Mägdesprung ironworks
The Mägdesprung ironworks is a former ironworks in the Mägdesprung district that belongs to the town of Harzgerode in Saxony-Anhalt . Parts of the preserved buildings of the hut are under monument protection .
location
It is located in the center of Mägdesprung in the Selketal . It is registered as an iron and steel works in the local register of monuments. The federal highway 185 leads through the factory area .
Design and history
Initially, the site of the later iron and steel works was called the Schalkenburg after an area up the slope . In the 18th century the name of the spring Meidesprungk became the place name for the emerging settlement . In 1646 the sovereign Prince Friedrich von Anhalt-Bernburg-Harzgerode and the Quedlinburg merchant Johann Heydtfeld contractually agreed to build an ironworks instead of the existing water mill, which initially consisted of two fresh fires (Zerrennherd) and a hammer mill. The locally available hydropower, developed iron ore deposits and the surrounding forest for the extraction of charcoal appeared to be favorable prerequisites for the success of the company. But the expectations were not fulfilled. A growing mountain of debts, bankruptcies and the resulting change of operators prompted Prince Viktor Amadeus von Anhalt-Bernburg in 1710 to shut down the plant, which has been producing a blast furnace since 1662.
For a few years the facilities were used to mine silver. In the 1820s a paper mill was installed here, followed by a grinding mill and an oil mill. After relocating a foundry (blast furnace) from Silberhütte to Mägdesprung in 1754, iron smelting began again. The development and use of more distant ore deposits such as at Tilkerode and in the county of Stolberg , improved technology, organization of a sales system and systematic funding by Prince Friedrich Albrecht von Anhalt-Bernburg (1765–1796) led to the upswing of the ironworks under the Mägdesprung . Above the older facilities, the new factory was built in 1769 on a valley widening with three fresh stoves, two forges and a grinding shop. From 1780 to 1786, four hammer mills with their own specializations were built down the valley, and a wire drawing mill at the new works. At this time, the approximately six decades of heyday of the Mägdesprung ironworks began, not least thanks to a number of competent and imaginative managers who followed one another, such as Oberbergrat Schlüter, smelter Johann Ludwig Carl Zincken and machine and smelter Bischof. Mägdesprung supplied high quality iron bars and a wide range of finished products.
In 1781 the late Baroque administration building of the hut, preserved today south of the road, was built. In the middle of the eleven-axis house is a roof turret with a clock. A cast iron plaque with the year of construction is attached to the house. To the building originally as is model workshop occupied half-timbered house added. The half-timbered figure of the whole man can be found in the half-timbered construction . Behind this building is the blacksmith's shop that was built around 1800 . It is listed as dry masonry, with the gables being built in half-timbered construction. The compartments are filled with cinder blocks that come from the production of the hut.
An outstanding technical achievement of its time was the erection of the monument in honor of Prince Friedrich Albrecht von Anhalt-Bernburg in 1812 after a new blast furnace was put into operation in 1809, with the obelisk needle constructed from 16 meter long iron plates. In 1821 artificial casting was added to the production program, which reached its artistic peak in the years of the extremely talented modeller Johann Heinrich Kureck (1843–1878). In a modernization and expansion phase , two cupola furnaces were built by 1829 , a factory building with a sheet metal smithy , locksmith's shop and rolling mill, a molding shop and grinding works, the Carlswerk with iron rolling and iron cutting works. The buildings were erected as dry stone masonry from stone-exposed slate quarries. On a former facade shield a violently ripped out in recent years was located underneath a crown prince Alexius Friedrich Christian von Anhalt-Bernburg allusive Monogram AFC .
The magazine with arched openings is located at an angle to these buildings. In 1828 , a plastered, two-storey, classicist director's house with a hipped roof was built for Bergrat Zincken , who had been the works director since January 1, 1821 . After the unification of Anhalt in 1863, it served as a lodging house for the Anhalter ruling house in the Upper Duchy under the name of the ducal palace . Most of the time, however, the living quarters for the smelter and officials were set up there. On the factory premises there are also half-timbered buildings for the bakery, the hand molding shop and the locksmith's shop. The bank fortification of the Selke, made of dry stone, belongs to the monument area.
