Hercules lignite plant
The lignite factory Herkules is a former operation for the extraction and processing of lignite in Hirschfelde .
Landowner Ernst Heidrich laid the foundations for the Hirschfelde lignite works (BKW) in 1904 when he had three shafts of 6 to 10 meters in the neighboring Türchau ( Turoszów ) sunk and expanded. The Herkules union took over the mines of the landowner Heidrich in 1905. Around 1905, coal mining began in the neighboring town of Gießmannsdorf ( devastation in the 1940s) under the Gießmannsdorf-Dresden lignite union, with the lignite being transported from Gießmannsdorf to a loading station at Hirschfelde station via a 1260 meter long cable car.
The conversion to the Braunkohlen- Aktiengesellschaft- Hercules in May 1907 involved the acquisition of 88 hectares of land and around 25 million tons of raw brown coal. As a result, an overburden excavator was put into operation and the transition from civil engineering to open-cast mining was made. The construction of two briquette factories , which began in 1907, ended in 1908 with completion and commissioning under the name Braunkohlenwerk AG Herkules .
The company was transferred to the state of Saxony as the state-owned lignite works in Hirschfelde in 1917. In 1920 the BKW employed 1,680 people. In 1923, the company was converted into the Aktiengesellschaft Sächsische Werke (ASW), to which, among other things, the immediately adjacent Hirschfelde power plant was connected. After initial increases in the production capacity in 1925 and 1926, it declined after 1931 due to the poor economic situation. The construction of a heavy factory began in 1937. During this time, around 19,000 cubic meters of town gas were produced every day .
After the end of the war , the situation arose in 1945 that coal extraction and coal refinement were separate, since the opencast mine was now on Polish territory. The Soviet military administration confiscated the ASW's operating assets on October 30, 1945 . The handover of the mine to the Polish government took place in September 1946. By means of a contractual arrangement between the GDR and Poland , coal supplies for the BKW (from 1968 for the power station) continued from the Turów mine until 1982 . Lignite from the Olbersdorf and Berzdorf opencast mines as well as from the Lusatian mining district was then used. In addition to the continuous supply of coal to the power station, the following products left the BKW Hirschfelde when the GDR was founded in 1949:
- Conveying, screening, piece - and clear coal for industrial and domestic heating
- Briquettes
- Smoldering coke
- tar
- Heating oil
- Heavy fuel
- Light oil
- Wet press blocks
- Remote gas
In July 1964, the Hirschfelde lignite mine and the Berzdorf open-cast mine near Görlitz merged to form the BKW Oberlausitz. The briquette factory was shut down on December 1, 1966 and gas production was stopped on March 31, 1968.
source
- Historic Hirschfelder Industriepfad - Brown Coal Works (BKW)