Kopalnia Węgla Kamiennego Sosnowiec
The Sosnowiec Mine (Polish Kopalnia Węgla Kamiennego Sosnowiec ) was a hard coal mine in Sosnowiec , Poland.
history
This colliery in the urban area of Sosnowiec was founded in 1856 by the niece of Prince Ludwig zu Anhalt-Köthen-Pless, Charlotte von Stolberg-Wernigerode and Count Johann Renard, son of Count Andreas Maria von Renard from Opole. For the beginnings see Ludwigshoffnung, Ludmila, and Graf Renard.
Ludwig Hope / Nadzieja Ludwika
The Ludwigshoffnung mine in Sielec (district of Sosnowiec from 1902 ) was founded in 1806 and went into operation in 1864. The owners were General Schimmelpfennig von der Oye and Duke Ludwig zu Anhalt-Köthen. In 1856 the plant came into the possession of the heirs of Count Renard, through whom it came into the Count Renard trade union (see below).
The colliery's first underground shaft was Wilhelmine, through which 200,000 t per year were lifted to the surface in the 1880s. The mine was run as an independent facility until 1906.
Ludmilla / Ludmiła
Civil engineering began in 1863 through the Ludmilla mine (later called Alt-Renard; authorized 1.64 km²) ( location ) with the two Moebius and Jan pits, which initially had a depth of 80 m. Steam engines were used for dewatering and coal extraction. Both shafts mined the coal in seams 501 and 510 and by 1873, 90,000 tons of coal could already be mined from Ludmila.
In 1881, a major catastrophe occurred on Ludmila - the mine was flooded by sand and the water of the Black Przemsza, which kept flowing in, and 200 miners were killed. Some sources report that stealing important stamps led to the break of day. All attempts to swamp the mine workings failed. Therefore, a new mine was built in the district of Sielec, 2.5 km north of the old colliery, which initially bore the name Fanny and formed a joint venture with Ludwigsglück (also called Chassée or Ludwigshoffnung) and was given the name Graf Renard (also Neu-Renard and Hrabia Renard).
Count Renard / Hrabia Renard
Because Russia imposed high tariffs on coal exports to Germany in 1877 and Ludmila (Alt-Renard) was right on the border between Prussia and Russia, Count Renard's heirs sold twelve parcels of their property to various German entrepreneurs between 1879 and 1885; they themselves want to remain present on the booming Russian market and therefore invested in their properties in the Dabrowsk Basin with a size of 2.07 km². This led to the construction of a new mine in the district of Sielec, 2.5 km north of the old colliery, which initially bore the name Fanny and formed a joint venture with Ludwigshoffnung (see above). Later the entire mine was named Graf Renard or Neu-Renard.
In addition to the old shafts Fanny, Countess Wilhelmine and Mathilde, a new shaft system ( location ) with the two production shafts Count Eulenburg and Count Renard was added. The Anna weather shaft was sunk a little further south on the same site. In the 1930s, the Gräfin Wilhelmine shaft, together with numerous daytime facilities, formed the Ludwigshoffnung shaft (for an independent colliery, see above) of the entire mine.
In 1905, during the Russian Revolution , a rally took place on the grounds of the Renard colliery, during which 32 demands by the striking miners were met. The attempt to enforce an eight-hour day, however, failed. Overall, however, all these attempts to improve the situation had to be paid for with 38 dead and more than 100 injured. In 1913 the production of the Renard coal mine increased to 662,000 tons. During the First World War, the mine was administered by an executive committee of the Soviets. The Red Guards were disarmed in 1918 and the committee's competence was severely restricted. In addition, in this context, the shaft production was blocked in order to prevent the (new) Russia from exploiting the facility.
In 1921 Count Renard was the largest industrial plant in Sosnowiec with a workforce of 4,295. In 1938, after years of economic crisis (production decreased to 240,000 t), the mine only employed 1,974 workers and produced 942,000 tons of coal. At that time it belonged to the French banking company Huta Bankowa. With these extraction figures, the Graf Renard colliery achieved a share of 14% of the amount extracted in the entire Dąbrowski basin in coal production. Part of the production (20–35%) was exported, mainly to Scandinavia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Latvia and Lithuania.
In the twenties there were numerous modernizations and expansions of the colliery. The power transmission was carried out consistently from steam to electricity, the trams were moved by electric locomotives, the Wilhelmine shaft was deepened and flushing was used almost everywhere. A little later, the Anna and Graf Renard shafts received new fans to improve ventilation.
