Mining in the Palatinate

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Ore mining in the Palatinate has been documented from Roman times (1st and 2nd centuries AD) to the 1940s. He went primarily to copper -, iron -, lead - and mercury - ores . Coal - mining took place only in very limited place Mining of clays has national significance and will continue to operate actively. Overall, ore mining was only of local importance due to the small ore deposits, with the exception of the rich mercury ore finds from the 18th century, which were intensively traded supraregional.

Iron ores

Ore mining and smelting began in Roman times, but probably much earlier. There are no regions with increased ore concentration, iron ore deposits are distributed over a relatively large area across the Palatinate. The occurrence of lawn iron ores , for example near Kaiserslautern , favored early iron extraction with extremely little technical effort in prospecting .

At Imsbach , at least since Roman times, turf iron ore was mined first, and the first shafts were then used to penetrate to depths of typically up to a maximum of 10 m.

From the 14th or 15th century, mining became more technically demanding, and the first pits with shafts and tunnels emerged. One of the last iron ore mines was the Maria mine in Imsbach, which was excavated from 1904 and had to be shut down again in the 1940s because profitability was too low. This pit is now a visitor mine .

Copper ores

The mining of copper was only carried out in a few narrowly defined regions. The beginnings also go back to Roman times ( secured for Göllheim , assumed for Imsbach ).

From the 9th century there is evidence of copper mining by the Prüm Abbey (Eifel) near Imsbach, which developed from an initial open-cast mine into a hybrid of open-cast mining and mining with the first short tunnels and shafts. The pits, called Katharina, were exploited until around 1600 under changing owners.

From the beginning of the Thirty Years' War in the early 17th century, copper mining quickly and completely came to a standstill and did not recover in the next 100 years. It was not until the early 18th century that old pits were reopened and new ones sunk , but only in the Imsbach district. Other regions in the Palatinate no longer operated any significant copper mining.

In addition to copper ores, accompanying ores were occasionally mined to a small extent, so silver ores were mined to a very small extent in Imsbach , Ebernburg and Wattenheim , and cobalt ores were also mined in Imsbach in the late 19th and early 20th centuries .

Lead ores

There was only a very small amount of usable lead ore, and the known mining took place only briefly in the 15th century near Obermoschel and in the 16th century in the southern Palatinate. However, the ore deposits were too small and mining was not profitable.

Silver ores

Only a very small number of trades or prospecting specialized in silver mining have survived, as the known occurrences were minimal. For the Stahlberg , narrowly localized mining efforts for the end of the 13th century can be documented. Other mining companies produced silver ores in small quantities.

Mercury ores

From the second half of the 15th century, extensive deposits of mercury ores were developed in the northern and northwestern Palatinate. The first high point in ore mining was between 1760 and 1790, when ore mining began to boom. The trade was quickly carried out nationally and the mercury mines of the Palatinate were temporarily market leaders in Germany. The mining on Potzberg , Lemberg and Obermoschel was particularly productive . This intensive mining phase ended in the middle of the 19th century and could never be revived through a few new attempts and prospecting until the 1940s, as the extraction costs were well above market prices and the mining was no longer profitable.

Clays

A mining center for clays has existed in the Eisenberg Basin since the 19th century, up to 129 pits (around 1890) operated underground and surface mining, which is still active today and is of national importance. In addition to adhesive sand , the following types of clay in particular are mined: green clay (use: highly refractory products, e.g. for steel works, fireclay), yellow clay (use: insulation, sealing of manholes), blue clay (use: products with high pressure fire resistance, for example Crucibles and grinding wheels), gray clay (use: acid- and alkali-resistant products) and brown clay (use: stoneware, saggars etc.).

Mining technology

Up until the Middle Ages, open-cast mining or pure tunnel construction was carried out, mining was done using mallets and iron in extremely laborious and time-consuming manual work, only a drive of two to seven centimeters could be carried out per working day, depending on the hardness of the rock. For a 100 m long tunnel, this means a construction period of 4 to 14 years. The dismantling was made more difficult by the exclusive allocation of small loans , which were typically smaller than 200 m 2 , so that medium-sized or larger structures could not be created. Larger mine fields are only known from the 16th century, the so-called treasure troves were allowed to dig for areas of the order of 1000 m 2 . From the 18th century, the pit fields were enlarged again, so that fields of 200 m by 400 m and multiples thereof were awarded.

The use of fire can be assumed from the early 18th century at the latest, but there is no direct evidence. Propulsion using explosives was also used for the first time from around 1720, but this was not systematically used until the 19th century.

Mines

See main article: List of mines in the Palatinate

literature

  • L. Anton Doll: Communications of the Historical Association of the Palatinate , publishing house of the Historical Association of the Palatinate, Speyer 1977: Hans Walling: The early mining in the Palatinate ; Pages 15 to 46.
  • Hans Walling: The ore mining in the Palatinate , State Office for Geology and Mining Rhineland-Palatinate, 2005, ISBN 3-00-017820-1

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walling 2005, pp. 97ff
  2. ↑ Walling 2005, p. 86ff
  3. ↑ Information board on site, responsible for the State Office for Geology and Mining, Rhineland-Palatinate
  4. ^ Walling 2005, p. 77ff
  5. ↑ Walling 2005, p. 86 ff
  6. ^ Walling 2005, p. 6f
  7. ^ Walling 2005, p. 92f
  8. ↑ a b Walling 2005, p. 7
  9. ↑ a b Walling 2005, p. 9
  10. ↑ Walling 2005, pp. 9-11
  11. ↑ Walling 2005, p. 156 ff
  12. ↑ Walling 2005, p. 121 ff
  13. ↑ Walling 2005, pp. 9-11
  14. ↑ Walling 2005, pp. 145 ff
  15. ↑ Verbandsgemeinde Hettenleidelheim - Information on the clay pits ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed September 24, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.vg-h.de
  16. ↑ U. Böhler, M. Böttger, W. Smykatz-Kloss, J.-F. Wagner: Excursion to clay deposits in the Oberrheingraben , p. 312, in: KA Czurda, JF Wagner (editor): Tone in der Umwelttechnik , series of applied geology, University of Karlsruhe, 1988. Online: www.dttg.ethz.ch/88_16.pdf (PDF), accessed on September 24, 2014.
  17. ↑ Walling 2005, pp. 12-17