Breitenborn basalt quarry

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The Breitenborn basalt quarry in the area of the municipality of Breitenborn A. W., which was independent until 1972, and of the Gründau district of Breitenborn in the Vogelkopf area since 1972, was the largest basalt quarry in Germany. The break is in the Büdinger Forest on the southern edge of the Vogelsberg . At around 2,500 km², this is the largest contiguous basalt mass on the European mainland.

geology

The Hessian Depression , which is bordered by the Vogelsberg in the east, is a particularly troubled area with regard to the formation of the earth's crust . At the beginning of the last ice age , huge masses of lava came to the surface of the earth, the solidification product is the basalt.

Basaltwork

Founding and expansion by 1918

A forester is said to have "discovered" the basalt on the Vogelkopf while creating a forest path. The owner, the Prince of Ysenburg and Büdingen in Wächtersbach (a landlord and forest owner in the former Kurhessen and after its annexation in 1866 in Prussia) leased the land to an already existing basalt operation of the Breitenborn entrepreneur Konrad Ewig, who was already south of the valley in which the Village is located in the district of Gettenbach at the height of the Eichelkopf, a small basalt quarry operated. The slab basalt of Vogelkopf north of the valley, however, seemed much more suitable for the production of paving stones , basalt stones of 15 to 20 meters were to be found there; the quarry on the Eichelkopf, from which the basalt gravel and the paving stones of a number of roads in the southwestern former district of Gelnhausen originate, has been closed. However, the removal of the stones from the new quarry seems to have been a major cost factor (12 km by horse and cart to the next Mittel-Gründau train station west of the village). The company failed and bankruptcy proceedings were carried out.

After the bankruptcy was closed, the entrepreneur Friedrich Rouselle (from a Hanau Huguenot family) took over the break in 1895 . He had already operated basalt quarries in Klein-Steinheim , Dietesheim and Mühlheim south of the Main in the Offenbach district and soon started the uneconomical transport with horse-drawn vehicles to the single-track railway line Gießen-Gelnhausen (Lahn-Kinzig-Bahn) by building a cable car over the heights and to replace the valleys of the southeastern Büdinger Forest after Wächtersbach on the double-track Frankfurt-Bebraer railway . The seven-kilometer cable car was put into operation in 1906.

There was enough workforce, Breitenborn or Wächtersbach had almost no industry. Basalt processing was very primitive, first the stone was cut out of the stone wall "by hand" and transported to the stone judges and stone knockers. The stone judges were special forces who came from the Rhön or Thuringia , the stone carvers and knockers mostly locals. The stone knockers processed the waste from the paving stones by hand into gravel (approx. 1½ m³ gravel per shift).

Rouselle's brother Wilhelm had not only taken over the paternal fractions, but also the fractions in Kerbersdorf and Steinau in the Schlüchtern district . Initially it competed with the Bavarian hard stone industry in Würzburg , but in early 1907 it merged with its competitor under the new name Mitteldeutsche Hartsteinindustrie AG (MHI). Friedrich took over the expansion of the plant in Breitenborn and Wächtersbach. In 1910 a strike paralyzed operations and most of the Steinrichter emigrated to North Hesse , the Rhön and the Westerwald . The new MHI in Steinau bought the Breitenborn company. From July 1, 1911 the Breitenborner Bruch belonged to the new company. In 1913 the company relocated to Frankfurt am Main .

The First World War brought radical changes. The stone judges were drafted. As early as 1915, only 25% of the pre-war employees were still there. During the years 1916/17 business connections were established in the areas of Belgium and France occupied by the German Reich . This resulted in further business connections even after the war, including a. to large export orders to the Netherlands (considerable quantities of basalt for draining the Zuidersee ). Later on, a Dutch company even took an equity stake.

Inflation, Financial Recovery, and World War II

From 1922 on there were many structural changes at the Breitenborn plant: a new Steinrichterhalle was built, steam operation was discontinued and switched to electricity . In 1923 new primary crushers, secondary crushers and sorting drums were installed. During the inflation, the plant switched to its own emergency money . After the inflation , the work from the deal with Holland had a cash balance of 300,000 guilders.

In 1925, a stationary tar mixing plant was built in Wächtersbach because after tests in England and Switzerland , the so-called black pavement (gravel and gravel-tar mixture) prevailed in road construction in all developed countries instead of the water-bound pavement . Domestic sales fell sharply, and at the end of 1931 the company's cash assets were only a small amount of 264 Reichsmarks (which corresponded to the weekly wages for three stone judges). The company then appointed Heinrich Hagemeier to the supervisory board and commissioned him with the economic reorganization of the company, which led to initial success in 1933. Despite the reduction in exports due to the boycott of German goods, considerable profits were made. From 1935 onwards there were larger sales through motorway construction contracts. Since the paving business continued to grow, the workforce could be employed again all year round. In 1939, Hagemeier acquired the shares of the Rouselle family, which left the company. In 1938 the plant had achieved its largest sales. The intended full mechanization failed because of contingents due to the war economy. By calling up many company employees, sales fell by more than half by 1941. In the last weeks of the war , operations came to a complete standstill.

