Carl Menzel (mountain official)

Carl Ernst Hermann Menzel (also Karl Menzel , born April 6, 1834 in Chemnitz ; † December 24, 1916 ) was a German mining official .

life and work

After attending the Chemnitz trade school, Menzel studied at the Bergakademie Freiberg from 1855 to 1859 . His teachers included the mathematician and engineer Julius Weisbach , who gave him special support.

After completing the practical mining work course, Menzel entered the civil service as an assistant at the coal inspection in Zwickau on April 1, 1862 . In this function he carried out a study trip to the Saarbrücker and Rhenish-Westphalian coalfields in 1864 with government support , the results of which he published in 1867.

After the General Mining Act for the Kingdom of Saxony on June 16, 1868, he became a mining inspector for the Zwickau district on January 3, 1869. He stayed here for two years until he left the civil service in 1871 to take over the Zwickau Brückenberg coal mining association as mining director . During this time he gained a lot of practical experience that is important for his future career. So he invented the "Menzel metal brake" named after him, a safety device for metal ropes. In addition, together with Bergrat Friedrich Hugo Berg, he developed a test facility on the Brückenbergschacht I to demonstrate the recently recognized risk of explosion from coal dust . After more than eight years, he returned to his old post on June 1, 1879.

On April 1, 1885, he was appointed to the State Mining Office in Freiberg, where he was given the responsibility for coal mining in Saxony. Here, too, a focus of his work was on the prevention of accidents in the Saxon mining industry. The safety of the mine had come to the fore in particular due to the severe firedamp explosion on December 1, 1879 in Zwickau with 89 deaths. A commission headed by Karl Edwin Leuthold was founded for this purpose in 1881 . Menzel was responsible for the technical processing and reporting. He published the results of the commission in 1886 in the yearbook for mining and metallurgy in the Kingdom of Saxony . The most important result of the commission were the first general mountain police regulations for the Kingdom of Saxony , published on March 25, 1886 . He was also involved in later editions of the mountain police regulations.

In addition, he devoted himself to the investigation of subsidence phenomena in his former home in Zwickau. From 1887 he headed the commission for the State Examination of Markscheider . Also since 1887, at the instigation of the Saxon Ministry of Finance, he published the yearbook for mining and metallurgy in the Kingdom of Saxony.

In 1892 it was named the Oberbergrat and in 1901 the secret mountain ridge.

Honors

• 1889 Knight's Cross 1st Class of the Albrecht Order
• 1899 Knight's Cross 1st Class of the Saxon Order of Civil Merit
• 1914 Officer's Cross of the Order of Albrecht
• 1914 Dr.-Ing. H. c. the Bergakademie Freiberg in conjunction with the TU Dresden in recognition of his outstanding services to the Saxon hard coal mining

Works (selection)

• As editor: Yearbook for the miner and smelter in the Kingdom of Saxony for the year ... 1887–1916 ( digitized version ).
• Notes, collected on an instruction trip carried out in 1864 to the mountain areas of Saarbrückens and Westphalia. In: Yearbook for the miner and smelter in the kingdom of Saxony. Year 1867, pp. 191–222 ( digitized version )
• Overview of the activities of the commission for the revision of the mountain police regulations in Saxony. In: Yearbook for the miner and smelter in the kingdom of Saxony. Year 1886, pp. 1–51 ( digitized version )

literature

• Carl Schiffner : Carl Ernst Hermann Menzel . In: From the life of old Freiberg mountain students . tape I . Ernst Maukisch, Freiberg 1935, p. 336-338 .
• Christian Otto Hirsch: Dr.-Ing. Carl Menzel † . In: Yearbook for mining and metallurgy in the Kingdom of Saxony . 1916, p. 1–8 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Carl Schiffner: Carl Ernst Hermann Menzel . In: From the life of old Freiberg mountain students . tape II . Ernst Maukisch, Freiberg 1938, p. 404 .