Historic mill of Sanssouci

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Historic mill of Sanssouci

The historic mill of Sanssouci is the reconstruction of a Dutch windmill of the Galerieholländer type built between 1787 and 1791 under Friedrich Wilhelm II . It stands a few meters west of the Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam and is known for its predecessor building, around which the legend The Miller of Sanssouci is entwined; the addition "historical" refers to this. Based on this story, she is primarily associated with the Prussian King Friedrich II .

At the end of the Second World War, the wooden mill structure burned down during fighting. After repair work on the stone base in the 1980s, it was rebuilt between 1991 and 1993. The mill building, which is managed by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (SPSG) and is under monument protection, has been operated as a museum by the Mühlenvereinigung Berlin-Brandenburg eV since 1995 .

history

Post mill (first mill)

At the beginning of the 18th century, during the reign of the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I , Potsdam developed into a garrison and royal seat. The associated increase in population made additional mills necessary, as the seven existing windmills were no longer sufficient for the supply. Most of the millers later bought the buildings that the king financially supported. In 1736, Müller Johann Wilhelm Ludewig Grävenitz, also Gräbenitz (* 1709), received permission to build a post windmill on the "desert mountain" of the Bornstedter ridge. The cost of the building, which was built between 1737 and 1739, was around 800 thalers , and the annual rent was 40 thalers. The lease income went to the Potsdam Domain Office and then flowed into the state treasury. In addition, the foundation of the military orphanage, established in 1722, as the owner of the property belonging to the Bornstedt village and crown estate, demanded a lease that Grävenitz refused to pay. The disputes dragged on for years and only ended when the miller no longer had to pay the basic interest himself.

In 1745, Frederick II, who had ruled since 1740, ordered the construction of the Sanssouci summer palace a few meters east of the mill. In addition to the disturbances in the daily mill operation due to the construction work, the miller feared impairments in the wind supply and complained about this to the king during the construction phase. This commissioned the War and Domain Chamber to review the matter and wrote: [...] what kind of wind miller Johann Wilhelm Graebenitz zu Potsdam complains that his wind mill, after our summer palace built there very close to it, is the vineyard with high walls surrounded and tall trees have been planted, had to go quietly for lack of wind, but nevertheless the annual rent had to be paid by him [...] . This dispute later led to the formation of legends. In 1749, Grävenitz received permission to build another mill on the east side of the palace, but it burned down shortly after completion. Thereupon he received 400 thalers from the king for the construction of a new mill on the "Milchow-Wiesen" north of today's Potsdam main station and in 1753 sold the post mill at the castle for 800 thalers to the miller Kalatz, who soon went into debt.

Plan of Sanssouci with three mills on the west side of the palace.
Christian Ludwig Netcke, 1746

In the then rural area around Sanssouci Palace, Frederick II saw the mills as living landmarks of the landscape . Even before the summer palace was built, there were three mills to the west of the building site, and in 1744 he approved two more on the Gallberg, today Mühlenberg, east of the palace. Friedrich II also forbade the relocation of the post mill near the vineyard in 1746, since it served as an ornament to the castle . In 1750 two more post mills were added to the northeast of the Mühlenberg. From 1736 to 1786 the number of Potsdam windmills increased from 7 to 26.

From 1764 Carl Friedrich Vogel (1736–1802) took over the mill operation and, like Grävenitz, complained about the insufficient supply of wind caused by the location of the castle. When the annual lease was waived for him too, he handed over the management to Müller Hering for 45 thalers a year, which brought him another profit. After the death of Frederick II in 1786, he took over the now dilapidated mill himself.

Dutch Windmill (Second Mill)

Friedrich Wilhelm II , who had ruled since 1786, had the old post windmill demolished and a gallery windmill built between 1787 and 1791 based on the Dutch model. The court carpenter Cornelius Wilhelm van den Bosch, also van der Bosch (1736–1789) , who came from a Dutch family, received the order for the new building, which is estimated at 3000 thalers . When van den Bosch fell ill and died of dropsy in 1789, his son Christian Ludwig (1772–1839) took over the work. According to an article by the lawyer and city historian Julius Wilhelm Haeckel (1866–1940), the total construction costs should ultimately have amounted to 24,344 thalers. On January 1, 1791, Vogel put the new mill into operation and again complained to the king that he should be waived the rent because of the impairment. He was then referred to the legal process, which he did not take. When Vogel died in 1802, his widow initially continued to run the mill. Since 1821 she was for sale and in 1825 Friedrich Wilhelm III. offered, but showed no interest. The lease income went to the Kronfideikommisskasse .

