The Sabel Mill at Oberbrechen, Germany
The name Sabel has been associated with milling in the village of Oberbrechen, Germany for hundreds of years. The Sabel
family is said to have been a large milling family originally from Elz, near Limburg, in the Westerwald.
This
roughly translates to “IN THE YEAR 1726 ON JUNE
14th, HAS MATHIAS SAEWEL AND HIS WIFE ANNA MARIA
VON EMPTS ERECTED
THIS MILL IN THE HANDS OF GOD. MAY
GOD
PROTECT IT AGAINST FIRE AND BURNING. MAY GOD BLESS
ALL WHO GO IN AND
OUT.”
The
closing words are difficult to translate. The builder
did not have enough “Pacen”.
He enlarged the new mill building on municipal property.
Therefore, in
1730, he paid two Reichsthaler (money) to the community because of the
mill
construction.
About
1900, the carved beam was painted to say,
“Johann Herman Sabel, Miller”. It is said that in more recent times, it
was covered
with
stucco so that it is no longer legible, however, an older picture shows
the beam which had been removed from the building, sitting on a step.
The current location can not be ascertained.
According to descendants of this widely branching mill family, by 1780 the private mill was called “Sablische” and by 1790, “the Sabelsmühle.”
In
1822, an oil mill was added to the old mill, and
in 1843, a bakery house was added. The property also included a tannery.
Just before 1904, the youngest Anton Sabel transferred ownership of the mill to his younger brother Johann Herman Sabel.
The Family of Johann Herman Sabel
Click here to see more Sabel family pictures.
The mill suffered a fire in 1931 and Johann Herman Sabel’s son, Toni
Sabel, took
over the mill. Toni Sabel, the last miller from this family, died in WW
II near
Stalingrad, Russia in January of 1943.
After Toni’s death, the mill was
inherited by
his two sisters, Anna and Leni. Anna
was
already living in Chicago, Illinois, USA at that time. Leni’s husband, Karl Schulten,
died in
WW II. Leni and her daughter Karoline alternated between living with her
relatives in
Chicago and the mill in Oberbrechen. Later, Karoline married
in the US and
mother and daughter remained in the US.
Their brother Hermann Sabel emigrated to
Chicago
before WW II. He died in 1956.
Their brother, Jakob Sabel,
was a
successful singer of classical operatic arias at
the opera houses in
Wiesbaden, Frankfurt and Kassel. He died following an
appendectomy in
1950. Read more about him here in German, or here in English.
Their sister, Thekla had married a distant cousin,
August Sabel, and lived in Essen.
During that time, the mill had been
leased twice
to millers, so it continued to be a working mill. The last leaseholder tried
unsuccessfully
to buy the mill. The story is told, that in his frustration, he threw
an iron
bar in the rotating millwheel to destroy it.
The
mill was finally closed on May 31, 1965 and the
property sat
vacant and uninhabited until it was purchased and renovated as a
private home
by Jo Jung in 1980.
During this time the buildings suffered from neglect and vandalism. The leaking roof allowed rain and snow to enter and the ancient building began to rot. People took items that they could use. Others dumped rubbish on the property. When Mr. Jung bought the property in 1980, he built a fence around the entire property and locked the doors and windows before undertaking a massive clean-up and renovation. He removed the grain silos in the upper floors, the grinding-machines in the ground floor, and all the other machines and functioning parts of the mill before converting the mill into a private dwelling house. Since that time, the mill has been his home. Click here to see photos of the mill before renovation. Photos courtesy of Herr Jung.
Click here
to
see Google maps photos of the mill property.
If you subscribe to Ancestry.com, you can find the Sabel family tree here.
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