Tanner mill

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The Gerbermühle (2017), view from the south. Left, sand-colored plastered, the older part of the ensemble, next to it the additions of the 21st century

The Gerbermühle in Frankfurt am Main , District Oberrad , a building on the eastern edge of the city, on the left is the Main river near the district Kaiserlei ( Offenbach am Main nearby) barrage Offenbach and opposite the Frankfurt's harbor area. Probably built around 1520 on the banks of the Weschbach, it was originally used to grind grain, and has been a popular destination as a restaurant since the beginning of the 20th century. The Gerbermühle is because of their literary-historical importance it as a result of visits by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe gained in the years 1814 and 1815, when cultural monument under preservation of the state of Hesse .

History of origin

Wayside shrine from 1519 with Pietà

The tanner mill, built as a watermill, was part of the Wasserhof, a fortified estate in the swampy area, criss-crossed by many water veins, between the river Main in the north and the village of Oberrad in the south. The fact that the farm was equipped with a mill suggests that the fields belonging to the estate produced enough income to justify running their own flour mill. The water court was part of a Lehnguts originally in 1311 as a "curia [...] allodium sita in villa Roden prope Frankenvort" (yard or Allod - free property - located in the village wheel near Frankfurt) by Philipp von Falkenstein and Philip of Münzenberg was established. In the same year, they enfeoffed a von Ovenbach (→ Offenbach ) family from Frankfurt with the court. The owners extended the right of inheritance in the fiefdom to female descendants of the feudal takers ("Frauenlehen"); the income from the Wasserhof secured the livelihood of the unmarried daughters of the fiefdoms.

For the years 1411, 1459 and 1463, Gipel von Ovenbach is mentioned in a document as a feudal recipient. His successor was Henne Koll in 1470 by marrying Anna von Ovenbach . Their daughter Elizabeth of Ovenbach, which succeeded the Erblehens, married Hermann von Strahlenberg, whereby the Court, including lands in 1545 in the possession of the Strahlenberger came that the Römerberg the house Strahlenberg inhabited. From then on, the estate was known as the Strahlberger Hof . The estate is said to have consisted of a manor house with five outbuildings, surrounded by a fortification wall and a moat. It is not known when the mill was built, based on bricks from the years 1519/20 that were found during renovations, it is assumed that the mill was built during this time. Also standing next to the building stone shrine is adorned the year 1519 and the name Koll and a family crest.

In 1601 the legacy of Wasserhof and Mühle passed to the Archbishopric of Mainz , a strategically disadvantageous development for the city of Frankfurt. In earlier centuries the Frankfurt council had always tried to keep the numerous fortified manors surrounding the city under its own control and in the possession of trustworthy old citizens. A change of ownership to a competing or opposing party would have restricted the freedom of movement of the Frankfurt Council by occupying the courts with opposing troops as a potential threat. However, the Wasserhof was never occupied by Mainz troops.

In the 17th century the mill served as a paint and grinding mill; there, among other things, copper paint was ground. From 1688 to 1723 the mill from Kunigunde von Holzhausen was leased to the Lorraine tanner Nicolas Coudos, who ran his business here. This gave the mill its name, which has been preserved to this day - although the property was initially used again as a grain mill after a renovation and expansion, the name Gerbermühle was retained. The leather merchant Johann Georg Dörr built an additional fulling mill in 1760.

After the Frankfurt merchant and banker Johann Jakob Willemer leased the mill property in 1785 and had it converted into a summer residence, all commercial use was suspended until his death in 1836. The city of Frankfurt had owned the Gerbermühle since 1803. In 1843, the citizen of Offenbach am Main, Franz Alexius Josseaux, received permission to set up a paint factory in the tanner's mill. From 1863 to 1882 here lived the writer Malvina of Humbracht with her sister Elvira . In 1896 the water yard was the victim of a major fire. At the end of the 19th century the Gerbermühle could no longer be leased, and the city of Frankfurt did nothing to counter its rapid decline.

Goethe and Marianne von Willemer

View of Frankfurt from the Gerbermühle. Dedication sheet from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe, a friend of Johann Jakob von Willemer, visited the Willemer family in the Gerbermühle for the first time on September 15, 1814 and several times in this year and the following year, 1815. During this time he got to know Marianne von Willemer , who had been the businessman's “foster daughter” since 1800, whom he had married in 1814 - a short time after Goethe's first meeting with Marianne.

An intimate relationship developed between Goethe, who was already 65 years old at the time, and Marianne, who was around 35 years younger than him, which also bore fruit in creative terms. This was expressed in the book Suleika, part of the work West-Eastern Divan published by Goethe in 1819, by the fact that it contained three songs from the pen of Marianne: Highly delighted in your love , what does movement mean and oh, about your moist ones Swing . Goethe took it in tacitly, the true authorship only became known posthumously .

