Ash house
A potash works (also: Aschenhütte ) was a by operation of early modern glassworks . In addition to quartz and lime , these also required potash as starting materials for glass production . The latter served as a flux , which means that when it was added to the quartz sand, its very high melting point was significantly reduced. To produce the potash, the huts set up ash houses in their neighborhood, in which ash burners first dissolved plant and wood ash in water and then evaporated it; the entire process is called leaching .
The contemporary witness Lukas Grünenwald , teacher and local history researcher, reports from his memories of his youth in Dernbach (Palatinate) :
“ These Pottaschhütten were small, square stone houses with a living room and kitchen and a layer of wood above. In the corner of the kitchen there was a large, round iron kettle in the brick hearth for boiling potatoes, and a chimney rose from there over the gable roof. There were small windows in the three walls opposite the entrance.
The wood ash required was widely bought in all villages and often laboriously brought home in sacks on handcarts and wagons on the roads that were still poor at the time. In the hut she was first buried cold, that is, in gray wicker baskets that were lined with canvas on the inside and stood over lye, poured water over them from the stream and soaked them through until they were completely drained.
The mother liquor was then boiled in the stove until only the white, precious potash remained, which was sold to glassworks at an expensive price. "
The wood requirement for potash production was extraordinarily high, which is why the glassworks were often located in extensive forests ( forest glass ). The records of the Spiegelberg forest glassworks in the Swabian-Franconian Forest Mountains (in operation 1705–1822) show an annual potash requirement of around 800 quintals . Since one cubic meter of wood (around 750 kg) only yielded 1 kg of potash, around 40,000 cubic meters of wood had to be felled annually for the potash requirement of this glassworks only.
Even today the names of settlements are reminiscent of former ash houses or ash huts, see Aschenhütte . These are the names of two residential areas in the area of the Mainhardt Aschenhütte community .
literature
- Marianne Hasenmayer: The glassworks in the Mainhardt Forest and in the Löwenstein Mountains. In: Paul Strähle (Ed.): Swabian-Franconian Forest Nature Park. 4th revised and expanded edition. Theiss, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-8062-2033-6 , pp. 108–128 ( nature - home - hiking ).
Individual evidence
- ^ Helmut Seebach: Old crafts and trades in the Palatinate. Volume 3: Palatinate Forest. Forest farmers, forest workers, forest products and timber goods trade, forest industry and timber transport. Bachstelz-Verlag, Annweiler-Queichhambach et al. 1994, ISBN 3-924115-13-3 , p. 116.