Mutterschieder Martinsmühle
The Martinsmühle was a historic mill in Muttigart in the Hunsrück . It was built in 1841 by the miller Paul Martin and was therefore also called Paule Miehl , a name that is still used today. The place where the mill stood is now wooded. Nothing is reminiscent of the Mutterschieder Mühle and the dispute about it.
Historical background
In the French era, the ban law was abolished in 1811, which obliged the peasants to use a mill prescribed by the rulers. The Hunsrück became Prussian after the Congress of Vienna , but the Kingdom of Prussia had already abolished the mill ban in 1810 through the reforms of Freiherr vom Stein . Everyone was now allowed to grind freely wherever and with whom he wanted.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the number of mills in the entire Hunsrück is estimated at up to 800. There were also numerous mills in the Simmerbachtal. Every village had at least one flour mill. They were located on the Simmerbach or on the streams flowing into it. Well known is the Eselsmühle (called Hammese Miehl ) from Altweidelbach , the Wahlbacher Fuchsmühle in a side valley , the Weißmühle (= wheat mill) in Pleizenhausen , or the lump mill near Bergenhausen . Many mills have disappeared today and only the buried mill ponds still point to the mill, such as the Mutterschieder Martinsmühle in the Rinkenbach valley and the Mutterschieder society mill.
New building at the old mill
A list of citizens of Muttigart, begun in 1816, names the miller: "... 1828 on April 24th Paul Martin joined the community ...". On April 10, 1841, an advertisement appeared in the public gazette of the Royal Government in Koblenz calling for an objection:
- "Paul Martin intends to build an overshot mill on his property in the district" near the old mill "on the Rünkenbach, under the spell of Muttigart, namely on the parcel Flur VII. Nro 271, and to use a pond to extract the water necessary for operation to be found in the Rünkenbach. All those who believe that their rights have been violated by this system are hereby invited to register their objections here within a period of three weeks. Simmern, March 21, 1841. The Mayor of Thuringia ”.
The field name An der alten Mühle points to a location where a mill already existed, certainly an old Palatinate (Simmerian) ban mill, which, it is assumed, probably still existed. All reports from that time are lost. The Mutterschieder report book from 1797 describes: Soldiers of the French army “tore up and destroyed” all court books “before Martini 1795”. The inspection of the new mill by the Royal Building Inspector Lassaux was received in the Koblenz State Archives on November 12, 1842. The plan describes that the mill pond branches off water from the Rinkenbach and leads about 500 m above the stream into a collecting basin. From there the water was led to the mill wheel via a wooden channel. The mill with the wheel shaft was about 15 meters from the pond and was quite a bit below the water level. In this way the water could be led into the water wheel from above ( overshot water wheel ).
The canal and the collecting basin are still recognizable in the landscape today. In 2001 the slate stone wheel shaft was still so well preserved that one could deduce the dimensions of the water wheel. The mill wheel had a diameter of about four meters. An overshot waterwheel of the same size from Hesse on the right bank of the Rhine, which was made in 1840, is now in the Deutsches Museum in Munich . The water supply is set to 50 liters per second. This achieves an output of 1.3 kilowatts. In order to guarantee the grinding operation, a water volume of 180,000 liters per hour is required. Any imbalance could destroy the sensitive grinder or the water wheel. That is why the rotation of the wheel is quite slow, one cycle takes about 20 seconds. The weight of such a large wheel is easily 1000 kg when wet.
Mill dispute 1854
12 years after the new construction of the Martinsmühle, farmers from Mutt Various founded a cooperative under the direction of Peter Paul Auler with the aim of building a grinding mill and operating it as a cooperative . First of all, the council of the municipality had to be consulted, because the project could not have been carried out without help from the municipality of Muttigart. The minutes of the meeting of March 22nd, 1853 are in the report books of the municipality. The meeting was chaired by Peter Joseph Rottmann , the responsible mayor of Simmern, the villages were not all independent at the time. The society (as it calls itself here) asks the councils for land and for permission in the Mutterschieder quarry to break stones. The municipal council allocated land in the Herzefeld district (corridor VII) to the society. To prevent the comrades from digging up Paul Martin's water, they set a smaller dimension than originally planned, namely “only 17 inches” (44.46 cm, 1 Prussian inch = 2.615 cm) for the width of the mill pond. Paul Martins nevertheless feared that the comrades could take too much water and that his mill operations could be disrupted.
The planning and execution of the social mill was therefore closely monitored by Simmern and Koblenz . When the building was approved by the district builder, it turned out that the specifications had not been followed exactly. The Royal architect of the circle Simmern, Bormann, is May 13th 1854 states: "... that the military not provided for in the post, but 21 rods (1 rod Prussian = 3.76 m, ie 78.96 m) of which away, also by ½ foot (1 Prussian foot = 31.385 cm, so approx. 15.7 cm) higher than planned ... "
On June 6, 1854, Martin objected to the height and structural condition of the weirs . Again a precise plan had to be presented. The legend reads: “Situation and leveling plan for the planned and executed new construction of a grinding mill on the spell of Muttigart, above the mill of Paul Martin, by Peter Paul Auler and comrades all from Muttigart. Taken and drawn by Chr. Huhn Wertmeister in Cülz in August 1854. “After the new plans were submitted, a building inspection took place with the following result: “… Mutterschieder Gesellschaftsmühle on June 18th, 1855. The facility does not correspond to the plans. The controlling Royal Master Builder of the Simmern Bormann district and the comrades: Peter Paul Auler, Michael Litger, Friedrich Jacob Ludwig, Paul Braun, Müller, Christoph Herman, Martin Dupont, Adam Kist… ”are present . The fee bill of the Royal Prussian Government followed on July 13, 1855: “The district builder Bormann zu Simmern has us with negotiations on the setting of a marker at the mill of Peter Paul Auler and Comrade zu Muttersche, which took place on the 18th of the month; also submitted the liquidation of the fees to which he is entitled for the 2nd investigation of this mill. After this has been revised and 2 f 20 Sgl (2 thalers , 20 silver groschen) have been determined, we leave them attached to them with reference to our decree v. 23rd November last year to go to A II N 1946 with the instruction to issue the payment to Father Auler and comrades and to inform H. Bormann of the claim for payment. Royal Government Section A ” .
After the district builder found out for the second time that construction had been carried out differently than planned, the facility was not approved; the society mill never went into operation. The following message appeared in the Hunsrücker Zeitung 24 years after the above-mentioned municipal council meeting: “Mill auction, Monday, November 5th at 1 am, Jacob Gutenberger will auction the company mill, along with the building, grinding, grinding stones and boxes against payment default. All items are still in good condition. Muttiffer, October 17th 1877. The mill company. "
literature
- Andreas Armin d'Orfey: The mill dispute of Mutt Various: a contribution to the Hunsrück mill history after 1803 , in: Rhein-Hunsrück calendar. - 66 (2010), pp. 86-91.