When someone has a sudden spurt of success, we like to say: "that was water on his mills" or "it’s got top water. We would like to get to the bottom of the origin of this proverb on the basis of the fresh muhle in unterzettlitz.
With the romans, the technology of watermill construction also came to us. A distinction is made between upper and lower sizing mills. Undersized mills are often built directly on the water, without any rough hydraulic engineering measures, the mill wheel is only driven by the water flowing by.
Reservoir needed
Because they could only be operated semi-effectively on strong flowing waters and with extra-wide mill wheels, the top-scaled mills became more and more popular. In order for the water to flow from above over the mill wheel, a storage basin had to be built. If enough water had accumulated in it, then the muller had "top water". If necessary, he could open the sluices and operate the muhle. So things went really well for the muller.
The mahlmuhle in nydernzettlitz is mentioned for the first time in a document in the landbuch der herrschaft plassenburg from 1398. At that time it did not have a name. Not until 1695 is a friedrich frisch named as owner. From this it may also have received the name, which however only in the 19th century was given to it. The mill was called "frischmuhle" in the nineteenth century (today fresh muhle) was officially taken over in unterzettlitz.
End of the 19. At the beginning of the twentieth century johann konrad preubinger was the owner of the "frischenmuhle". When he was killed in the first world war, his widow babette, a native of felbinger in heubsch, remarried. The marriage with peter preubinger (not related to johann konrad preubinger) remained childless.
Flour was milled until 1982
In the search for an heir for the estate, the choice fell on the niece linda kolb, who lived in heubsch. Together with her husband heinrich, she took over the "frischenmuhle" in 1950. Because heinrich kolb had previously only been active in agriculture, he learned the profession of muller and passed the muller trade examination at the age of 52.
Until his death in 1982, flour was milled in the frischenmuhle for various bakeries in melkendorf and in kulmbach or for farmers from the surrounding area. His son hartmut kolb then converted the mill to electricity generation. Initially, he produced only for his own use, but from 1988 he also fed electricity into the public grid.
However, it soon became clear that the 20 kilowatts per hour predicted by experts were not achieved. Only two kilowatts were generated.
Hartmut kolb stumbled upon the "hobby mill builder" rather by chance leo gick from marktzeuln. What the experts could not do, he was able to fix. The number of revolutions of the turbine was slowed down from 36 per minute to 19, the transmission was realigned and the pulleys were adjusted. This enabled the output to be increased to 17 kilowatts per hour.
Turbine from vorarlberg
However, hartmut kolb was not entirely satisfied with this either. As a tufter and artisan, he has benefited from the sale of a more modern "francis"-in the icy month of january 1996, he and his friends removed the turbine and installed it in the frischenmuhle.
From march of this year, the new plant was up and running, generating 30 kilowatts of electricity per hour, which was fed into the public power grid. In 2010, however, the muhle was literally "dug out of the water", at least a share. To make the main river passable for fish, kolb had to build a bypass channel. 150 liters of water per second had been drained from the muhle.
But because the owner himself is very environmentally conscious, he accepted it without a murmur. According to hartmut kolb these small power plants are an important part of the energy supply. According to his calculation, he could supply 50 to 60 single-family homes with electricity. Rough electricity lines, which conduct electricity from the wind farms in northern germany to us, were perhaps not necessary in the mab, if the regional electricity production verstarkt was used.