The mill and the Swiss house, before 1945
Mill house, south side

After Friedrich Wilhelm IV took office in 1840, the landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné beautified the area around the mill. The landscape design was in connection with a Triumphstrasse planned by the king, but only partially realized, in memory of Friedrich II. Starting from the Triumphtor , east of Sanssouci Park, to the Belvedere on Klausberg , northwest of the park, the mill was to be part of the high road project to be included. In 1841 Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Acquired the mill building through the Prussian Sea Trade , handed it over to the Kronfideikommissfonds and converted the lease into a medieval feudal relationship . The then miller Gottlieb Walsleben now had to pay an annual fee of 200 thalers. When he failed to pay, Friedrich Wilhelm IV gave him notice on April 1, 1843, whereupon Walsleben secretly [left] the working mill at night without turning it off. The successors, Carl August Meyer and the Müller Pahle, or Pohl, were also in the feudal relationship, and they, too, showered the king with complaints.

Since Friedrich Wilhelm IV used Sanssouci Palace as his residence, additional living space and stables had to be created for the keeping of the court. A stable building on the north side, at the foot of the mill, was probably extended between 1839 and 1842 according to a design by Ludwig Persius . The ground floor of the so-called Swiss house served as a horse stable, and in the overhanging timber-framed attic, which was decorated with wood carvings on the gable side, small living rooms were created for the servants. In direct relation to the mill, the mill house inhabited by the miller, also called miller's house, was on the west side. According to a design made by Persius in 1841, Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse converted the building into a staggered assembly in 1847/48. Subsequently, the minister of the royal house Anton zu Stolberg-Wernigerode lived there .

When Prince Wilhelm, who later became Wilhelm I , took over the business of government from his brother in 1858, the mill was shut down and applications from millers for further management were rejected. From 1861 the mill could be visited as a listed museum. In addition to other inventory, there were three grinding courses with baggage, release devices, scales with weights, bag lift, Metzen and vibrating sieves . At the end of the Second World War, the mill building and the Schweizerhaus burned down. On April 27, 1945, a Soviet tank standing between the mill and the castle was hit by a bazooka. In the fighting that followed, the mill caught fire, which also spread to the neighboring Schweizerhaus. Of the destroyed buildings, only the mill was rebuilt.

Reconstruction and use (third mill)

View from the south of the historic mill

Ten years before the 1000th anniversary of the city of Potsdam in 1993, the Chamber of Crafts began in 1983 with the first repair work on the stone mill plinth. On their behalf, the “Production Cooperative Construction” continued the work in 1988, but had to stop it again in 1990 for financial reasons. After the fall of the Wall , the reconstruction could be continued from 1991 with funds from the State of Brandenburg , the North Rhine-Westphalia Foundation and the former Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Potsdam-Sanssouci and ended in April 1993 in the outdoor area.

Today's gallery windmill is a replica of the Dutch mill built between 1787 and 1791. Since the building plans by Cornelius Wilhelm van den Bosch were no longer available, the architects relied on photos and a survey of the mill stump. On behalf of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg , it has been run as a revenue-financed museum by the Mühlenvereinigung Berlin-Brandenburg eV, founded in 1990, since 1995 . A permanent exhibition on mills in Brandenburg and Berlin was set up on the three floors above a museum shop on the ground floor, and on the grinding and classifier floor in the upper area, grain is processed into flour in the museum. The surrounding gallery in the outside area serves as a viewing platform.

Technical data and operation

The mill corresponds to the Dutch construction from around 1800. The wooden mill construction - octagonal stand, rotating hood, mill blades and mill technical fixtures - rests on a brick substructure with a gallery running around it. Due to the 13.41 m high substructure and the 12.37 m high structure, the mill building reaches a height of 25.78 m and 35.45 m to the upper limit of the wing. The boat-shaped hood rests on an iron roller ring. Underneath is the 5.5 m long vane shaft with comb wheel , to which the vane cross with its four 12 m long sail gate wings is attached. The circumferential gallery floor supported by 32 struts serves the miller as a work platform. From here he turns the hood or the wings into the wind with the help of a jeep reel. They move counterclockwise and can reach a working speed of 15 revolutions per minute and a peripheral speed at the wing tips of 67.8  km / h . The wing cross can be stopped via a bar with a chain and rope attached to its end. This so-called seesaw stick protrudes from the back of the mill hood.

