Bertzit Tower

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Bertzit Tower

The Bertzit Tower is an investment ruin in the north of Kahla , a district of the southern Brandenburg municipality of Plessa in the Elbe-Elster district .

The tower was built in the 1920s in the immediate vicinity of brown coal underground mine Ada built and was part of a plant for processed lignite . The remains of this facility are now listed as a historical monument along with some other industrial buildings from the formerly neighboring brown coal mine . The 35 meter high industrial monument forms a landmark that is visible from afar in the lowlands of the Schwarzen Elster .

history

General view from the direction of Döllingen
Sorting bunker with cable car of the Ada mine
Cable car bridge
Rear view

prehistory

In the middle of the 19th century, the industrialization of the Elbe-Elster region began with the discovery of brown coal deposits and the construction of the first railway lines . The since 1856 on the estate in Döllingen in Elsterwerda based Prussian Lieutenant Colonel Hermann von Ploetz (1816-1879) was on his lands also after brown coal drill. The drilling was successful, and on 1 April 1857, from the coal ash Eight Emilia the town is east for the first time in the vicinity of lignite in civil engineering promoted. This pit only existed for a short time. Numerous other pits were soon built in the vicinity, many of which, however, such as the Robert pit located just a few kilometers to the west, were abandoned a short time later.

Pit Ada

In 1911 the next lignite mine in the region was opened. North of the Falkenberg – Kohlfurt railway line , the Döllinger Bergbaugesellschaft operated the Ada civil engineering brown coal mine on the boundary between Kahla and Döllingen . The coal seam here was about 4 meters thick, with a 30 meter thick overburden above it. The reduction took place in the pillars - breaking process . By means of a reel and an electric motor , the coal was transported over an inclined plane to the surface, where coal drying systems and two briquette presses were located. The lumpy raw coal was mostly sold to regional customers. Much of the inferior coal was used for self-sufficiency with steam and electrical energy. Up to 170 workers were employed in the mine, which took up an area of ​​118,000 square meters in the early 1920s. The annual production in 1914 was 58,000 tons of brown coal. In the first year after the First World War , this number was reached again.

The Bertzit Tower

In September 1915, the mine submitted an application to the responsible mining authority in Senftenberg for the construction of a Bertzit plant (named after the Bertzit process mentioned below ). In 1920, on the initiative of the management of the company operating the Ada mine, the 35 meter high Bertzit Tower was built in the immediate vicinity of the mine.

This tower, a square in plan reinforced concrete - skeleton was part of a planned factory plant where the coal drying that of the Munich Camillo Mahnhardt developed Bertzit procedure should apply. This process was developed for drying low-quality fuels such as peat that contain high levels of bound moisture . Since the proportion of lignitic and thus inferior coal in the mine was relatively high, the process tested in a test facility in Pasing near Munich appeared attractive, especially since it promised a cost-effective upgrade by doubling the calorific value (per volume or weight unit) of the fuel extracted. At 250 to 300 ° C, a high-quality fuel similar to anthracite should be obtained in a reaction process carried out in the absence of air . The majority shareholders in the project were Bertzit-Aktiengesellschaft in Berlin-Charlottenburg and Bertzit-Gesellschaft mbH in Munich. The Döllinger mining company was probably only a minority shareholder here, but had a seat on the company's supervisory board. This newly established company later moved its headquarters to Munich.

It is largely in the dark, which is why the construction of this complex was never completed and the Bertzit Tower ultimately turned into a ruined investment. Regional historians suspect the reason in the technological immaturity of the process, which has never been tested on a large, industrial scale before. Lignite mining in Kahla was shut down in 1929 as a result of its poor profitability; the following year, the Ada pit, the last underground mine in the Liebenwerda district, was closed. Most of the coal in the Lauchhammer lignite mining area , which included the mine, had long since been extracted using open-cast mining . The mine director Friedrich von Delius had the world's first overburden conveyor bridge built and put into operation in the neighboring “Agnes” mine in Plessa in 1924, according to his own plans . This contributed extremely to the rationalization of the mining.

According to the local historian Jürgen Bartholomäus, the mining book of the Ada mine was still kept by the mining authorities in Senftenberg in the early 1990s .

Current condition and tourist connection

The 35-meter-high ruins of the Bertzit Tower, visible from afar in the lowlands, are now considered the oldest investment ruins in the region. The distinctive shape and similarity of the building with a Bavarian church tower or with the lighthouse of Alexandria was intended and is to be understood as a consequence of the industrial culture at the time it was built. After there were threatening signs around the turn of the millennium that this facility would be demolished in the near future, it was finally placed under a preservation order. The system is now largely left to its own devices. In the region there are, among other things, the Plessa power plant , the bio towers in Lauchhammer , the briquette factory Louise in Domsdorf and the visitor mine overburden conveyor bridge F60, further striking remnants of the former lignite mining.

