Funny mill

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Komericher mill around 2011

The Komericher Mühle is a historic mill in the Aachen district of Brand , which has been used by several owners in various functions since it was first mentioned in the 16th century. It is one of the former 21 mills in the Indetal nature reserve and is located on Komericher Weg No. 42/44. It currently consists of the old Komerich courtyard, built around 1800, and a building complex for operating the mill from the period between 1885 and 1926, all of which are listed as industrial monuments .

history

In the late 16th century, at the current location of the Komericher Mühle, there was an old lease mill of the Reichsabbey Kornelimünster under the name Kaldenberger or Kaltenberger Mühle , which was used for copper processing. Around 1770 the mill was converted into a spinning and fulling mill and around the turn of the century the Komerich estate was built in the immediate vicinity. After the secularization of the abbey, the cloth merchant Andreas Barschon took over the complex consisting of two mills and a farm building from around 1802 and continued to run it as a fulling mill. Only a few years later he transferred this to the cloth merchant Ernst Conrad Claus (1774–1838), who after his death left the mill to the cloth manufacturer Arnold Deden (1769–1851), who in turn already had a roughing, shearing and spinning factory in Aachen's Pontstraße business. His son of the same name (1810–1875) inherited the plant, which he converted into a carded yarn spinning mill in 1860 and equipped with a workshop as a spinning room. Five years later, the cloth manufacturers Nicola Dechamps (1842–1911) and Gustav Drouven (1848–1920) took over the complex as a branch of their Aachen headquarters “Dechamps & Drouven” and in 1885 equipped it with a steam engine with a steam boiler system.

As early as 1893, the spinning master from Raeren , Peter Jacob Kutsch, initially acquired the machines there and four years later bought the entire factory including the neighboring farm, and from then on operated as “PJ Kutsch Streichgarn-Spinnerei” on the Komericher mill. In 1901, the company suffered a major setback after the factory building had burned down, presumably due to arson. Within just three months, Kutsch had it rebuilt and in 1906 a new steam engine with 100 hp was installed. His sons, who inherited the business after their father's death, replaced the old water wheels with a 40 hp water turbine in 1926, had the technical system continuously modernized and in 1948 they equipped them with two electric motors for the carding machines and self-actuators . Although there were still almost 50 employees in the factory in 1952, this company was not spared the general decline of the Aachen cloth industry and had to stop production in 1960 and sell the complex to the city of Aachen five years later.

In 2001 the complex was extensively renovated by an investor who, among other things, ran a specialist company for ecological building and a landscape maintenance service based on the former estate, which is responsible for maintaining the surrounding biotope areas. In addition, in 2003 the newly founded “Association for the maintenance of the Aachen textile industry history e. V. "the old Sheddachhalle and upgraded this to a showroom, where he from 2006 using the NRW Foundation and the Sparkasse Aachen as" Textile Museum Aachen "historical machines as well as the history of the textile industry in Aachen based exhibited by numerous exhibits and panels . After the meanwhile to “Tuchwerk-Aachen e. V. ”was able to constantly expand its inventory, the shed roof hall became too small and from 2012 it relocated its activities, also because of the improved transport connections, to the old Stockheider Mühle cloth factory in the Soers .

investment

View of the inner courtyard

The current building stock, which is whitewashed in a strong reddish brown, was largely the result of the new building measures after the great fire in 1901, with well-preserved predecessor stocks being integrated. The oldest building that was largely spared from the fire is the agriculturally used courtyard, which was built around 1800 parallel to the factory hall and later the shed roof hall. This is a brick building with a gable roof , the front two-story area of ​​which was used for residential purposes and to which a cattle shed was attached in the rear area. The residential wing is provided with arched wooden lattice windows on the sills made of natural stone and well-preserved historical style elements were used in the design of the front door as well as several interior doors. The brick hall is equipped with heavy vaulted structures and small stable windows in the lower area. As part of the building renovations after the fire, a single-storey wing building with a pent roof was added to the north side of the courtyard, which is connected to the mill's office building via the factory gate.

The factory gate is equipped with a two-wing steel gate and is framed by two masonry pillars crowned with spheres, in the plaster of which dummy joints for a corner cuboid are worked in a tooth cut sequence. The office building adjoining it to the east is again a two-storey brick building with a gable roof, which has two axes on the gate side and three axes on the courtyard side with arched windows on natural stone sills. In the center of the courtyard is the entrance door, which is reached via a three-step flight of stairs .

Immediately to the south of the office building is the narrow wheel chamber, in which one of the two five-meter-high water wheels was suspended, which was replaced in 1926 by the turbine that is still preserved today. Next to the wheel chamber is a quarry stone hall with a flat roof and mounted lighting hoods, which was last used as a grinding mill. The roof is supported on the inside by two cast-iron pillars on which the consoles for supporting the transmission shafts have been preserved.

The new three-aisled shed roof hall from 1901, which replaced the former workshop and served as a spinning room, is connected parallel to the wheel chamber. This type of building, developed in England in the 1830s, was not used in the Aachen textile factories until 1880. The outer walls of the Komerich shed roof hall are made of massive brick and reinforced with horseshoe-shaped iron anchors. Here, too, cast-iron supports were used inside, on whose consoles the transmission waves running across the hall ran. Under the shed roof hall ran an underground ditch fed by the Inde, the water of which drove the second mill wheel.

To the north of the wheel chamber is the narrow steam engine room, the substance of which goes back to the installation of the first steam engine in 1885, but was renewed in 1901. It has a flat roof with two centrally integrated exposure beads. The support stone for the flywheel with a diameter of 5 meters is still located in the southern eaves wall.

A year before the renovation, a new boiler house for the two-flame tube boiler was built parallel to the engine room in 1900, which survived the fire undamaged. It is a brick hall covered with a gable roof, in the gable of which a large arched gate was built. The boiler house is characterized by the originally 20 meter high chimney, which was later shortened to 16 meters and then completely dismantled after 2011 for structural reasons. The round chimney shaft stood on a square base and was decorated with shaped bricks in the transition area from the shaft to the base.

In addition, a large part of the water-carrying and water-regulating systems for driving the mill wheels have been preserved, although they are no longer actively usable but still belong to the monument complex as a whole. The supply of the water was ensured by an upper ditch more than 400 meters long and 1.50 to 2 meters wide, which is fed by the Inde. At the point of entry, the water was dammed through a brick weir at a height of 4.30 meters and the inlet was regulated with the help of a lockable gate . The upper ditch itself flows in front of the mill building into a natural stone-framed reservoir, which also has a gate at its outlet and through which the water was directed to the turbine. It then flowed back into the Inde via an underground ditch. In addition, water was channeled from the pond via a further overflow channel through the shed roof hall, where it drove the second mill wheel there before it was also diverted into the Inde.

Overall, the Komericher Mühle impresses as a prime example of a spinning plant from the turn of the century in rural areas that has largely been preserved in its structural area, as well as the large number of elements for the drive systems that have been preserved.

literature

  • Ewald Kraus: Comerich story , typescript Bürgererverein Brand e. V. 1981
  • Brander mills and farms , in: Heimatblätter des Landkreis Aachen , No. 6, 1938, issue 3, p. 26

Web links

Commons : Komericher Mühle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry in German Foundation for Monument Protection
  2. ↑ ', in: Aachener Zeitung of May 28, 2007

Coordinates: 50 ° 44 '54.2 "  N , 6 ° 11' 17.3"  E