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Hammergut Neidberg – history and legends

The Hammergut Neidberg is more than 550 years old: in 1470 it is first mentioned as “das smedeberg genandt der Neytbergk” – a “smithy hill”, in other words. Here the Biela drove waterwheels that raised heavy hammers, with which iron from Berggießhübel ore was forged. And like every old house in the valley, the Hammergut has a legend all of its own.

Legend

The legend tells that at the Hammergut Neidberg no yellowhammers were ever to be seen – instead there were adders lying everywhere, in whole rows, even in the beds. A hammersmith is said to have banished them here during a quarrel with the lord of the estate, and as late as 1853 people claimed to have seen them. In the end a conjurer was sent for. He drew a circle and recited his spells until a gigantic adder appeared – the King of the Adders. He led all the adders behind him up the Pflasterberg into the forest, where they vanished for ever. Since then you see yellowhammers at the Hammergut instead of adders. The conjurer is said to have remarked afterwards that if the King of the Adders had not come, it would have cost him his own life.

Official ironworks and blast furnace

In 1548 and again in 1764 Neidberg is recorded as an “Amtshammer”, that is, a hammer mill under the sovereign's supervision in the district of Pirna. In 1661 a blast furnace was built at Neidberg – which placed the works among the blast-furnace sites of “Pirnisch Eisen”, Pirna iron. The spelling changed over the centuries: Nytberg, Neitperg, Hamer Neydtbergk and finally Neidberg. Around 1834, 29 people lived here; by 1890 there were 43.

Hammer, mill and sawmill

According to the house's own tradition, the hammer master's house was rebuilt in 1661 on the site of an older predecessor, and in 1792 a new hammer for tools, iron and weapons was established. Over the centuries the estate served as an iron hammer works, a grain mill and a sawmill – all powered by the same waters of the Biela. In 2016 Tom and Katrin Jäger acquired the property and restored it in 2017 and 2018.

Legend Other adder kings

Adder kings are known elsewhere in the area too – and there they even wear a little golden crown. At the Ascheborn opposite Sebnitz – so it says as early as Meiche's book of legends from 1894 – all the adders are said to gather around their king at noon on St John's Day; if someone pure of heart spreads out a white cloth, he lays his crown upon it. At the Geisingberg in the eastern Ore Mountains, on the other hand, a thief is said to have stolen the crown – but a snake had hidden in his horse's tail and bit him as he unsaddled it.

Legend The last hammer lord's daughter

In 1894 Alfred Meiche was only able to write down a few lines about the Bielagrund – among the legends “about which nothing more could be learned”: in the Bielagrund there used to be several hammer works, and the last hammer lord had a daughter. She was so beautiful that he only let her go out walking at night – to protect her from her many admirers. Which Hammergut is meant, however, the legend does not reveal.

The parish of Langenhennersdorf

For a long time the people of Neidberg went to church in Langenhennersdorf: the Hammergut belonged to that parish, as documented in 1539 and still in 1930. Unlike the neighbouring hammer works of Brausenstein and Reichstein, which for a time belonged to the manors of Hermsdorf and Langenhennersdorf, Neidberg remained an “Amtshammer”, an ironworks under the sovereign.

The first hammer masters

In 1470 “young Hans Fischer”, son of Nickel Fischer, sold his father's estate “das smedeberg genandt der Neytbergk” to his brother Hensel – for 300 Rhenish guilders, together with a share in the iron-ore mine at Berggießhübel. Another name is even older: in 1485 Magdalena, the widow of the former hammer master Memol or Mennel, appeared before the court in Königstein. And from the same period comes a report that the hammer master “zcum Neidberge” had his horses stolen during a feud.

Beer from Aussig

As early as around 1483 the records state: “Der hammermeister ym Neytberge had Awßiger bier geschanckt” – the hammer master at Neytberg has served beer from Aussig; so there was beer from Aussig in Bohemia to be had at the hammer works. In 1548 the hammer master was allowed to bake, slaughter and brew freely for his workers. The right to serve drink was later expressly set down in the deed of sale of 1604, and from 1776 to 1785 the landlord of the tavern in Hermsdorf complained about the competition from the Hammergut. In 1832 the owner, Johanna Christiane Luger, then officially applied for an inn licence – the earliest evidence that guests were catered for here.

