Carlshütte (Dautphetal)

View of the buildings of the former ironworks

The Carlshütte is an industrial settlement in the municipality of Dautphetal . It belongs to the Buchenau district .

history

The Carlshütte around 1911 with a train station, but still without a villa

West side of the historic half-timbered building with tower hood on the railway line

The Carlshütte was created in the course of industrialization in the Lahn lowlands about 1.5 km southwest of Buchenau. Friedrich Carl Klein had the Carlshütte named after him built on July 12, 1844 as the last ironworks in the upper Lahn valley.

Emergence

Friedrich Carl Klein was previously employed as the Grand Ducal Hessian Hütteninspektor in the Ludwigshütte in Biedenkopf . After the Ludwigshütte was sold into private hands, he lived in Elmshausen . From there he found iron ore deposits on walks in the Buchenau, Allendorf and Elmshausen districts. Since he feared that the deposits he discovered would not be accepted by the surrounding ironworks out of envy , he had the "Karlshütte" built with the financial help of his patrons, the privy councilor Freiherr von und zu Breidenbach and the Count of Solms-Laubach . This is how the last steelworks in the upper Lahn valley was built.

With the commissioning of the railway line from Cölbe to Biedenkopf on April 1, 1883, the Carlshütte received its own breakpoint. Soon the smelting of iron ore became more and more unprofitable and so the “hut” was transformed into a cast goods factory. Among other things, cast ovens ("Zeus ovens"), garden bench frames, cast windows, household items and cast pipes were manufactured. In its heyday shortly before the economic crisis of 1929, around 440 people worked at the Carlshütte. Also worth mentioning is the Hohenfels House, built around 1925 above the Carlshütte, an extremely luxurious villa for the time, which Friedrich Carl Klein's son-in-law had built for himself.

During the Second World War , the Carlshütte and the railway line were bombed several times, but were spared major damage. Carlshütte, which had only around 150 workers after the war, specialized in the construction of cast-iron stoves before it went bankrupt in the late 1950s . Then it was sold. Today the area houses the home of the current owners in addition to various smaller businesses. On May 26, 1985, the Carlshütte station was "closed", that is, operations were stopped.

present

The so-called "Villa" - The Hohenfels House

In addition to the actual Carlshütte with its associated buildings, the villa, the former stationer's house, a former restaurant, another house on the district road to Allendorf and a newly built car workshop are inhabited by a total of almost 40 people. The dilapidated little station building was demolished after the station closed.

In the direction of Buchenau, approx. 23 hectares of industrial area are designated along the railway line following the Carlshütte (13 hectares of existing, but mostly still undeveloped and 10 hectares in planning).

literature

Elsa Blöcher : On the history of the Carlshütte . In: Hinterländer Geschichtsblätter 43 (1964) No. 3
Peter Ihm, Jürgen Westmeier (ed.): Buchenau an der Lahn. History and stories in words and pictures . Buchenau / Lahn 1985

Web links

Carlshütte, Marburg-Biedenkopf district. Historical local dictionary for Hessen. (As of June 8, 2014). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

50.862777777778 8.5866666666667Coordinates: 50 ° 52 ' N , 8 ° 35' E