post mill Kottmarsdorf

The Bockwindmühle Kottmarsdorf stands on the 435-metre Pfarrberg in the south-east of Kottmarsdorf, a village in the Saxon municipality of Kottmar. Built in 1843, it is the only surviving one of three original post mills in the village and is protected as a technical monument. The site includes the windmill itself, a nearby Müllerhaus, and an old gear wheel from another mill.

The mill operated as a grain mill for exactly a century until 1943, then fell into disrepair before being restored in 1961 by the local nature and heritage club with the village council. After German reunification it was renovated again in 1990, and its 17-metre sails and rotating beam were renewed. A further overhaul of the sails and turning mechanism took place in 2014. Each year on German Mill Day events are held around the mill, and every five years a Mühlenfest festival is organised.

The Müllerhaus beside the windmill once housed the miller’s family and now contains a display bakery with a traditional oven where baking demonstrations are held several times a year. Nearby stands the Kammrad from the Hempelmühle Schönbach, a 1752 gear wheel measuring 2.90 metres across and weighing about two tonnes. A 1.5-kilometre Mühlenrundweg links the surviving mill with the sites of the former Samel and Döring mills, passing a model of the windmill, an Umgebinde house, a war cemetery and the village church.