The Hipisch family and the mill dispute

In 1535 Paul Hipisch, hammer master in the Fichte near Hellendorf, bought the Neidberg and passed it on to his sons Valten and Hans for 1000 guilders. In 1537 the brothers kept fourteen horses, four of them riding horses, and in 1539 received the hammer works as a hereditary fief. In 1548 about eight people lived on the estate: hammer masters, foundry workers and carters. In 1549 the millers of Rosenthal, Hermsdorf, Markersbach and Hellendorf complained about the Hammergut's grain mill, which was taking their customers away. In 1565 a cutting mill and a blast furnace were added – but the debts grew, and in 1573 an old debt of 1000 guilders had to be deferred.

The Elector's keeper of the art chamber

In 1582 Elector Augustus made a gift to his court cabinetmaker David Ußlaub of a debt owed by the hammer master Hans Hipisch – and that is how a craftsman from Dresden came to own an iron hammer works. Ußlaub found the estate burned down: in February 1583 he wrote that he intended to rebuild it in the spring. For this purpose the Elector granted him the piece of woodland called “Schleichersberg”, and Ußlaub later became keeper of the Elector's Kunstkammer, the art chamber in Dresden. In 1604 he was permitted to sell the hammer works to Andreas Wolff.

A barrel of herrings

The letter of enfeoffment for Andreas Wolff in 1610 brought with it a curious levy: every year the hammer works had to deliver a whole barrel of herrings to the district governor in Pirna – the “Heerings-Geschoß”, the herring tax. The hammer works of Reichstein and Königstein paid the same. This fish tax was not abolished until 1792. Besides the grain mill, the letter also mentions a board mill – so timber was already being sawn here more than 400 years ago.

War, a fresh start and grenades

The works did not survive the Thirty Years' War: in 1654 it was sold at a forced auction, and in 1660 it was described as “caduc und eingegangen” – derelict and defunct – its machinery gone and the Rabenstein farmstead burned down. Then the Elector's valet Christoph Bürckner bought the estate, had the hammer and mills rebuilt and in 1661 put up a new hammer master's house with fine stonemasonry. In the year 1700 his son was to work off part of his dues with “grenades for the princely arsenals and fortresses” – munitions cast in the Bielatal.

Shortage of wood and the end of the blast furnace

In 1705 the records state that the hammer works was “beginning to fall into decay for want of wood” – blast furnace and hammer needed vast quantities of charcoal, and the forests were exhausted. In 1728 the hammer works gave up its ore mining in the Johann-Georgen-Stolln adit in Berggießhübel; its water was handed over to the new Johann-Georgen-Bad spa as healing water. The Elector's forestry ordinance of 1731 then made the operation unprofitable once and for all, and by around 1770 the old blast furnace had gone cold.

Princesses' garden and slices of bread and butter

In 1826 the travel writer Merkel described the Hammergut: a large country estate with a mill, an iron hammer, a forge and a brick barn, plus the “tool and weapons hammer of Herr Luger” and “Madame Grahl, owner of the Hammerguth”. A little waterfall tumbled down from the mill race, there was a flower garden with a rock grotto – the “Prinzessinnengarten”, the princesses' garden – and in the summerhouse walkers were given milk and slices of bread and butter, which Merkel calls “Butterschnittchen”. That same year the widowed Johanna Christiana Grahl married the hammersmith Johann Andreas Luger – and estate and hammer works were once again in the same hands. So guests were already being looked after at the Hammergut almost 200 years ago.

Weapons hammer, pearl barley and tanbark

In 1792 Andreas Luger from Lohmen received permission for a tool, iron and weapons hammer – but without a blast furnace and without wood from the princely forests. Around 1840 it was said that his products were “often dispatched very far abroad”. Meanwhile, many wheels were turning on the Biela at the estate: a grain mill with a “Dutch pearl-barley mill”, two sawmills, a bark mill with six stampers for tanner's bark, as well as a brickworks, a farm forge and a small sheep farm. The keystone above the forge door bearing the year 1816 has survived to this day.