In the middle of the 19th century, the increasing competition between the cheaper Scottish and Westphalian pig iron had an impact, as well as increased prices for the raw materials required. After modernization, the growing orders with the industrialization of Central Germany could be fulfilled. The number of employees rose to around 200. Around 1860 a new machine factory was built, today's Carlswerk , an important individual monument of industrial architecture in the 19th century. After the Lower Harz iron ore mines were exhausted, the blast furnace was shut down in 1876. The Selke Valley Railway was available from 1887 to supply raw and scrap iron and transport the finished products.
When the state property was separated from the princely property in Anhalt in 1872, the until then ducal hut passed into private hands and changed hands several times in the following decades. From 1902 the production of gas stoves and devices began and thus appeared alongside mechanical engineering and artificial casting as the most important productions to date. In 1907 the company had 247 employees. In the 20s and 30s the development of the plant stagnated and at times it was also in decline.
At the end of the war, the factory was involved in combat operations in April 1945 and the model house, in which all of the company's historical models were located, was destroyed by fire. After the Second World War , from 1959 with state participation and from 1972 as VEB Gas- und Heizgerätewerk Mägdesprung , the results of the wide-ranging production could be increased again. In the areas of stove and gas cooker construction, Mägdesprung was the sole manufacturer in the GDR.
After the reunification of Germany as Mägdesprunger Eisenhüttenwerk GmbH, the construction continued and soon re-privatized, the almost three and a half centuries old production facility was quickly liquidated. The attempt to continue building gas appliances in a newly founded GmbH with 10 employees failed after a short time. Since then, the area of the old steelworks has been sold in small plots or auctioned several times and most of the production facilities have been demolished.
As evidence of the efficiency of the former Mägdesprung ironworks in the field of artificial casting, the sculpture Besiegter Hirsch in the center of the village and in the closer region various works made in the ironworks have been preserved, including the Luise Temple and the Standing Deer in Alexisbad and the Fürst-Friedrich-Albrecht -Monument in Mägdesprung.
literature
- Falko Grubitzsch in: Georg Dehio: Handbook of German Art Monuments . Saxony-Anhalt. Volume 1: Ute Bednarz, Folkhard Cremer and others: Magdeburg administrative region. Revision. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich et al. 2002, ISBN 3-422-03069-7 , page 526.
- State Office for the Preservation of Monuments of Saxony-Anhalt (Ed.): List of monuments in Saxony-Anhalt. Volume 7.2: Falko Grubitzsch, with the participation of Winfried Korf and Theo Gosselke: Quedlinburg district. Halle 2007, ISBN 978-3-86568-072-3 , page 164 f.
- Eckhard Oelke: The development and decline of the Harz metallurgical industry. Shown using the example of the Mägdesprung hut from 1646–1875. In: Wiss. Journal University of Halle-Wittenberg, XV 1966
- Edgar Presia: 350 years of the Mägdesprung ironworks. In: General Harz Mountain Calendar for 1997, 1996
- Matthias Reichmann: The Harz ironworks under the Mägdesprung. A contribution to artificial casting in the northern Harz. 2002, improved edition 2010. ISBN 3-8258-6194-5 . ( Digitized version from 2002, 31.4 MB)
- Paul Schmidt: The history of the ironworks under the Mägdesprung. Ed. Eisenhüttenverein Mägdesprung Carl Bischof e. V., 2008
- Wolfdieter Ludwig: The ironworks Mägdesprung - an industrial monument of national importance. Mägdesprunger Hefte No. 1, 2009. ISBN 3-937648-15-1
- Karl-Heinz Börner : Mines and smelters in the Harzgeröder region with special consideration of the Mägdesprunger Eisenhütte. Mägdesprunger Hefte No. 2, 2nd edition 2013, ISBN 3-937648-16-X .
- Wolfdieter Ludwig: The Mägdesprunger Obelisk. Mägdesprunger Hefte Nr. 3, 2009. ISBN 3-937648-17-8
