an outside tour is possible.

See also

• List of windmills in East Frisia

Individual evidence

1. ↑ For the history of the mill until it was sold to the East Frisian landscape in 1962, see Paul Otten: Dornum in Past und Gegenwart (second, revised edition), Verlag SKN, Norden 1989, ISBN 3-922365-77-9 , pp. 120 ff.
2. ↑ Gerd Saathoff: Mühlen in Ostfriesland (series of publications Die Leuchtboje , issue 21), Verlag Ostfriesische Landschaft, Aurich 1979, without ISBN, p. 15.