The sawmill and the bombs of 1945

At the end of the 19th century Karl Julius Otto bought the mills at Neidberg and expanded the sawmills into a turbine-driven sawmill; in 1917 Paul Otto was trading as “sawmill, mill and animal feed merchant”. Around 1920 the farm section of the estate was converted into a dwelling house. According to the house's own tradition, on 17 April 1945 American aircraft bombed the sawmill – probably by mistake, the intended target most likely being an armaments factory in Rosenthal. What is documented in the State Archives is a file from 1945 on “war damage to the Neidberg sawing and planing mills”.

The “Bastei” caravan

After the war the sawmill was nationalised in 1952/53, and in 1967 it became the state-owned VEB Karosseriebau Rosenthal. From 1974 the “Bastei” caravan rolled off the production line here at Neidberg – in white and blue, white and red or green, for 14,000 marks without an awning. By 1977 more than 2,500 a year were being made, making it the most-built hard-bodied caravan in the GDR; East German citizens waited four to five years for one. It was exported as far as France, Sweden, Holland, West Germany and the Soviet Union, where the 25,000th went in January 1984. At the end of July 1991 production ground to a halt – in all, some 40,000 caravans and sales trailers had come out of Rosenthal. In 2019 the last factory chimney at Neidberg was blown up.

The lost hammer master's house

The hammer master's house of 1661 was a two-storey dwelling with a seat-niche portal and a diamond-patterned arch reveal, a cross-vaulted hallway and barrel-vaulted service rooms. In 1986 local historians were still celebrating “325 years of the Neidberg hammer master's house” as a monument of regional significance. But the house fell into decay, in 1987 the roof truss partly collapsed, and in 1988 it was demolished despite its importance. What remains is the combined house and stable building, where our holiday flats are today, the old farm section next door, which was confirmed as a listed cultural monument in April 2026 and is being restored, the forge keystone of 1816 – and the portal of the hammer master's house, which today stands once more at the entrance to the Hammergut.

The portal at the entrance

The stately portal that welcomes you today at the entrance to the Hammergut has only stood on this spot since 2018. Originally it was the entrance to the old hammer master's house – standing in front of it, you can sense how splendid and imposing that house must have been for its time. When the hammer master's house was demolished in 1988, the portal was torn out as well. Local residents with an interest in history collected money in the village back then, at least to salvage it; dismantled into its individual pieces, it then lay in the Rosenthal council depot for some 20 years. When Tom and Katrin Jäger were restoring the Hammergut, they asked whether they might re-erect the portal at the farmstead – the municipality and the heritage authority were happy to agree. Ever since, it has welcomed every guest and is the loveliest spot for a souvenir photo.

The seating area in the old cellar

If you look from the Hammergut's courtyard towards the slope, you'll discover a cosy covered seating area that guests and walkers are welcome to use at any time. But this spot wasn't always a place to sit: until 2025 it lay hidden under the rubble of the hammer master's house demolished in 1988. The floor slabs of this little terrace and its back wall are the original surviving cellar of the hammer master's house – Tom and Katrin Jäger uncovered it again. Where people now while away pleasant hours, the hammer master once kept his provisions.

Walls of Elbe sandstone

Take a look at the walls of the Hammergut: it is built of Elbe sandstone, like most of the old houses here in the Bielatal. Sandstone used to be the cheapest building material there was – after all, it lay right behind the house. The stones were quarried directly on the slope and laid on the spot, without long journeys and without carts across the country. Supply chains hardly come any shorter, and you could not build more efficiently back then. So the Hammergut has quite literally grown out of the rock it stands on.

