The Tobiashammer is a large, water-driven

hammer mill A hammer mill, hammer forge or hammer works was a workshop in the pre-industrial era that was typically used to manufacture semi-finished, wrought iron products or, sometimes, finished agricultural or mining tools, or military weapons. The featur ...

Ohrdruf Ohrdruf () is a small town in the district of Gotha in the German state of Thuringia. It lies some 30 km southwest of Erfurt at the foot of the northern slope of the Thuringian Forest. The former municipalities Crawinkel, Gräfenhain and W ...

in the German state of

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and larg ...

. The mill, which dates to 1482, has been an industrial monument and museum since 1983.

History

The first hammer forge was probably built in 1482 "Thüringen-Reporter
dated 29 April 2012, mit Hinweis 1482 u. Schmiedesymposium. Retrieved 13 May 2013. on the River Ohra. In 1592 the mill was bought by Tobias Albrecht, since when it has been named after him. The works originally had three huge iron hammers which were raised by the motion of a

water wheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...

. The mill made iron products such as

scythe A scythe ( ) is an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or harvesting crops. It is historically used to cut down or reap edible grains, before the process of threshing. The scythe has been largely replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor m ...

sickle A sickle, bagging hook, reaping-hook or grasshook is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting, or reaping, grain crops or cutting succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock, ei ...

ploughshare In agriculture, a plowshare ( US) or ploughshare ( UK; ) is a component of a plow (or plough). It is the cutting or leading edge of a moldboard which closely follows the coulter (one or more ground-breaking spikes) when plowing. The plowshar ...

lance A lance is a spear designed to be used by a mounted warrior or cavalry soldier ( lancer). In ancient and medieval warfare, it evolved into the leading weapon in cavalry charges, and was unsuited for throwing or for repeated thrusting, unlike si ...

s and

sword A sword is an edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed ti ...

s. Later, it also carried out

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

processing; washbowls, washtubs,

kettle drum Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally ...

s, brewing implements, pots, cans and pans were made. The kettle drums, which were produced into the late 20th century, were made from a single piece of copper, forged under the

tilt hammer A trip hammer, also known as a tilt hammer or helve hammer, is a massive powered hammer. Traditional uses of trip hammers include pounding, decorticating and polishing of grain in agriculture. In mining, trip hammers were used for crushing metal ...

and still set a standard today in terms of their sound. The Tobiashammer was owned by the Albrecht family until 1816 when they sold it. Thereafter its owners changed more often. From the mid-19th century the mill was significantly enlarged. A

rolling mill In metalworking, rolling is a metal forming process in which metal stock is passed through one or more pairs of rolls to reduce the thickness, to make the thickness uniform, and/or to impart a desired mechanical property. The concept is simil ...

and a second hammer mill was built. The office (''Kontorhaus''), built in 1882, now acts as a restaurant, the ''Hammerschenke''. In 1972 the old, ruined hammer mill was bought from private owners by the Ohrdruf Steelworks.
In 1983 the Tobiashammer was opened to the public as a demonstration mill.

Museum, technology and art

The museum has five working

trip hammer A trip hammer, also known as a tilt hammer or helve hammer, is a massive powered hammer. Traditional uses of trip hammers include pounding, decorticating and polishing of grain in agriculture. In mining, trip hammers were used for crushing meta ...

s, a

stamp mill A stamp mill (or stamp battery or stamping mill) is a type of mill machine that crushes material by pounding rather than grinding, either for further processing or for extraction of metallic ores. Breaking material down is a type of unit operatio ...

and grinding workshop as well as

furnace A furnace is a structure in which heat is produced with the help of combustion. Furnace may also refer to: Appliances Buildings * Furnace (central heating): a furnace , or a heater or boiler , used to generate heat for buildings * Boiler, used t ...

s. The mill is still driven by four

s. Since 1988 the Tobiashammer has also housed one of the largest

steam engine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...

s in Europe: a twin, tandem, reversing, steam engine, built in 1920, with a total weight of 305 tonnes and a power output of 12,000 horsepower. It comes from the old Maxhütte smeltery at

Unterwellenborn Unterwellenborn is a municipality in the district Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, in Thuringia, Germany. It was created on 1 February 2006 by fusion of the municipalities , Goßwitz, Könitz, Lausnitz bei Pößneck and Unterwellenborn itself which had co ...

and was decommissioned in 1985. The engine is fully working and is operated during guided tours. An annual event that has taken place since the museum's opening in 1983 is the Blacksmiths’ Symposium (''Schmiede-Symposium''). In 2009 it was entitled ''"Tribute to Fritz Kühn"'' and brought together ornamental metalsmiths from three continents. Over the years many well-known

metalsmith A metalsmith or simply smith is a craftsperson fashioning useful items (for example, tools, kitchenware, tableware, jewelry, armor and weapons) out of various metals. Smithing is one of the oldest list of metalworking occupations, metalworking o ...

s and metal sculptors have created their

works of art A work of art, artwork, art piece, piece of art or art object is an artistic creation of aesthetic value. Except for "work of art", which may be used of any work regarded as art in its widest sense, including works from literature ...

here. Many still grace the outer areas of the museum site as part of its sculpture park, such as the gigantic, forged water lily by Alfred Habermann and ''Das Gesicht'' by Rüdiger Roehl.

References

Literature

* Wolfgang Schmidt, Wilfried Theile: ''Denkmale der Produktions- und Verkehrsgeschichte. Teil 1.'' VEB Verlag für Bauwesen, Berlin, 1989, *

Eberhard Wächtler Eberhard Wächtler (10 May 1929 – 22 September 2010) was a Germans, German Economic history, economic historian. He was particularly notable for research in coal and steel sciences in postwar Germany. Wächtler was born in Dresden, Weimar Republi ...

: ''Tobiashammer Ohrdruf.'' Stahlverformungswerk Ohrdruf, 1987 * Manfred Beckert: ''Metallgestaltung im Tobiashammer.'' 25 Jahre Metallgestalter-Symposium im Tobiashammer, Steinbeis-Edition 2008, * ''Tobiashammer: ein Kunstbuch.'' Verlag für Schweißen und Verwandte Verfahren, DVS-Verlag, 1999

External links

Home page of the Tobiashammer
{{Authority control Hammer mills of Germany Heritage sites in Thuringia Museums in Thuringia Gotha (district)