Bendorfer huts
Even before the first Bendorfer ironworks were built in 1608, iron ore from local deposits was processed in the Bendorfer area . Old Pingen and an iron melt from Roman times discovered in 1929 prove that iron ore was processed in Bendorf almost 2000 years ago. The local demand was met with the iron produced from it. In the 18th century there were five blast furnaces or hammer mills that smelted iron ore.
Hammerhütte Steinebrück
On June 15, 1608 Maximilian von Steppenrodt, Caspar Schwikhardt and Isaac zu Duißberg received the concession from Count Wilhelm III von Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn to operate an ironworks in the Brexbachtal , in the Sayn district. This hut was closed in 1629 due to unprofitability. An ironworks was not built again until the beginning of the 18th century.
The hammer master Johann Arnhold Bertram from Remscheid , whose family owned several hammer mills in Märkischen, Andernach and Mülheim (Mosel) , received the concession on March 31, 1722 to build two hammer mills with free choice of location. First he rebuilt the Steinebrücker Hütte , but was only able to process the pig iron that had been delivered. Because of disputes with the authorities, he leased the hut to Wilhelm Remy from Bendorf in 1725 .
Lower hut
Bertram now concentrated on building the lower hut on the banks of the Rhine. The iron ore came from the nearby Loh mine. The hut consisted of a blast furnace, a stamp mill and storage buildings. Around 1730 Bertram gave up his smelting activity in Bendorf. He sold the Steinebrücker Hütte to the Dutchman Johann Wilhelm Hoffmann and shares in the Untere Hütte to Wilhelm Remy and the Andernach monastery of St. Thomas . The Lower Hut was further expanded under Remy's direction. In 1784 the stone bridge was leased to Bernhardt Thielemann and later to the Neuwied company Johann Philipp Freudenberg & Co. In 1813 the hut was auctioned after years of inactivity.
Sayner Hut
The Sayner Hütte was founded in 1769 by Clemens Wenzeslaus von Sachsen and was closed in 1926. The hut has become famous for its artificial iron casting and with its casting hall, which is one of the European industrial monuments.
Oberhammer
The Oberhammer, which was about one kilometer above the Sayner Hütte, was built around 1790. It consisted of two fresh buildings and several buildings.
Upper hut
In 1804 the Obere Hütte on Bendorfer Mühlenstrasse was built by the Remy, Hoffmann & Cie company.
Mülhofener Hut
The Mülhofener Hütte, located at the mouth of the Saynbach, was founded in 1856 by the Prussian tax authorities because of the rich local deposits of brown iron stone and iron spar. At first the hut was operated with brown coal. And only produced a few tons of pig iron a day. In 1865 Alfred Krupp took over the smeltery and built three new blast furnaces for 650,000 thalers, each with a daily production of 35 tons of pig iron, followed later by a fourth one. The daily output was increased to 300 tons through modernization. Since the Rheinhausen blast furnace plant was already producing all of the pig iron from the end of the 1890s, only puddle iron , fried iron and ferro-manganese were produced in Mülhofen . Slag wool was created from the blast furnace slag. In 1911, Krupp-Hüttenwerke consumed 2.405 million tons of ore, of which Mülhofen 151,000 tons. Mühlhofen contributed around 70,000 tons to the pig iron production of 1.047 million tons. The iron ore was transported by horse and cart from the Georg mine near Willroth and the Luise mine in Horhausen to Mülhofen. A single carriage was loaded with a maximum of 40 hundredweight, a double with 120 hundredweight. At that time the wages were 16 pfennigs for a hundredweight. The hut was closed on June 6, 1930.
Concordia Hut
As early as 1752 there was a small ironworks on the Concordia site, operated by Steitz and Wilhelm Remy.
The company Brothers Lossen presented on June 12, 1838 application for the construction of an ironworks in Bendorf. The Lossen family owned the Nassau ore mines. Carl Maximilian Lossen and his siblings had bought land between Sayn and Mülhofen from 1832 and also owned all the water rights for the Saynbach. On October 29, 1839, the foundation stone was laid for the new plant, which was named Concordia. In December 1841 the official license was granted. At the end of June 1843, the first blast furnace was blown, and it was in operation continuously until 1853. The construction of a planned rolling mill was postponed to 1853 due to the weak economy prevailing at the time. Two puddling furnaces, a welding furnace, a sheet metal annealing furnace, a steam hammer and a rolling mill were built. In 1854 the plant was ready for operation. Two years later, a second rolling mill and an even larger steam hammer were built. After the death of Carl Maximilian Lossen in 1861, his son-in-law Hermann von Braunmühl took over the management; the operation of the blast furnaces was switched to coke. Around 1870 two new blast furnaces were built and the first houses in the workers' settlement Am Röttchenshammer were built.
