Pfisters Mühle, Ein Sommerferienheft

Pfisters Mühle, Ein Sommerferienheft, a short novel written by W. Raabe in 1883-4, and published in 1884. As the sub-title indicates, it purports to be written down by Ebert Pfister while on holiday with his young wife at the family mill, which is about to be demolished. Ebert tells of the mill's prosperity in the days when the miller not only ground his flour but served drinks in his garden to numerous citizens and students. But the mill stream became polluted, the guests, repelled by the smell, departed, and Ebert's father had to face the decline of his salubrious old mill in the rising age of industrial development. Though he discovered the source of contamination in the sugar refinery of Krickerode upstream and won a lawsuit against it, the whole experience brought a realization of the inevitable retreat of his own world in the new technical age, so that he lost heart and died.

Raabe's sympathies are clearly with the values that are fading, but his book, which uses Pfisters Mühle and Krickerode as symbols for the old world and the new, gives the modern development, in the person of Dr Asche, the Pfisters' progressive friend, a fair hearing.