Räbker mill history

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Location of the mills on the Schunter and the Mühlengraben in and around Räbke, 1754

The history of the Räbker mill began as early as the Middle Ages , as Räbke was a preferred location for water mills due to its location on the Schunter .

General

Liesebach watermill with the mill ditch

In and around Räbke there have been at least eight water mills on the Schunter and the Mühlengraben since the Middle Ages. At the beginning of the 13th century , monks from the St. Ludgeri Monastery in Helmstedt branched off the Schunter and guided it through the village on a contour line . The only remaining and still operational mill is the Liesebach watermill . Other watermills were the Obermühle , the Amtsmahlmühle , the Mönchsmühle , the Ölmühle , the Prinzhorn Mill , the Mittelmühle and the Untermühle . Their water wheels worked overshot because the Schunter has a great gradient within Räbke.

The mills are shown on a map of Räbke and the surrounding area drawn up as part of the Brunswick general survey of 1754. At the time, almost 570 people lived in the village's 84 residential buildings. In 1802, seven watermills were mentioned in the geographical statistical description.

The preserved watermill Liesebach was shut down in 1954 and was extensively restored between 1998 and 2005 as part of the village renewal program. Since then it has been functional again and can be viewed. It represents a station on the Lower Saxony Mühlenstraße .

Paper mills

Branch of the Mühlengraben (in the foreground) from the Schunter in Räbke

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Räbke, with its paper mills on the Schunter, was an important place in the national production of paper . This was initially due to the proximity to the University of Helmstedt with its considerable paper requirement for books. Among the eight water mills in and near Räbke there were four paper mills in such a small area at the beginning of the 18th century, more than anywhere else in what is now Lower Saxony.

The founding of the mills can be traced back to a lack of paper that prevailed at the ducal Welfen University in Helmstedt , which was founded in 1576 . The patrician from Helmstedt, bookseller and patron of the university printing house Hermann Brandes then founded several paper mills to improve his security of supply. In 1594 this was initially the middle mill (in the middle area between the towns of Räbke and Frellstedt), which was owned by “his prince. Grace Julius University in honor ”. These and related measures led to disputes that grew into a veritable "mill war" with the noblemen of Warberg and ultimately led to bitter decline or to the "tearing of the new Gebew" (... new building).

For years, the Räbker paper production facility supplied the paper for the production of the Braunschweig Historical Plots of Professor Henrich Meibom , printed in Helmstedt from 1607 to 1609 - a mammoth work of around 6,000 pages and a favorite project of the Brunswick Duke Heinrich Julius .

Another paper mill was the upper mill. Located just below the source, it had the advantage of particularly pure spring water, on which the papermaking was particularly dependent as "manufacturing water". In 1743 it is described as

... a new fabrique that is very useful in the country, because it knows how to make such beautiful, special and large writing and printing paper that could not be found anywhere in the country.

Due to its high-quality handmade paper , it was simply referred to as the “Dutch paper mill” in the 19th century. This designation is to be seen as an award, because it was the Dutch who brought paper production to perfection internationally. The assessment of the medium-sized paper mill was by no means worse.

The Räbker paper mills produced better quality at a lower price than most of their competitors. Due to its efficiency, the Braunschweig regional government even preferred the Räbker Mittelmühle to its own ducal mill in Oker am Harz in 1767 when it came to questions of product improvement and research “to raise paper production in the country”. In order to improve the raw material situation in Räbke, experiments were carried out with materials that were pioneering at the time, such as wood, as one of the earliest steps towards wood-based paper . Some of the watermarks on the papers produced at that time bore the place name RAEPKE and made the mill town on the Elm widely known.

literature

  • Wilhelm Kleeberg: Räbke in: Niedersächsische Mühlengeschichte , Hanover, 1978, Schlütersche , p. 387
  • Joachim Lehrmann: Helmstedter and Räbker book and paper history. Lehrmann-Verlag, Lehrte 1994, ISBN 3-9803642-0-8 .
  • Förderverein Räbker Chronik: (Ed.): Räbke. A village on the edge of Elmes , Helmstedt, 2005,
  • Joachim Lehrmann: Räbke. Lower Saxony's old papermaking village. Once the location of important paper mills. Ed .: Räbker Förderverein Mühle Liesebach eV, 2014.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Joachim Lehrmann : Braunschweigische Pioneers - and the invention of "a new kind of paper from Holtz matter" by Johann Georg von Langen - in: Braunschweigische Heimat, 2017, Issue 3, pp. 13-20