From ice cellar to wine cellar

The vaulted wine cellar, where up to twelve people now spend convivial evenings, used to be the Hammergut's ice cellar. In winter, snow and ice were stored in the vault so that food could be kept cool all year round. The cellar has a drain to the Biela through which the meltwater could always run away – so it stayed cool quite naturally from winter right through to late autumn. A fridge without electricity, powered by winter itself.

The old Pflasterberg by the Hammergut, a steep cobbled hill, was once part of the main route between Pirna and Bodenbach (Děčín) – until 1938 today's B 172 federal road ran via Hermsdorf and Rosenthal, and as early as the Middle Ages long-distance traffic travelled to Bohemia via Rosenthal on the “Hohe Straße”, the High Road. The railway and the road along the Elbe valley, which are the main transport routes today, did not yet exist. So that the fully laden horse teams could get up the steep Pflasterberg, the Hammergut kept extra horses ready as trace horses. Going downhill was no easier: to get the carts and carriages safely down the steep descent, they were set on iron or wooden rails and lowered down the hill. If you look carefully, you can still find the drag marks of these laborious journeys in the cobbles today. In winter, by the way, the Pflasterberg is the Hammergut's very own toboggan run.

The last Saxon outpost before Bohemia

For a long time the border with Bohemia ran right above the Hammergut: Rosenthal belonged to the Bohemian crown until 1503, and its church came under the Archdiocese of Prague. The Hammergut, by contrast, was Saxon – the Historical Gazetteer lists the Neidberg in the district of Pirna as early as 1483, as a sovereign “Amtshammer”; in 1470 it is called “das smedeberg genandt der Neytbergk”. Hermsdorf, too, already belonged to the administrative district of Pirna in 1438. That made the Hammergut the last Saxon outpost before Bohemia. It was only in 1503, through an exchange of territory between Saxony and Bohemia, that Rosenthal came to Saxony – in the deed of exchange it appears under its Czech name, “Rozmital”.

The water-lily pond at the Hammergut was once a mill pond: water was collected here for dry spells, so that the mill wheels could be driven when needed whenever the Biela was running low. Today it is a little wildlife habitat with water lilies and small fish. If you're lucky, you might spot a grey heron here, or even a kingfisher – both like to hang around the pond.

Restoration with traditional techniques

When the Hammergut was restored, old building techniques were brought back into use – for instance, building vaults the way they did in the days of the hammer masters. Valuable historic fabric was preserved as far as possible or reused for the new parts, so that around 90 per cent could be made from recycled material. The modern furnishings are a deliberate contrast to the old walls. Because the sandstone walls have been left exposed, they can breathe – which makes for a very healthy indoor climate. So: take a deep breath and enjoy the good air.

The 'Bastei' caravan from across the road

Opposite the Hammergut, on the former industrial site at the Neidberg, there was a branch of the state-owned VEB Karosseriewerk Dresden in GDR times – it had grown out of the old sawmill. Caravans were built here even before the 'Bastei': in the early 1970s the Rosenthal plant converted sales trailers, which it had previously made under licence from the Dresden vehicle builder Richard Nagetusch, into caravans. For the 'Bastei', the facilities were thoroughly modernised in 1974, because this was where the most caravan-building experience lay. It was built on a wooden frame, clad with Sprelacart panels and insulated with foam; inside were two seating areas that could be turned into beds, a small kitchen with gas stove and sink, a wardrobe and, depending on the model, a fridge and gas heating. It came as the Bastei 1, Bastei 2, 350, 390 and 351, plus sales trailers; Fritz Berger sold the 390 and 351 models in the West under the name 'OASE'. Many Bastei caravans belonged to companies and stood on campsites as holiday accommodation for their workers. Do ask around in your family – perhaps someone spent a holiday in a 'Bastei' that was built right across the road from here.

Links to other places

Neidberg was one of many hammer works on the Biela: upstream were the Oberhütte near Rosenthal and the Brausenstein hammer, whose blast furnace of 1693 still stands today; downstream were the Reichstein hammer and the hammer works in Hütten. The ore came from Berggießhübel, where today you can go underground in the Marie Louise Stolln show mine. Together they made “Pirnisch Eisen”, Pirna iron, famous.

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