Gaisthal hammer
The Gaisthaler Hammer is a former iron hammer mill in the Upper Palatinate Forest in the Schönsee town of Gaisthalerhammer . The first written mention of it comes from the year 1387. The Gaisthaler Hammer was one of many hammer works in the Upper Palatinate Forest, which many place and house names still remember. The hydropower , the ore deposits and the extensive beech forests made the Upper Palatinate Forest the so-called "Ruhr area of the Middle Ages".
After a heyday in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Gaisthaler Hammer was destroyed in the Thirty Years War . After the war, of the five hammer mills in Schönseer Land, only the Gaisthaler hammer was rebuilt and experienced another heyday in the 18th century under the new owners of Grünerwald. Right next to today's State Road 2159 between Oberviechtach and Schönsee was an eight-meter-high blast furnace with two bellows, a foundry and a pile. The Gaisthal house names, Balgmacher and Modelbauer, are still reminiscent of branches of trade that were associated with hammer mills. In 1878 the blast furnace was shut down. New methods of smelting iron and the use of coke instead of charcoal had made the business unprofitable. The existing water power was still used and operated a grinding and sawmill; the current sawmill is independent of water power. An inn - today's Gaisthaler Hammer - was set up. After this front hammer was bought by the Kommerzienrat Carl Wolf from Zwickau in 1914, the Bussas family - coming from East Prussia - took over the Gaisthaler Hammer guest house and farm.
literature
- Teresa Guggenmoos: City of Schönsee , Verlag der Stadt Schönsee 1981
- Norbert Hirschmann and Edith Benner: The Upper Palatinate, a European iron center (600 years of the Great Hammer cleaning) , series of publications by the Mining and Industry Museum in East Bavaria, Volume 12/1, 1987
- Gertrud Benke: Heimat Oberpfalz , Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 1965