Antonshütte
The Antonshütte was a smelter in the Schwarzwassertal . It was located in the Antonsthal district of the Breitenbrunn community , which was created in 1831 for smelting operations.
history
Since the "Generalschmelzadministration" was founded in 1710, the low-grade ores mined in the Upper Ore Mountains had to be brought to Freiberg for further processing at great expense . In order to save these transport costs and thus make mining more profitable, chief miner August Freiherr von Herder initiated the construction of a smelter in the western Ore Mountains. The mouth of the Halsbach into the Schwarzwasser between Erlahammer and Breitenhof was chosen as the location in 1825 .
The “Königlich Sächsische Antons-Silber-Schmelz-Hütte”, named after the then King Anton , consisted of three main buildings: the Huthaus, the Erzhaus and the Schmelzhaus. The equipment of the hut was generous and state-of-the-art. For the air supply of the melting furnaces, the machine director Christian Friedrich Brendel constructed a cylinder blower that went down in technical history as the "Schwarzenberg blower" and has been on view in the Freiberg mine Alte Elisabeth since 1926 . In order to ensure sufficient impact water for the blower operation, an approx. 3.5 km long artificial moat was created from 1829 .
At the inauguration of the Antonshütte on July 4, 1831, Baron von Herder gave up the first trough for charging the ovens . He expressed the hope that with this hut “the well-being of the Upper Mountain residents [...] would be secured for centuries”. In the first two years of operation, the smelter processed around 31,000 quintals of ore into 36.5 quintals of silver , 90 quintals of copper and 3,043 quintals of lead . The high expectations placed in the hut were not fulfilled in the long run. The Oberbergamt complained as early as 1833: “The amount of ores that are delivered to the Antonshütte is not enough to keep the works busy enough.” The switch to amalgamation did not revive the business either. In 1843 the Ministry of Finance approved the temporary cessation of work.
As early as 1853, A. Stöckhardt from the Tharandt Academic Laboratory pointed out the damage to young spruce and pine trees from the smoke from the Antonshütte and examined the trees and the surrounding soil, with lead compounds being detected in both. In 1855, the Schwarzenberg forester Curtius drew attention to severe forest damage, the cause of which was the poisonous hut fumes. On September 5, 1857, the Ministry of Finance informed the Mining Authority that it had decided to temporarily "suspend" the operation of the smelter due to the considerable smoke damage and only a small amount of ore deliveries. In May 1858, the ironworks were finally given up, not least because in the same year a flood of the Halsbach broke some of the buildings seriously.
A public auction of the Antonshütte took place on April 1, 1863, but it was unsuccessful. In 1865, the paper manufacturer Franz Eduard Weidenmüller bought the Antonshütte equipment, including hydropower, for almost 23,000 thalers. The wood grinding shop, which supplied dried wood pulp to other companies from 1867 to 1884, developed into a paper factory with three machines and corresponding processing systems in the following years . Weidenmüller had another paper mill built in Drei Werden near Mittweida in 1906/07 . He put workers from the Anton's hut there.
After the referendum in Saxony on June 30, 1946 , the operation was publicly owned and, in the 1970s, incorporated into the United Paper and Cardboard Factory Niederschlema . In 1990 this combine was privatized as Dresden Papier AG , which gave up the Antonsthal location in 1994 and tore down most of the operating facilities.
Of the Antonshütte, which was listed as a historical monument in 1972, only the mansion or hat house with an attached staircase is preserved today.
Royal Saxon Antonshütte eV
On January 19, 2016, the association Königlich Sächsische Antonshütte eV, based in the Breitenbrunn district of Antonsthal, was entered in the commercial register at the Chemnitz District Court . This is the form of the Hüttenknappschaft from Antonsthal, which has been active since the beginning of the 1990s under the direction of Andreas Kahl, written as a registered association. The association has set itself the goal of researching the history of the Antonshütte in its supraregional importance as part of the Ore Mountains mining region of the Saxon-Bohemian Ore Mountains and making it accessible to the public.
The design of the square club flag carried during the mountain parades is based on the district colors of the Saxon Hüttenamt (scarlet red and gold) and on contemporary images. In addition to the hut insignia, it shows a banner with the inscription "Glückauf" and the words "Königlich Sächsische Antonshütte" arranged in two semicircles. The smelters bring along a furkel (also a hut fork), a chisel and a tasting ladle.
literature
- About Aue, Schwarzenberg and Johanngeorgenstadt (= values of our homeland . Volume 20). 1st edition. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1972. (pp. 122–125)
- Andreas Kahl: The Antonshütte in Antonsthal. in: Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz (Hg.): Calendar Sächsische Heimat 2017, calendar sheet 27th week
- Otfried Wagenbreth , Eberhard Wächtler : Mining in the Ore Mountains. Technical monuments and history , Verlag für Grundstofftindustrie, Leipzig 1990, ISBN 3-342-00509-2
Web links
- Website of the Antonshütte
- Film clip about the Antonshütte on youtube
- Views of the Antonshütte and later paper factory in the holdings of the Deutsche Fotothek: [1] , [2] , [3] , [4]
Individual evidence
- ↑ The paper mill Drei Werden on the website of the industrial history of Mittweida
- ↑ The Antonshütte in the history of the Liebenhainer mill near Mittweida
- ↑ Homepage of the hut association Antonsthal
Coordinates: 50 ° 30 ′ 7.2 " N , 12 ° 45 ′ 24.7" E