Goethe also celebrated his 66th birthday in the Gerbermühle during a stay from August 12th to September 8th. He wrote his poem Gingo biloba shortly afterwards on September 27th (and, as we know today, dated it back to the 15th of the month) and sent it to Marianne von Willemer, decorated with two Ginkgo leaves. The original script of the poem, which was written after the last meeting of the two at Heidelberg Schlossberg, is now in the Goethe Museum in Düsseldorf.

In addition, it is often claimed that the scene in front of the gate from Goethe's work Faust I with the well-known sentence "Here I am a person, here I can be!" Is caused by a walk from the Sachsenhausen Mühlberg, where the Willemers owned a garden house (which today Willemer-Häuschen ), is understandable about the Gerbermühle and that Goethe was inspired to these verses by this experience of nature around the year 1774. An indication of this is the mention of the water yard, to which the Gerbermühle belonged, in this scene of Faust I, also known as the “Easter Walk”. There, the dialogue between the walkers takes place: “But we want to walk to the mill.” - “I advise You to go to the Wasserhof. "

The Gerbermühle as an excursion restaurant

Gerbermühle beer garden, 2018

After letting the mill fall into disrepair for many years due to the lack of tenants, the city of Frankfurt finally renovated it from 1904 onwards and used it as a restaurant with a “Goethe room”. Since then, the Gerbermühle has been a popular destination again.

In 1930 a memorial plaque was placed on the building, the inscription of which alludes to both the original purpose of the building and the person whose visits to the Gerbermühle have made it well known to this day:

The mill is idle, the wheel fell asleep,
His name only goes in the house.
Who eternalized every place that
he entered: So you would be.

Frankfurt-Oberrad was in World War II in the air raids on Frankfurt destroyed in 1944 to 90 percent, including most of the building Wasserhofs. The tanner mill, of which only the foundation walls were left, was only rebuilt in the 1970s with only limited resources and operated again as an inn. Today, near the Gerbermühle, there is a small landing stage of the same name, where Frankfurt excursion boats dock or at the height of which they turn - in front of the neighboring Offenbach lock and barrage .

Logo of the Gerbermühle

On December 31, 2001, the now dilapidated tanner mill was closed by the owner, the former boss of the Henninger brewery , Werner Kindermann. In the summer of 2005, a temporary garden restaurant with 500 seats went into operation. Extensive renovations and extensions were carried out by 2007 according to plans by Jochem Jourdan ; afterwards a restaurant and a hotel in an upscale country house style with 19 rooms were opened. The Gerbermühle has been owned by Micky Rosen and Alex Urseanu since 2016.

literature

Web links

Commons : Gerbermühle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Gerbermühle on the page denkxweb.de - Cultural Monuments in Hessen (accessed on April 16, 2017)
  2. ^ Rudolf Maxeiner: Rural life in old Frankfurt, p. 78. Waldemar Kramer publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1979. ISBN 3-7829-0210-6
  3. ↑ Quoted from Pehl: When they once protected the city, p. 63
  4. ^ A b "Wasserhof, City of Frankfurt am Main". Historical local dictionary for Hessen. (As of June 23, 2012). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
  5. ↑ . Cf. Heinrich von Nathusius : The Münzenberger so-called Alt-Strahlenberger inheritance and female fief to Oberrad, Gebrüder Knauer, Frankfurt 1900
  6. ↑ a b Pehl: When they once protected the city - Frankfurts fortified manors, p. 65
  7. ^ A b c Frank Berger, Christian Setzepfandt : 101 non-places in Frankfurt . Darin, p. 198 f .: Chapter Inconspicuous - The water court . Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt 2011. ISBN 978-3-7973-1248-8
  8. ↑ “The importance of the walled courtyards was thought of earlier. The council did not allow the old citizens to sell them to strangers. […] The old citizens who build such courtyards issue insurance letters that their locks should be open to the council and its friends and should never be sold to Ausmärker. ” - The historian Anton Kirchner in his work Geschichte der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, 1807 Quoted from Rudolf Maxeiner, in Ländliches Leben im alten Frankfurt, p. 62. Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1979. ISBN 3-7829-0210-6
  9. ↑ a b Pehl: When they once protected the city - Frankfurts fortified manors, p. 69
  10. ↑ a b c Björn Wissenbach: Radrundweg um Sachsenhausen, p. 3. Volume four of the building block series , published by the city of Frankfurt am Main, city planning office. Frankfurt, 2008
  11. ↑ Green belt leisure map . 7th edition. Environment Agency of the City of Frankfurt am Main, 2011
  12. ↑ In the replica from 1964 that was built in the same place after the destruction of the Willemer House in World War II , a public Goethe memorial was set up. The neighboring Mariannenstrasse also points to the history of the place .
  13. ↑ Faust I. sorted by chapters, on sciencesoft.at, chapter Before the gate, line 810 f .; Retrieved February 9, 2012
  14. ↑ The history of the Gerbermühle . ( gerbermuehle.de [accessed June 26, 2018]).

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 21 ″  N , 8 ° 43 ′ 17 ″  E