The Enchanted Mill

From Linda Ann Hance:

This website, still under construction, is devoted to my German Jewish great-grandparents, Friedrich and Auguste Ahrens. They were industrialists until 1938  when the Nazis seized their factory and fortune. Yet one of their possessions did survive the Holocaust: The Borkow Mill Guestbook. Today it can be counted among the artifacts documenting the pre-WWII culture of German Jews. It begins in 1900 when the Ahrens acquired their country home—a converted mill on the river Mildenitz—where they entertained friends, family and business associates.

An invitation to dine at the Borkow Mill was no ordinary sit-down event. Instead, guests were guided to experience God and nature’s bounty by catching their own seafood from rowboats. The humor, joy and often spiritual quality of these outings are captured by guests in exceptional verse and artwork, such as the drawing on this page. All entries are in verse (poetry), as was the custom. Eventually we will have English translations, but if you do not speak German, the art also tells the story.

The title page is drawn by Auguste Ahrens herself (click yellow button above). She shows us the mill lapped by the river with a boat resting in the dock, a fish dangling above—a reference, no doubt, to the program they had in store for their guests.

The first entry is from my great-great grandfather, Hermann Josephi, who sets a festive tone:

When visiting Sternberg you must see

The Borkow Mill that captivates me,

Where festivity and merriment are renowned,

And boating, lobstering and fishing abound.

Before we leave, the important matter!

To eat our catch, to dinner we gather

And if we hauled no fish,

Then savory eel will be our dish,

For Country living is the motto!

With so much bread, butter, milk and eggs,

For nothing must we grovel.

Before we end another delightful day,

Let me say, beautiful and bountiful

Is the Mill at Borkow in all its ways.

(Translation by Linda Ann Hance).

The guestbook was one of Auguste Ahrens most treasured belongings she took with her into hiding for 7 long years, eluding the Nazis. When she died at a farmhouse just one month after the war’s end, the guestbook was found with her.. Later it was preserved for decades by her granddaughter, Ilse Rosenhainer Hance (my mother). Upon her death, this honor was passed to me.

Much gratitude and special thanks to Sylvia Ulmer and Juergen Gramenz for turning the guests’ archaic handwriting into recognizable German verse. Without them this document would be lost to history.

For more historical information on Friedrich Ahrens and other notable Jewish contemporaries, see www.juden-in-mecklenburg.de (researched and created by Ulmer and Gramenz).