POW camp: Work Command 187 of Stalag IX B

In December 1943, a disciplinary and arrest command for prisoners of war was set up in the quarry. This was subordinate to the crew main camp and penal camp ( Stalag IX B) in Bad Orb - Wegscheide . From there, the prisoners were ordered to go to work (another work detail with accommodation and guard barracks was in the neighboring town of Gettenbach ). In Breitenborn, however, prisoners from other German Stalags are also said to have served their disciplinary sentences (e.g. for attempted escape, quarrels, refusal to serve). On August 26, 1944, a commission of the International Committee of the Red Cross ( ICRC or French CICR ) visited the camp in Breitenborn and reported: The barracks for a total of 45 men were occupied by ten prisoners who were arrested for between three and 21 days. The detainees were not allowed to receive parcels from relatives, which is why Ambassador Scapini wrote to the legal department of the Foreign Office asking for a justification for this violation of Articles 32, 54, 56, 57 of the POW Convention.

Post-war economy and boom in the 1950s and 1960s

In May 1945, under Konrad Krolikowski, production in Breitenborn and Wächtersbach was resumed. The turnover was modest, up to the currency reform it went slowly. Only after the introduction of the DM did the company grow again. Full automation began in Breitenborn with the excavator operation, which was completed in the mid-1960s. With the help of explosives, 800 to 1200 tons of rock were broken out of the wall. Conveyor belts carried the blasted material to the crushing plant. The jaw crusher was able to crush up to 30 tons of rock in one operation .

After the stones had been crushed, the fine chippings were mixed with tar in order to produce the mix ready for road construction. The paving stones were still carved by hand until the mid-1960s. The stone judges from Breitenborn have mostly practiced their profession for several generations. At that time, basalt wool and basalt fibers were also produced in the Wächtersbach plant. Basalt is liquefied under great heat (approx. 1400 degrees) and pressed through nozzles. The cooled material was used as insulation (cold, heat and sound insulation), in fiber-plastic composites it is mostly used as a heat protection material.

Since the 1970s

In the mid-1970s, the operating company MHI decentralized into regional branches, acquired a qualified majority in Strassing Bau GmbH in Bad Orb (road construction) and expanded the company to include recycling and landfill. At the beginning of the 1980s, the regional branches were converted into independent subsidiaries. The MHI became a holding company, from 2000 the newly founded VHI (Vogelsberger Hartstein-Industrie) was also active in the basalt quarry in Breitenborn. In 2003 a ready-mixed concrete plant was built in Breitenborn. The MHI still operates the asphalt production in Breitenborn and the VHI the business fields natural stone, recycling , landfill . Basalt mining, on the other hand, has taken a back seat.

To the west of the site is the Westbruch von Breitenborn nature reserve . Here, mining stopped in the early 1970s and the area was not backfilled, so that a varied morphology of rock faces, dumps, still water, woody succession areas and dry sites was preserved .

Trivia

At the entrance to Breitenborn there is a basalt cart from the former cable car to commemorate the transport route.

literature

  • Wilhelm Bührmann: Chronicle of the community of Breitenborn A. W., An economic, social, contemporary and cultural history , Breitenborn A. W. 1949.
  • Karl Schreiber: Cobblestones, gravel and grit in: Heimat-Jahrbuch des Kreis Gelnhausen - Between Vogelsberg and Spessart 1967, Gelnhausen 1966, pp. 81–86.
  • Jürgen Ackermann: The cable car of the basalt works Breitenborn-Wächtersbach in collections on the history of Wächtersbach, No. 150, 24th delivery, August 1994, 5.1.3.5, ISSN  0931-2641 .
  • Renate Holzapfel: Who remembers? - 110 years of the cable car protection bridge in Wächtersbach. In: Heimat-Jahrbuch des Kreis Gelnhausen - Between Vogelsberg and Spessart 2017, Gelnhausen 2016, pp. 48–53 ISBN 978-3-9808424-6-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adolf Kenngott: Overview of the results of mineralogical research in 1860 , (Wilhelm Engelmann) Leipzig 1862, p. 346
  2. ^ Wilfried Günther: Expansion of the road from Lieblos to Büdingen . In: Grindaha - Issue 22, 40 years of the community of Gründau, Gründau 2012 (ISSN 2194-8631), pp. 121–130
  3. ↑ Helga Koch The quarry near Breitenborn AW: a prison camp for prisoners of war in: Between Vogelsberg and Spessart - Gelnhauser Heimat-Jahrbuch 2013 - annual calendar for people in town and country between Vogelsberg and Spessart, published by the district committee of the Main-Kinzig district - Gelnhausen 2012, p. 108 f.
  4. ^ Text of the agreement on the treatment of prisoners of war (Austrian version) from 1929
  5. ↑ Helga Koch: Der Steinbruch ... , p. 109 with reference to a document in the Archiv de France (Paris), No. F (9) 2716
  6. ↑ Robert Knickel: Near-natural habitats second hand - The nature reserve "Westbruch von Breitenborn" in: Bulletin of the Center for Regional History - Natural History Office, 30th year 2005, District Committee of the Main-Kinzig District, Office for Education, Culture and Sport, Gelnhausen S . 78 ff.

Coordinates: 50 ° 15 ′ 56 ″  N , 9 ° 12 ′ 19 ″  E