The oldest house in the village: House Drechsel

This house, built in the 15th century and also known as the “Mohrenwirtschaft” – the Mohren Inn – was most likely one of the first taverns in Mittelberg, and it is verifiably the oldest building in the center of the village. The core of the building includes the living room with a cellar underneath and its original floor plan shows it to be a so-called single-room house.

This house dates from the year 1452; an extension was made around 1540. In its present form, the house was crowned with high gables about 80 years ago. Unfortunately, we can no longer determine who constructed the building. There are also no records which could provide information about the first innkeeper. Not until 1840 do we find evidence of the owners of this former tavern. In 1840 Josef Fritz took over the business, then the physician Feurstein, and later, in 1850, Wolfgang Drechsel, who built the “Alte Krone” tavern in 1866. The old sales deeds mention, in addition to this building, an associated brewery, a distillery, a butcher’s shop, and the courtyard with a dance floor.

In the so-called Landsordnung (legal registry) of 1569 only one tavern was allowed in each village, and it had to be located near the parish church. There was good reason for the fact that a tavern had the concession for serving wine only in the immediate vicinity of the church: During the Sunday church services, at which attendance was mandatory, no one was allowed to be present in the local pub. Furthermore, it was easier for the authorities to apprehend shady characters there. They were sometimes severely punished – the men in stocks, the women with the “neck fiddle” , both extremely unpleasant instruments of torture. In 1990 the house was put under protection as a historical monument.