Some of the machines inside, powered by wind power, come from other old mills or were newly made according to templates. The function of the single-pass backfill mill corresponds to the operation of a small grain mill at the end of the 19th century. The grain that is delivered reaches the gallery via an elevator winch and from there to the millstones on the fifth floor. On this grinding or stone floor, the grains between the lower, fixed floor stone and the rotor stone rotating on it are crushed to grist or ground to flour at 120 revolutions per minute . A square housing, the bucket, surrounds the millstones, which have a diameter of 1.35 m. The grist is conveyed via the scraper on the outer edge of the runner block to an opening on the edge of the vat, from where it falls through a wooden pipe into the classifier of the "Ascania" type on the fourth floor below, the classifier or flour floor. It is sifted in the two-stage sifter and sorted according to size so that flour, grist and semolina are obtained. The fine flour reaches a sack spout via a flour collecting screw. The coarse components are filled into sacks via a separate sack nozzle and are returned to the grinding or stone floor for further processing with a sack lift. The flours that have been sieved out are then mixed by a mixing screw in the vertical mixer that extends over the fourth and fifth floors. Then the flour is filled into sacks on the sifter base at the discharge funnel. The equipment also includes a grain crusher with flake cylinder and a groats cutter for making baking meal .

Legend

In a reproduction by the historian Franz Kugler from 1856, the legend says that Friedrich II was bothered by the mill because he would have liked to include the square in his park. In other stories, the king took offense at the rattle of the mill wings. When Frederick II called the miller to buy the mill from him, he refused all offers. Thereupon the king is said to have admonished him: Does he know [...] that I can take his mill from him without paying a penny for it? To which the miller replied: Yes, Ew. Your Majesty [...] if it weren't for the High Court in Berlin!

The legend has its origins in a year-long legal dispute over water rights that has been going on since 1770 between the miller Christian Arnold in Pommerzig , Neumark and his lord Count von Schmettau - the " Müller-Arnold Trial ". After the miller had already been found guilty twice, he turned to Frederick II in 1775, who interfered in the proceedings in favor of the miller. This process and the story of the Sanssouci miller Grävenitz were interwoven in the legend and were intended to show the justice of the king towards all his subjects, regardless of person. The nephew and successor of Friedrich II., Friedrich Wilhelm II. , Opened the case again. In 1786 he ordered in a cabinet order that […] the decrees of the deceased king […] were to be regarded as the consequences of an error, including the “[…] glorious judicial zeal of our uncle's majesty, who was resting in God, through incomplete, the true situation of the matter inadequate reports from ill-informed and preoccupied [preoccupied] persons [was] misled ” .

After the death of Frederick II, the legend was first mentioned in the publication "Vie de Frederic II, Roi de Prusse" (The Life of Frederic II, King of Prussia) by Jean-Charles Laveaux (1749-1827), published in France in 1787 . In it he formulates the miller's threat with the words: Oui, […] n'était la chambre de justice de Berlin (Yes, […] if we didn't have the Superior Court in Berlin). This was followed by different versions of this legend in both France and Germany. Among other things, a shortened version appeared in 1788 in the work “About Frederick the Great and My Conversations with Him Shortly Before His Death” by the doctor Johann Georg Zimmermann and in 1797 the anecdote “Le Meunier de Sans-Souci” by the lawyer and dramaturge François Andrieux . The answer given by the miller: Oui! si nous n'avions pas des juges à Berlin (Yes! If we didn't have judges in Berlin), became the catchphrase Il ya des juges à Berlin (There are [still] judges in Berlin). In 1798, the comedy “Le moulin de Sans-Souci” by the French playwright and librettist Michel Dieulafoy (1762–1823) followed. In Germany, Johann Peter Hebel recorded the legend in 1811 in his “Treasure Chest of the Rhenish House Friend” and reproduced it in a modified form under the title “King Friedrich and his neighbor”. "Der Müller von Sanssouci" can be found in various literature to this day, was filmed and performed as a play, such as the comic opera by Karl Goepfart (1907) and the comedy by Peter Hacks (1958).

Trivia

A replica of the mill is in the International Wind and Watermill Museum in Gifhorn.

literature

  • Official guide of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin Brandenburg: The historic mill. 1st edition. Potsdam 2000.
  • Karlheinz Deisenroth: Märkische burial place in courtly splendor. The Bornstedt cemetery in Potsdam . Trafo, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-89626-411-7 , pp. 77-80.
  • Karl-Heinz Otto: The mill of Sanssouci . Edition Märkische Travel Pictures, Potsdam 2003, ISBN 3-934232-30-2 .
  • Anna Vilsen, Heike Wadewitz: The miller and the king of Sanssouci. A Prussian legend. Wolbern, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-9808472-6-8 .
  • Louis Schneider: The historic windmill near Sanssouci. Fragment from a historical work about Sanssouci . In: Association for the history of the Mark Brandenburg (Hrsg.): Märkische researches . No. 6, 1858, pp. 165-193.
  • Karl Dickel: Friedrich the Great and the trials of the miller Arnold . Marburg 1891 ( digitized version , accessed December 12, 2012).

