Amélie Zurcher

Amélie Zurcher

Louise Marie Amélie Zurcher (born August 27, 1858 in Bollwiller in Upper Alsace ; † June 8, 1947 in Cernay ) is considered to be the founder of potash mining in the productive Bassin Potassique northwest of Mulhouse in the Upper Rhine Plain at the foot of the Vosges .

youth

She was the daughter of Théodore Zürcher (1817–1889), head of the Bollweiler textile factory, which employed 350 workers, and was born in Bollweiler Castle as the fourth child after three brothers in an upper-class milieu. Her parents were French at heart. The young Amélie attended the Bollwiller primary school until 1870, the year Alsace became German. To keep her safe, Amélie was sent to the Dominican boarding school of Nancy in Lorraine, where she showed an initial interest in geology. Amélie passed an excellent high school diploma . She returned to her homeland in 1877 at the age of 19 to look after her brother Albert , who was wounded in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and was now disabled (her other brother James (1848–1870) had died in Algeria). Together with him, she inherited the 65-hectare Lützelhof on the Ochsenfeld south of Sennheim (today Cernay ) and turned this estate into a model farm. Amélie was an animal lover and an excellent hunter. She was a decisive person who demanded a lot from herself but also from her servants and maids.

Test drilling

In 1893 the estate, which had only a thin layer of humus, suffered from the terrible drought throughout the country. Amélie had to find alternatives to avoid ruin. The following year she met Joseph Vogt , who was the director of a foundry. She made herself familiar with the idea of ​​searching for natural resources, basing her certainty on success with some kind of revelation or vision. With that, however, she encountered serious doubts among her relatives and acquaintances, who could not believe that something like this should exist in their area.

But after ten years of insistence, she finally succeeded in persuading Joseph Vogt and the drilling expert Jean-Baptiste Grisez to carry out a test drilling in the Ochsenfeld between Sennheim, Wittelsheim and Lutterbach . One hoped to find oil there - later one thought of hard coal . On May 21, 1904 the holding company Société en participation pour la recherche de gisements de houille en Alsace ( gisements de houille means coal deposits) was founded with a deposit of 100,000 gold marks , which later became Société Bonne Espérance (German: "Gesellschaft Gute Hoffnung") was renamed. On June 11, 1904, the test drilling began in the Nonnenbruch forest right next to the two siblings' hunting lodge. While Joseph Vogt tended quickly to become discouraged, Amélie persuaded him to continue. Crystals of orange, red and purple in color were finally found 550 meters below the surface and sent to a Strasbourg laboratory for analysis . The report, which arrived a few days later, stated in essence: “The sample is potash of excellent quality; should the camp be big enough, one would have to consider dismantling ”.

The extensive exploration had more than used up the start-up capital; the costs amounted to over 400,000 marks. In order to raise the additional capital, Amélie Zurcher had not only pledged her property, but also those of her brother and nephew. New donors for the exploitation of the deposit had to be found with the greatest possible secrecy. It was unsuccessful in the region and in Paris, but it was thanks to investors from Germany that the mining company union Amélie was founded on June 13, 1906 with its headquarters in Mulhouse. It carried out 120 wells in the region and on April 22, 1908 the first shaft ( Amélie I ) was dug. In 1910 the industrial use of the potash mines could begin.

Exploitation of the potash mines

In the following year - Alsace was still annexed by the German Empire - the Amélie union had to cede all usage rights to Deutsche Kaliwerke Bernterode , which was domiciled in the then province of Saxony . Joseph Vogt remained confident, however, and raised enough money among his friends to found a new joint-stock company, the Sainte-Thérèse potash mines . The new company then received concessions in the municipal areas of Pulversheim , Ruelisheim , Ungersheim , Feldkirch , Bollwiler and Ensisheim . In 1912, 106 potash concessions had been awarded in Upper Alsace, 28 of which belonged to the Sainte-Thérèse potash mines and 78 to the German potash works. From the funds that Amélie received from the industrial exploitation of the mines (in 1910, individual shares in the Amélie union were traded extremely speculatively and rose to 12,000 to 14,000 marks with outliers up to 30,000 marks), she enlarged the Lützelhof from 65 to 800 hectares. The workforce increased to over 40 people and, among other things, 350 sheep were driven in a twelve-day march from Bavaria to Alsace. The farm also had its own steam engine that operated a rapeseed oil press and was also available to the neighboring farmers. At the time of this expansion, Amélie was between 50 and 60 years old.

Late life

During the First World War , a field hospital was set up in Lützelhof, in which Amélie Zurcher worked as a nurse. Towards the end of the war the manor was completely destroyed.

The year 1918 saw the victory of France, Alsace became French again and Amélie became French again. The German mines were confiscated by France. In 1924 all mines were nationalized, but Amélie was compensated for it. The mining company Mines Domaniales de Potasse d'Alsace (MDPA) dominated the region. Amélie Zurcher was proud to have given her country this wealth: "Most importantly, France benefits from this discovery, that is my best reward."

After the German annexation of Alsace in the Second World War , Amélie stayed in Mulhouse. In 1942, at the age of 84, she suffered a fractured thigh bone in an accident in the bathroom, making her bedridden. On May 11, 1944, her villa at 17, rue du Moenchsberg was hit by an Allied bomb. The cook of the house died immediately, but Amélie survived but had to be hospitalized in Cernay. Because gangrene set in, her poorly healing leg had to be amputated in October 1945 in the Hasenrain hospital in Mulhouse.

Amélie remained unmarried and died on June 8, 1947 at the age of 89 in Cernay.

Some things were named after her, including the Lycée Amélie Zurcher high school in Wittelsheim , the municipality in whose area the first drilling took place.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Markus Kutter: Amélie Zürcher discovers the treasure underground PDF.
2. ^ Yves Frey: Polonais d'Alsace - Pratiques patronales et mineurs polonais dans le bassin potassique de Haut-Alsace 1918–1948 , p. 25. Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2003.