The district of Kahla is located on the federal highway 169 and on the Ruhland - Falkenberg / Elster railway line . Several cycle paths connect the village and the Bertzit Tower industrial monument with the sights in the surrounding area, the Niederlausitzer Heidelandschaft nature park and the neighboring Schradenland . With the Brandenburg Tour , which opened in 2007, Germany's longest long-distance cycle path (1,111 kilometers) also touches the district. Further cycle routes are the Fürst-Pückler-Weg , the 108 km long Schwarze-Elster-Radweg and the coal-wind & water route, opened in 2007 , a 250 km long energy historical foray with 14 stations through the Elbe-Elster-Land.

and display information about the image
Elsteraue landscape protection area near Kahla: In the background, the Bertzit Tower can be seen as a landmark.

literature

  • Andreas Pöschl (Red.): Coal, wind and water. An energy historical foray through the Elbe-Elsterland . Ed .: Cultural Office of the Elbe-Elster District. Herzberg / Elster 2001, ISBN 3-00-008956-X , p. 147-158 .
  • Jürgen Bartholomäus: The Bertzit Tower near Kahla . In: The Black Magpie . Bad Liebenwerda 1991, p. 17-18 .
  • Collective of authors: Mining history in the Lauchhammer district . Ed .: Traditionsverein Braunkohle Lauchhammer e. V. Lauchhammer 2003.

Web links

Commons : Bertzitturm Kahla  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ a b Database of the Brandenburg State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and the State Archaeological Museum ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2017 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 27, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / bldam-brandenburg.de
  2. ↑ Lutz Heydick, Günther Hoppe, Jürgen John (eds.): Historischer Führer. Sites and monuments of history in the districts of Dresden, Cottbus . Urania Verlag, Leipzig 1982, p. 317 .
  3. ^ Author collective: Mining history in the Lauchhammer district . Ed .: Traditionsverein Braunkohle Lauchhammer e. V. Lauchhammer 2003, p. 8 .
  4. ↑ Jürgen Bartholomäus, Andreas Pöschl (Red.): A monumental investment ruin of the brown coal industry - the Bertzit tower in Kahla . In: Kulturamt des Landkreis Elbe-Elster (Hrsg.): Coal, wind and water. An energy historical foray through the Elbe-Elsterland . Herzberg / Elster 2001, ISBN 3-00-008956-X , p. 147-158 .
  5. ^ Author collective: Mining history in the Lauchhammer district . Ed .: Traditionsverein Braunkohle Lauchhammer e. V. Lauchhammer 2003, p. 117 .
  6. ↑ a b c Jürgen Bartholomäus: The Bertzit tower near Kahla . In: The Black Magpie . Bad Liebenwerda 1991, p. 17-18 .
  7. ^ A b c d e f g Matthias Baxmann, Andreas Pöschl (Red.): On the history of lignite mining and lignite refinement in the Schönborn-Tröbitz-Domsdorf mining area . In: Kulturamt des Landkreis Elbe-Elster (Hrsg.): Coal, wind and water. An energy historical foray through the Elbe-Elsterland . Herzberg / Elster 2001, ISBN 3-00-008956-X , p. 46-69 .
  8. ↑ contemporary as Bertinierung or Bertinier procedure referred to in Switzerland as apparently Carbozit methods familiar
  9. ^ Anonymus: Polytechnische Schau. In: Polytechnisches Journal . 336, 1921, p. 25.
  10. ↑ a b c d Luise Grundmann, Dietrich Hanspach: Der Schraden. A regional study in the Elsterwerda, Lauchhammer, Hirschfeld and Ortrand area . Ed .: Institute for Regional Geography Leipzig and the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-412-10900-2 , pp. 80-81 .
  11. ^ Author collective: Mining history in the Lauchhammer district . Ed .: Traditionsverein Braunkohle Lauchhammer eV Lauchhammer 2003, p. 117 .
  12. ^ Author collective: Mining history in the Lauchhammer district . Ed .: Traditionsverein Braunkohle Lauchhammer eV Lauchhammer 2003, p. 93 .
  13. ↑ www.reiseland-brandenburg.de ( Memento from April 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ The Black Elster Cycle Path on magicmaps.
  15. ↑ Brochure Cycle Tour Coal-Wind & Water-An energy historical foray , published: Landkreis Elbe-Elster, 2006.

Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 27.9 "  N , 13 ° 34 ′ 55.7"  E