Web links

Commons : Historic Mill of Sanssouci  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deisenroth: Märkische burial place in courtly splendor. The Bornstedter Friedhof zu Potsdam , p. 78, note 109.
  2. ^ Official leader of the SPSG, p. 2.
  3. ^ Karlheinz Deisenroth: Märkische burial place in courtly splendor. The Bornstedt cemetery in Potsdam . Berlin 2003, p. 77.
  4. ↑ a b c Sandra Hoeritzsch, Stephan Theilig: Rattling and dishes - The historical mill . In: Daniela Morgenstern, Tobias Kunow, Stephan Theilig (Eds.): Potsdamer Ge (h) schichte. Frederician Potsdam . Berlin 2007, p. 84.
  5. ↑ Excerpt from the letter of Frederick II to the War and Domain Chamber of June 4, 1746. Cf. Official Guide of the SPSG, p. 3.
  6. ^ Official leader of the SPSG, p. 3.
  7. ^ Willi Ruppin: Watermills and windmills in old Potsdam . In: Communications of the Association for the History of Potsdam . Vol. 7, Issue 5, 1939, p. 417.
  8. ^ Julius Lange: Contributions to the history of the Potsdam mill system . In: Communications of the Association for the History of Potsdam . Part 2, 1878, p. 307.
  9. ↑ Jörg Wacker: The area around Sanssouci - windmills, avenues, mulberry plantations, colonies, community gardens . In: Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg: Friederisiko. Frederick the Great . Munich 2012, p. 65f.
  10. ^ Official leader of the SPSG, p. 6.
  11. ↑ a b c d Official Leader of the SPSG, p. 8.
  12. ^ Deisenroth: Märkische burial place in courtly splendor. The Bornstedter Friedhof in Potsdam , p. 78.
  13. ↑ Ulrike Gruhl: Schweizerhaus . In: Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg: Ludwig Persius. Architect of the king. Architecture under Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Potsdam 2003, p. 118.
  14. ^ Official leader of the SPSG, p. 11.
  15. ^ Astrid Fritsche: Müllerhaus Sanssouci . In: Andreas Kitschke: Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse (1795–1876) court architect under three Prussian kings . Munich 2007, p. 276.
  16. ^ Official leader of the SPSG, p. 13.
  17. ^ Official leader of the SPSG, p. 13ff.
  18. ^ Official leader of the SPSG, p. 14.
  19. ^ Mühlenvereinigung Berlin-Brandenburg e. V .: Historic mill of Sanssouci . See: Gallery (accessed February 17, 2013).
  20. ^ Official leader of the SPSG, p. 16f. See Mühlenvereinigung Berlin-Brandenburg e. V.
  21. ^ Mühlenvereinigung Berlin-Brandenburg e. V .: Historic mill of Sanssouci . See: Mühlentechnik (accessed on February 17, 2013).
  22. ^ Mühlenvereinigung Berlin-Brandenburg e. V .: Historic mill of Sanssouci . See: The grain processing (accessed February 17, 2013).
  23. ↑ Franz Kugler, Adolph von Menzel: History of Frederick the Great . 5th edition. Leipzig o. J., p. 267 ( digital edition of the University Library Trier , accessed on February 20, 2013).
  24. ^ Andreas Wolfgang Wiedemann: Prussian judicial reforms and the development of a lawyer notary's office in Old Prussia (1700-1849). Vol. 17, Cologne 2003, p. 92 ( digital , accessed December 11, 2012). Cf. Conrad Bornhak: Prussian State and Legal History . Berlin 1903, p. 256.
  25. ^ Jean Charles Laveaux: Vie de Frederic II, Roi de Prusse. Volume IV, Strasbourg 1787, p. 308 ( digital , accessed February 22, 2013).
  26. ^ Johann Georg Zimmermann: About Frederick the Great and my conversations with him shortly before his death. Frankfurt / Leipzig 1788, p. 195 f. ( digital , accessed April 11, 2013).
  27. ^ François Andrieux: Contes et Opuscules en vers et en prose . Paris 1800, pp. 45-48 ( digital , accessed February 20, 2013).
  28. ^ Meyer's Large Conversational Lexicon. Volume 9, Leipzig 1905, p. 765 ( digital , accessed on February 22, 2013).
  29. ↑ Michel Dieulafoy: Le moulin de Sans-Souci, fait historique en un acte, en prose, mêlé de vaudevilles . Paris 1798 ( digital , accessed February 18, 2013).
  30. ^ Johann Peter Hebel: King Friedrich and his neighbor . In: Projekt Gutenberg (accessed on February 18, 2013).

Coordinates: 52 ° 24 '14.8 "  N , 13 ° 2' 8.1"  E

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on December 14, 2012 .