International Wind and Watermill Museum
The International Wind and Watermill Museum in Gifhorn , Lower Saxony , with its mills is a unique facility in Europe. There are currently 16 original or faithfully reconstructed mills from twelve different countries, which are embedded in their original landscape, on the approximately 16 hectare open-air site of the museum. Historical objects from the milling and milling industry are also exhibited on the entire site . The museum complex is conveniently located near the intersection of federal highways 4 and 188 . The museum is station 65 on the Lower Saxony Mühlenstraße .
Museum prehistory
The history of the mill museum is closely linked to its founder and owner Horst Wrobel. In 1965, on a trip to the Elm in Abbenrode, he discovered an old post mill that was still in operation. Wrobel rebuilt the mill on a scale of 1:25 and then collected all of the material using wind and water mills. In 1974 he set up a private museum in Suhlendorf with models of the mills he had reproduced up to then. In order to create a facility on a larger scale, first contacts were made with the district of Gifhorn in 1977 , which actively supported the project. In the same year, the two parties signed a leasehold contract for the future museum site.
From 1980 until today
The mill museum opened its doors on May 8, 1980 after extensive field work had been carried out by the Aller-Ohre-Verband for two years. With the help of bulldozers and washer-dredgers, the terrain was modeled, creating numerous ditches and ponds as well as the five-hectare mill lake. The lake also serves as a retention basin for flood protection and water regulation of the Ise . The exhibition hall and three mills (Kellerholländer, post mill and Tyrolean watermill) were the first to be built.
Mill models
The centerpiece of the museum complex is the 800 square meter exhibition hall. It houses utensils from the milling and milling industry. In addition, there are 49 wind and water mill miniature models (lifelike and scaled down from the originals, reduced in every detail) from 20 countries. They provide information on the work processes for which people, before the invention of the steam engine, used wind and water power to do heavy work.
Some mill models:
|
|
Village square
The center of the open-air museum is the village square with an ensemble of three half-timbered houses that are placed as a round village :
- The baking or miller's house was in 1983 as a four-column - Hall House (popularly: Lower House) built and can accommodate about 250 guests.
- The bread house from 1985 is a replica of a bakery on a traditional farm near Gifhorn. Here bread and cakes are baked according to old recipes in two wood-fired stone ovens and sold to museum visitors.
- The traditional costume house was built in 1990 in the style of a historic hall house and offers space for around 500 guests with an old bakery and a restaurant.
The “International Mill Tree” stands on the square. This is a stake about 30 meters high, on which the country coats of arms of all mills on the museum grounds as well as wood carvings with milling motifs are located.
Mills
German gallery-Dutch mill Sanssouci
Since 1984 there has been a mill on the village square of the museum grounds, which is an image of the historic mill next to Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam . The 40 meter high original was created in 1788, burned down in 1945 during the last fighting in World War II and was rebuilt in Potsdam in 1993. The mill near the royal residence became famous through the legend that its rattling disturbed Frederick the Great . When the king threatened expropriation, the miller pointed to the court in Berlin. The name Galerieholländer refers to the surrounding gallery , which is located above the fourth floor of the building. The mill is therefore enormous. The history of the museum is presented in the Gifhorner Mühle.
German post mill Viktoria
The post mill comes from the nearby town of Osloß and can therefore be described as a local. In 1882 it was set up there by a miller who had acquired the mill in the Neuhaldensleben district . The year 1816 is noted on the mill as the year of construction. In 1940 it ceased operations. The district of Gifhorn bought the dilapidated mill in 1977 and gave it to the museum operator Wrobel in care. With donations it was restored by a carpentry shop and in 1980 it was set up in a functional condition on the mill museum.
The name post mill refers to the whole mill house, which stands on a frame, or, to put it technically correctly, hangs. The mill house and its furnishings are turned against the wind before work begins. According to the General Land Law for Prussia of 1794 , the post mill was not a building in the narrower sense, but a machine. Therefore, at that time the owner was not obliged to pay house interest tax for his place of work .