During the Second World War, the main trust center East (HTO) was set up on the colliery , and the exploitation of the facility was organized by Preussag from November 1941 . With the addition of new extraction points and the ruthless exploitation of the material, it was possible to increase production to 1.12 million t in 1942 and 1.23 million t in 1943. The personnel situation was problematic in these war years. Since 850 of around 2000 miners were sent to Westphalia to work in the mines there, the workforce at Renard was replaced by young people, elderly people and British prisoners from the Łambinowice camp. This led to an increase in the number to 3,252 employees by mid-1944.
At the end of the war, this number fell again to 1,720 people. From 1946 the name of the mine was changed to Sosnowiec, and three years later to Stalin.
CHP Stalin
From 1946 to 1959 the mine bore the name of Josef Stalin.
CHP Sosnowiec
After the liberation of southern Poland from the Nazi regime, the colliery came under the administration of the Dąbrowskie Zjednoczenie Przemysłu Węglowego and was named Sosnowiec in May 1946. The two production shafts Graf Renard and Graf Eulenburg were renamed Szczepan and Sosnowiec in this context.
While the operational activities of the colliery were limited to a relatively small area in the inter-war period, after the end of the war the mine extracted from an area that covered more than 20 km². This expansion in area and the increase in the number of employees to 3636 by 1949 led to the fact that at the end of the first 3-year plan, i.e. H. 1949, 1.308 million t could be extracted again. After that, production fell slightly in the following years and only reached the level of 1949 again in 1955. The absolute high point was 1943 with 2.68 million t. This result could only be achieved, however, because the number of employees had risen to 4,300 (of which 2,300 underground) and numerous modernizations had been implemented in the meantime. These modernizations took place from 1960 both above and below ground. The Sosnowiec and Anna shafts were sunk, a new shaft called Stanisław was built and a new processing plant was installed in 1973.
At the same time, the mechanization of mining was tackled, e.g. B. through the introduction of the scraper conveyor and - from 1966 - the shearer loader. These and other measures mean that the mine had the highest level of mechanization in Poland in the 1970s.
Despite these efforts, production gradually declined from the mid-1970s onwards as the richest coal seams were exhausted. In 1989 the production was only 1.33 million tonnes per year. Therefore, in 1975 the two shafts Louis and Eugene were dropped and filled. Together with the economic upheavals in Poland at the beginning of the 1990s, the privatization of the mine on January 1, 1990, the decision was soon made to phase out operations in 1995. Although the closure was delayed until 1997 due to union pressure, it was implemented in 1998 with the discontinuation of subsidies and the demolition of the daytime facilities. From 1999 to 2001, the Sosnowiec shaft remained open for central drainage, but it was also filled.
Funding figures
1900: 586,000 t; 1913: 662,472 tons; 1938: 941,177 t; 1970: 2.11 million t; 1979: 2.54 million t
present
Of the three remaining shafts Szczepan, Sosnowiec and Anna, all of which were on Count Renard's premises, only Anna still exists today as part of a newly built climbing park.
swell
- Jerzy Jaros. Słownik historyczny kopalń węgla na ziemiach polskich. Katowice 1984.
- Kurt König: The coal mining in Upper Silesia from 1945–1955. Scientific contributions to the history and regional studies of Eastern Central Europe. Published by the Johann Gottfried Herder Institute. Marburg 1958.
- Werner Röhr. On the role of heavy industry in annexed Polish Upper Silesia for Germany's war economy from 1939 to 1949. Yearbook for Economic History Volume 130. Downloaded as a PDF file from www.digitalis.uni-koeln.de/JWG, last accessed on October 5, 2015.
- Tomasz Szymczyk. Niebawem minie 15 lat od ostatniej tony węgla wydobytej w Sosnowiec. Historical overview of the colliery at the URL address http://sosnowiec.naszemiasto.pl/artykul/kwk-sosnowiec-troche-historii-co-zostalo-po-kopalni-zdjecia,1641451,artgal,t,id,tm.html (Accessed October 6, 2015).
Web links
- At the Internet address http://igrek.amzp.pl/mapindex.php?cat=FLOTZKARTOS (last accessed July 14, 2015) you can find 43 flötz maps (sic) of the Upper Silesian coal basin as JPG files showing the field boundaries, seams and shafts show the stock from 1902 in excellent quality. These cards were made by the “Verlag von Priebatsch's Buchhandlung. Breslau ”published.
Map with all coordinates: