Mining company Merchweiler
| Mining company Merchweiler GmbH | |
|---|---|
| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | 1948 |
| Seat | Fischbach , Saarland |
| management |
|
| Number of employees | approx. 80 (when coal mining stopped on June 20, 2008) |
| Branch | Hard coal mining |
The mining company Merchweiler operated from 1948 successively at 5 locations in central Saarland , in which a total of about 6.5 million tons of hard coal had been mined until 2008 . In 2008 the mining operations were stopped due to a lack of economically recoverable stocks.
history
With a contract dated July 19, 1948, the electrician Walter Greiber received a lease field for coal mining from the Régie des Mines de la Sarre near the forester's house Erkershöhe near Friedrichsthal . Mining tunnels were built in three seams running out to the surface there and well over 2,000 tonnes a month (approx. 1 t per man and shift) were mined with 100 workers.
From 1955, the company began between Merchweiler and Bildstock , at the level of the Altsteigershaus restaurant, with new tunnel operations. There the conveying capacity with 90 workers was 100 - 120 t per day (approx. 1.2 t per man and shift).
In 1964, the foreman Josef Schäfer and his son, mining engineer Siegfried Schäfer, took over the company and greatly modernized the company, which had been technically up to 1925. Among other things, electrification was carried out by electrical engineer Bertold Bettscheider, until then mainly compressed air was used for dismantling and conveying. After the sales of domestic fuel fell sharply, the mine primarily supplied steam coal to the Wehrden power station . By 1965 the coal fields in the Altsteigershaus area were dismantled. Further residual coal was still pending in the Fischbachtal, which is why the activities were relocated to the Hackenweiler mine, where, however, the economically usable supplies were already exhausted in 1968. From this time on, Siegfried Schäfer was solely responsible for managing the company.
Test drilling by the mining company led to the discovery of a previously unknown seam (seam "Untitled") with a thickness of almost 1 m and a coal reserve of an estimated 500,000 t. By using modern mining techniques, the daily output of the mine could be increased to 400 t between 1968 and 1974 (approx. 4 t per man and shift).
Fischbach mine
Due to the exhaustion of the previous construction fields, daytime facilities were built north of Fischbach from 1972 to 1974 and the field was aligned with the Kallenberg seam by means of a conveyor tunnel leading down at an angle. After that, the dismantling of coal could be started and the production increased to 800 t (approx. 8 t per man and shift) through the use of modern walking supports and a shearer loader . The main buyers of the processed coal were the Ensdorf , Wehrden and Saarbrücken-Römerbrücke power plants . There, two kWh of electricity were produced from one kg of coal.
In 1993, Siegfried Schäfer handed over the mine operation to mining engineer Frank Elsner due to age. After the economically minable supplies gradually ran out, the plan was to shut down the mine at the end of 2008. Because a fault zone was approached in the middle of the year and the mine suffered a severe face fracture, however, coal production was stopped on June 20, 2008. The delivery rate was recently around 12 t per person and shift.
The daytime facilities have since been torn down; the forest only took over the mine house for its operational purposes.
Others
In 1992, as part of the succession plan, the company was renamed Bergwerksgesellschaft Merchweiler Verwaltung mbH.
The Merchweiler mining company secured the Emilianus tunnel against landslides with a modern extension .
literature
- Karl Heinz Janson and Siegfried Schäfer: The private mines in the Saar area , Association for Industrial Culture and History Heusweiler Dilsburg eV, Contributions to Regional History Volume 20, 2013