German Bergholländer mill Immanuel
The mill comes from Westdorf in the Dithmarschen district , which was built there under the name Immanuel in 1848. It was one of the first three original mills to be found in the museum. She is called " Berg- " or "Kellerholländer". This means, on the one hand, that the mill is built on a small hill and, on the other hand, that it has a cellar into which carts could drive. In the course of its history, the plant developed into a highly technical mill through numerous modifications, including an automatic wind rose. The louvre blades could be adapted to the wind strength. In 1969 the last miller offered in a newspaper advertisement to give it away on condition that it be rebuilt. The newspaper publisher Axel Springer acquired the mill and had it restored. He later donated it to the Mill Museum, where it was rebuilt in 1979.
Tyrolean watermill
The approximately 300-year-old watermill from Iselsberg-Stronach near Lienz in Tyrol is also one of the first three mills in the museum and was built here in 1979. It previously stood on a torrent in the Lesach Valley in East Tyrol and is powered by a pond on the museum grounds. The mill made of massive larch trunks has two overshot water wheels that drive two grinding cycles.
German horse mill
Probably the largest Rossmühle (horse mill) in Germany from Hüllhorst -Oberbauerschaft in the Minden-Lübbecke district from 1797 was built in 1982 as a replica of a Göpel . It is an octagonal half-timbered building, inside of which draft horses run in a circle and set a wooden gear wheel in motion with one horsepower each . The gear wheel with 320 teeth and a diameter of 32 meters is the largest of its kind. It was used to drive a tamper for processing flax and a grain mill.
Greek mill Mykonos
When the museum was expanded in 1987, a replica of a windmill from the Greek Cycladic island of Mykonos was built on an artificial island on the site . The mill is a white tower mill with a pointed roof and twelve sail blades.
Ukrainian windmill Natasha
The replica of the mill was inaugurated in 1988 in the presence of the Consul General of the USSR and ensured positive contacts with the former USSR. The model of the mill is in the twin town of Gifhorn in Korsun-Shevchenkovsky in the Ukraine near Kiev , where it is now used as a restaurant under the name "Vitrjak" (windmill). The mill has a substructure made of solid pine and spruce trunks in the log house style. Only one drive shaft is housed in the long, slim tower. Like many Ukrainian structures, the building is richly decorated on windows, doors and ledges. The mill was built by a carpentry shop. The log house construction of the substructure comes from Finland.
Hungarian Danube Ship Mill
1989 was a year of construction according Danube - Schiffsmühle "Julischka" at the Ise commissioned. It consists of two wooden ships between which a paddle wheel turns. The grinder and miller's room are housed in the larger main nave. The smaller ship carries the shaft of the paddle wheel, which turns in the river water. The mill was built by shipyard workers from the shipyard in Mohács , Hungary , museum specialists from the open-air museum in Szentendre near Budapest , carpenters from Lower Saxony and a Belgian mill construction company.
With this type of mill, the operator was both miller and captain . He could choose the best current in the river. However, this impeded shipping traffic, which is why regulations were issued in the 19th century. After the construction of ship mills for the Rhine was banned in 1861 , the last mill of this type disappeared in 1926. Such river mills have completely disappeared from today's landscape, because their lifespan was only around 50 years. They were invented around 536 during the siege of Rome by the Ostrogoths . Its heyday was in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Portuguese windmill Algarve
The replica mill was built in 1993 next to the Greek mill and comes from Torres Vedras in central Portugal. It corresponds to the type of mill that can also be found on the Portuguese Algarve coast . The mill with its four triangular sails is typical of Portugal and the Mediterranean .
Balearic windmill from Mallorca
The "Moli de Tramuntana" flour mill was created in 2000 based on the model of mills near Palma on the Balearic island of Mallorca . Many such mills were erected in a row on an elevation. The round tower stands on a rectangular basement, which was also the home of the miller's family. The mill has six fabric-covered wings with a diameter of about 20 meters. In the base of the museum mill you can see an exhibition about mills from Mallorca, yesterday - today . Representatives of the association “Friends of the Mills of Mallorca” came to the laying of the foundation stone.
