Ironworks Othfresen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Othfresen ironworks is a former blast furnace that was operated from 1871 to 1874 in the area of ​​the Posthof near Othfresen .

prehistory

The founder of the ironworks was the industrialist Bethel Henry Strousberg, known as the "railway king" . In addition to building railway lines, Strousberg had acquired stakes in numerous companies, such as B. the iron foundry and machine works Georg Egestorff in Hanover (the later Hanomag plant ) and the steelworks Dortmunder Hütte , the forerunner of the Dortmund Union . In order to secure the steel requirements for the construction of its railway lines, Strousberg considered it necessary to have additional iron production facilities. In Salzgitter, Strousberg met the industrialist Emil Langen , who appointed Strousberg to the supervisory board of the Eisenwerke Salzgitter corporation founded in 1868 . Based on the knowledge gained here, Strousberg bought several iron mines in the area of ​​the later Fortuna mine near Groß Döhren on July 10, 1869 , which had been owned by the Salzgitter ironworks until then, the purchase price was 250,000 Reichstaler.

Construction of the ironworks

For the construction of the ironworks, Strousberg acquired 43 hectares of land at the Posthof near Othfresen. This also included the post office building, in which the administrative rooms of the ironworks were housed. Construction of the iron and steel works began on December 9, 1869, and Strousberg had commissioned the building contractor Ferdinand Wallbrecht from Hanover with the work . According to the building application, the plant consisted of four blast furnaces, one of which was a machine house with four blowers each. The plant also included two casting halls and two bell towers , four forge fires and a steam engine with 845 hp. The buildings were built from brick in the English “Windsor style”. The construction costs amounted to around 330,000 Reichstaler. On October 1, 1871, the "blast furnace plant for the production of pig iron for foundry purposes" began.

business

Strousberg obtained the iron ore from the Rote Rose , Fortuna , Dorothea , Glückauf and Mutung Glücksborn mines ( awarded to Strousberg on May 20, 1870 ) at Groß-Döhren, which he had bought in 1869 from the Salzgitter ironworks. To transport the ore from his mines near Döhren, Strousberg had a 2.33 km long narrow-gauge railway laid to Othfresen. He obtained more ore from the Lüneburg Eisenstein mining company from their Helene and Ludwig mines near the Grenzlerburg (later the Ida-Bismarck mine ). Before the ore could be used in the blast furnaces, it was broken, sieved and washed on the smelter site.

The aggregate lime for the blast furnaces, which came from nearby limestone quarries , was also brought in via the narrow-gauge railway from Döhren . The addition of lime was necessary to smelt the "acid ores" in order to bind the sulfur contained in the coke , which otherwise would have got into the pig iron and made it brittle. To transport the pig iron away, Strousberg had a 7.6 km long small train connection to Ringelheim on the Kreiensen – Börßum – Braunschweig railway line .

In 1873 the plant employed around 400 people, with whom around 20,000 tons of pig iron were produced. In the early 1870s, Strousberg got into financial difficulties, as a result of which he had to sell the iron and steel works in 1872. The buyer was the Dortmunder Union, which acquired the ironworks for one million thalers.

When in January 1874 the chain of one of the top towers, through which the blast furnaces were filled, broke, this blast furnace could no longer be operated and had to be blown out. In March 1874 the last blast furnace was shut down and the ironworks closed. The reason given was the dwindling sales, as the Döhrener ore was no longer competitive with the cheaper and higher quality Minette ore from Alsace-Lorraine .

Reuse

The machines were passed on to the former Dortmunder Hütte , which had also become the property of the Dortmunder Union. The buildings and grounds were later sold to the Othfresen sugar factory, which was founded in 1883 and operated until 1965. The administration building was destroyed by shell bombardment at the end of the Second World War; individual buildings are still preserved today and are used by various companies.

The residues from the smelting as ( blast furnace slag ) had been stored on the bank of the Innerste . This area, later known as the “slag forest” because of its greening, was dismantled in the 1960s when the new B6 near Posthof was built , with the slag being used as road gravel.

literature

  • Heinz Kolbe: The time of hunger for iron and the founding of smelters in Salzgitter-Bad and Othfresen in the 19th century . In: Geschichtsverein Salzgitter eV (Ed.): Salzgitter Yearbook 1982 . tape 4 , 1982, ISSN  0723-757X , p. 52-58 .
  • Heinz Kolbe: The history of iron ore mining in Salzgitter: Revealing history of the Fortuna (Groß Döhren) and Anna & Hope (Liebenburg) mines . In: Geschichtsverein Salzgitter eV (Ed.): Salzgitter yearbook 1984 . tape 6 , 1984, ISSN  0723-757X , p. 16-25 .
  • Horst-Günther Lange: The Salzgitter and Othfresen ironworks - sources for the first two large-scale iron ore smelting operations in the 19th century . In: Geschichtsverein Salzgitter eV (Ed.): Salzgitter Yearbook 1990 . tape 12 , 1990, ISSN  0723-757X , pp. 109-149 .
  • Mining in Salzgitter - The history of mining and the life of miners from the beginning to the present . In: Office for History, Culture and Homeland Preservation of the City of Salzgitter, Editing: Heinrich Korthöber, Jörg Leuschner, Reinhard Försterling and Sigrid Lux ​​(eds.): Contributions to city history . tape 13 . Appelhans, Salzgitter 1997, ISBN 3-930292-05-X , The history of mining and the coal and steel industry in the Salzgitter area from the beginnings to the end of the First World War, p. 20-22 .
  • Wilhelm Bornstedt: The district of Goslar . Ed .: Lower Saxony State Administration Office (=  Die Landkreise in Lower Saxony . Volume 24 ). Walter Dorn Verlag, Bremen-Horn 1970, Der Eisenerzbergbau, p. 200-201 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Humburg: Max Humburg - Pictures of Life from Salzgitter . In: Archives of the City of Salzgitter (Ed.): Contributions to the city's history . Salzgitter 1995, ISBN 3-930292-01-7 , Bethel Henry Strousberg, p. 160 .
  2. ^ Mining in Salzgitter , p. 21
  3. ^ Salzgitter Yearbook 1990 , p. 138
  4. ↑ Salzgitter Yearbook 1984 , p. 11
  5. ^ Salzgitter Yearbook 1982 , p. 157
  6. ↑ Salzgitter Yearbook 1984 , pp. 17-18
  7. ^ Salzgitter Yearbook 1990 , p. 145
  8. ↑ The district of Goslar , p. 201
  9. ^ Salzgitter Yearbook 1982 , p. 58

Coordinates: 52 ° 0 ′ 19.5 ″  N , 10 ° 22 ′ 38.5 ″  E