In 1898 the family business was converted into a GmbH and in 1900 into a stock corporation. With the new capital, the foundry was expanded until 1908. In 1906 the ore mines were sold to the Thyssen Group and in 1909 a cement plant was built. In 1917 the Koblenz iron trading company Carl Spaeter acquired the majority of the shares, later it bought the remaining shares of the Lossen family. In 1921 the Concordia smelter was merged with the Rombacher Hüttenwerke AG, which also belonged to Carl Spaeter, and in 1926 it was incorporated into the newly founded Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG. For reasons of rationalization, the blast furnaces, the slag plant , the pressing plant and the large forge were shut down.
The iron foundry and the engineering department were enlarged. During the recession in the 1930s, the workforce fell from 1,000 to less than 400. In the war years, the steel foundry was put back into operation and the workforce rose to around 1,500 in 1943. Up to 30,000 wheel sets were manufactured annually for the German Reichsbahn. At the end of 1944 nothing was produced anymore. Towards the end of the war, the hut, which until then had been spared bombing, was partially destroyed by artillery fire.
Reconstruction began in the early summer of 1945. After the last assembly halls were released in 1951 and new investments were made, almost 1,500 workers were employed again, in 1957 even more than 1,500. After almost 100 years, the production of ovens and stoves was stopped in 1962. The focus now was on series casting and mechanical engineering.
Since 1952, Concordia has belonged to Rheinstahl-Union Maschinen- und Stahlbau AG and then to Thyssen Guss AG. In the following years, cast steel and hand-formed castings were discontinued and only series castings were made. Up until this time, the term Lossens hut was used by the ironworkers and popularly .
The hut was closed in 1993 and demolished in 1995 with the exception of two buildings. This ended the metallurgy in Bendorf.
Since 1998, the remaining parts of the building have been used as a seminar and event center after partial renovation.
Ore roasters
The iron ore extracted in the Bendorf district was delivered to the surrounding ironworks. Since the high-quality Bendorfer ore had too high a carbon content , which strongly influenced the toughness of the end product, the ore was roasted. The sulfur , which was present as sulfide, was removed from the iron ore and oxidized to gaseous sulfur dioxide. This made it easier to melt the ore. Another advantage was that the roasted ore was around 30 percent lighter than fresh ore.
Four roasting ovens from the Werner pit on the Vierwindhöhe were restored in the 1990s and can be viewed.
Werner pit
In April 1724 the smelter Wilhelm Remy, the chamber manager Wirtzen zu Hachenburg and the office director Grün received the permission from the then sovereign of Bendorf, the prince of Saxony-Eisenach, to break in the Bendorf Eisenstein area. In 1872, when the loan was renewed, the boundaries of the mine field were determined for the first time. The area was 12.4 million m². From 1877 to 1915 around 830,000 tons of iron ore were mined, which had an iron content of up to 35 percent and a manganese content of eight percent.
The main installation, the Werner pit, was located on the four-winch height, further tunnels were located on the Loh, in the Kleinesbach and Brexbach valleys and on the Eisenberg. Ore was mined from these tunnels for almost 200 years. Around 1890 around 250 miners were employed. In 1915 ore mining was stopped.
The Bendorf – Neuwied area was a center of iron production and processing long before the Ruhr area .
literature
- Eisenhütten in Bendorf, published by the Bendorf City Administration in 1990
- Society for history and local history of Bendorf and the surrounding area
- Lahr, Reinhard: The Middle Rhine communities Heimbach, Weis and Gladbach between manorial rule and industrialization (1680–1880). Stuttgart: Steiner 1995, ISBN 3-515-06842-2 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Home calendar for the Neuwied district, 1959, pp. 87/88
- ↑ Information from the Chamber of Crafts Rhineland-Palatinate on the preservation of monuments (2003) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
