Quedlinburg Castle Mill
The Quedlinburg Castle Mill is a former large mill in Quedlinburg (north of the Harz Mountains ). Today there is a hotel, a restaurant and an event courtyard with lounges in their buildings.
The building is located south of the Quedlinburg collegiate church and north of the Bode river . The Brühlpark is located between Mühle and Bode . The historic core town (e.g. Klopstockhaus and Quedlinburg Castle ) is located northeast near the mill .
In the oldest document that has survived to this day (dated 1412) it is called cappittels mol ( cappittel means pen chapter ); In the course of the centuries other names were also used (e.g. Wolburgsches Gehöft, Propstei-Mühle).
About history
In July 936, Heinrich I , the East Frankish-German king, died . His widow Mathilde asked her son Otto I to found a monastery on the castle hill of Quedlinburg to commemorate him. Quedlinburg Monastery was a royal family monastery . It was a women's pen ; Mathilde managed it herself until her death in 966.
The monastery had farm buildings (e.g. stables, barns, bakery); When exactly the first mill wheel was built is unknown.
A mill ditch was laid out for kilometers. This canal branches off water from the Bode above Quedlinburg and leads it with little gradient to Quedlinburg. There it was used to drive mills (there were at times 16 mills that can be found in the city today) and to supply water. Most of the mills in Quedlinburg had an undershot mill wheel .
The residents also used the mill ditch for washing, swimming, fishing, fishing and for transporting goods - watercourses were much more important before modern times than they are today.
The women's monastery leased the mill to a miller every six years . In the flour mill wheat were milled rye, barley and other grains or broken . Even malt (raw material for brewing beer ) has been edited. Up to 200 houses in Quedlinburg had the right to brew brewing ("brewing law"). Later, the grain distillery (production of spirits , then known as brandy or aquavit , for example ) also acquired economic importance. For example, during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), the brewery and distillery flourished. Together with Nordhausen , Quedlinburg was at times a leader in the brandy industry. It is documented that the castle brewery had its own master brewer from 1556 to 1805 .
In 1802 the monastery on the Schlossberg was also dissolved in the course of the Napoleonic secularization ; it now belonged to the Brandenburg-Prussian state property. Albert Christian Kratzenstein (1770–1828) took over the mill in 1806; on November 28, 1811 he bought it in gold for 3500 thalers ( King Jerome confirmed the purchase).
In 1828 his son Christoph Moritz (1796–1983) took over the company. The schnapps was now distilled in copper bubbles. Kratzensteiner Korn was well known in the 19th century. In addition to water power , the power of steam engines was now also used. There were hybrid mills that used hydropower and steam. Carl Kratzenstein (1825–1879) managed the company in the early days (which was characterized by rapid industrialization ).
During the First World War, all copper equipment had to be delivered to the distillery - Germany suffered from a shortage of numerous raw materials, some of which were essential to the war effort (and from 1916 also hunger in many places) because a sea blockade by the Royal Navy prevented imports to Germany.
In the inter-war years there was a great death of mills in Germany . In 1930 (at the beginning of the global economic crisis ) the grinding operation in the Stiftsmühle was stopped.
After the Second World War, Saxony-Anhalt belonged to the SBZ ( Soviet Occupation Zone ); many landowners and companies were expropriated (see here ). The last still intact mill wheel was dismantled in 1964. The property was used by the state-owned company VEB Kombinat Obst und Gemüse until the fall of the Berlin Wall ( German reunification in 1990) as an interim storage facility and processing facility.
In 1997 the Hotel Schlossmühle was opened. The old structure (half-timbered storage building, vaulted cellar and old storage rooms) was integrated into the new building. The chosen architecture cites forms of historical mill construction. In 2012 a ballroom in the Schlossmühle event courtyard was inaugurated.
The only preserved original millstone is used for a water feature on the courtyard terrace.
Others
Quedlinburg has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since December 1994 .
See also
- List of cultural monuments in Quedlinburg
- other mills in Quedlinburg: Gröpernmühle , Wordhaus restaurant , Klostermühle , Carl Kratzenstein mill , mill between the cities
Web links
literature
- Ernst Stöckmann: Water, grain and alcohol - the Quedlinburg castle mill as reflected in the history of the mill and brandy in the city , Hotel and event courtyard Schlossmühle Quedlinburg, 2013.
- Sources on the administrative, legal and economic history of Quedlinburg, from the 15th century to the time of Frederick the Great. Published by the Historical Commission for the Province of Saxony and the Duchy of Anhalt (1916) ( full text )
- Document book of the city of Quedlinburg (1873)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Propstei names an ecclesiastical administrative area or is a synonym for abbey
- ↑ until the abbess issued new brewing regulations in 1756
Coordinates: 51 ° 47 ′ 6.5 ″ N , 11 ° 8 ′ 6.3 ″ E