Russian post mill
The Russian farmer's windmill was built in Russia in 2001 and transported to Gifhorn by truck. It is a replica of a typical Russian peasant mill from the northern Russian area around Arkhangelsk . The mill is a gift from the "Andrej Rublev Foundation" from Moscow , which is committed to preserving the Russian architectural heritage.
Provencal windmill from France
In 2002 the “Alphonse Daudet” tower mill (photo: see above) was built as a replica. The model was the mill built in Fontvieille near Arles in French Provence in 1813 . The poet Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) immortalized them literarily in the 19th century with his book Letters from My Mill . In 1935, the “Society of Friends of Alphonse Daudets” set up a memorial for the mill in the basement hall (“sous-sol”) Alphonse Daudet, in 1936 it appeared on a French postage stamp. This type of mill, which has been documented since the 12th century, is said to be one of the oldest in France .
Korean watermill
The stamping mill was built in 2003 as the first Asian mill on the museum premises. It is an overshot watermill from a mountain region in Gang-won-do Province in South Korea . Mountain farmers used this type in the 19th century to pound grain. The Gifhorner mill was recreated in Korea according to old tradition with the building materials Korean fir and stone birch and transported by ship to Germany, where it was set up by three specialists from Korea. It is a gift from the Korean governor, in whose district this type of mill was represented.
Taiwanese water treadmill
A water treadmill comes from the island of Taiwan , with which water is scooped up to a higher field. This is the only type of mill that exists in this country. The replica of the historic water trade is on loan from the vocational schools in the Gifhorn district , which maintain a school partnership in Taiwan.
Serbian watermill
As the last and 15th mill for the time being, the 100 year old Serbian mill "mudra Milica" reached the mill museum in May 2005. It is a bucket wheel mill from western Serbia . This type of mill was the model for the Pelton turbine . With their spoon water wheels, small amounts of water could be used well on large slopes. This type was mainly found in mountainous areas such as the Alps , the Pyrenees and the Carpathian Mountains . The mill is a gift from the Serbian Orthodox Bishop Lavrentije of the diocese of Šabac - Valjevo on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Mill Museum.
Scottish windmill Lady Devorgilla
The mill is not located on the museum grounds, but within sight of a lake on the edge of the city center. It serves as a romantic setting for weddings and is owned by the city of Gifhorn. It is a replica of a Scottish windmill on "Corbey Hill" from around 1790. The original is in Gifhorn's Scottish twin town Dumfries .
The Russian stave church
The 27-meter-high wooden church with eight gold-plated domes is a replica of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Transfiguration of Christ from 1765 in the village of Kozljatjewo. It is dedicated to St. Nicholas and was consecrated in 1965 by the Moscow Patriarch Aleksij II . An exhibition of liturgical items from the Patriarchate's manufacture can be seen in the church. It includes icons , oil lamps, candlesticks, vestments, embroidery, baptismal vessels, Bibles and golden pictures, some of which are painted there. The inside tour of the building, which is decorated with icon paintings, costs an additional entrance fee. The bell for Minden Cathedral , cast in 1948, is hung in front of the church .
See also
literature
- Rosita Wrobel: The International Wind and Watermill Museum. In: Museums and excursion destinations in the Gifhorn-Wolfsburg area (= series of publications on local history by the Sparkasse Gifhorn-Wolfsburg. 5, ZDB -ID 30106-1 ). Sparkasse Gifhorn-Wolfsburg, Gifhorn 1989.
Web links
- Website of the mill museum
- Pictures from the mill museum (2017)
- Interactive 360 ° panorama photo of the museum on the village square
Individual proof
- ↑ Dirk Kühn: A walk through 40 years of the mill museum. In: Wolfsburger Nachrichten. Edition of July 14, 2020.
- ↑ wamsiedler.de: Where is the old Minden cathedral bell?
Coordinates: 52 ° 29 ′ 37 ″ N , 10 ° 32 ′ 52 ″ E