Salzgitter ironworks

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The Salzgitter ironworks is a former blast furnace that was operated from 1869 to 1874 in the area of ​​today's Salzgitter-Bad .

prehistory

The trigger for the planning for the construction of a steel works were the reports by Albert Schloenbach from the year 1866 about ore deposits near Salzgitter-Bad. Schloenbach (1811–1877) was the chief saltworks inspector and head of the saltworks in today's Salzgitter-Bad. In addition to this, he researched the geology of the Harz foreland . In particular, he explored the local ore deposits and is considered to be the trailblazer for iron ore mining in Salzgitter . His finds include the iron ore deposits of the later Finkenkule and Hannoversche Treue mines . These findings prompted Emil Langen , who until 1867 had been the general director of the "Sieg-Rheinischer Bergwerks- und Hüttenverein" in Troisdorf , to set up a plant for smelting iron ore near the iron finds .

On June 24, 1868, the Eisenwerke Salzgitter corporation was founded. The object of the company was the exploitation of iron stone fields and the utilization of the mined iron stones, partly through sale, partly through smelting in a blast furnace establishment with the necessary ancillary facilities and the sale of the pig iron produced . The supervisory board of the Aktiengesellschaft included u. a. Albert Schloenbach, who had explored the ore deposits, and the "railway king" Bethel Henry Strousberg . Based on the experience gained here, Strousberg had an ironworks with four blast furnaces built in the neighboring Posthof near Othfresen in 1869 .

Construction of the ironworks

Construction of the plant began in February 1869, and the first pig iron tapping was carried out on October 12, 1869. The site of the iron and steel works was on the arterial road to Lattice, south of today's Gittertor sites 40 to 44. Since the local bricklayers had no experience in blast furnace construction, Langen hired the bricklayer Arnold Hoenerbach from Cologne as the site manager, whom he had already met in Troisdorf. Four blast furnaces were to be built for the production of crude steel. These were around 16 meters high and made of clinker bricks based on the Scottish model . Two blast furnaces were completed for commissioning, the casting halls were in front of them and the boiler houses behind . The plant also included coke ovens for producing the coke required . The cooling water was obtained from several sources on the factory premises and from the Warne reservoirs and stored in six ponds on the smelter premises . Two of these ponds served the population as a bathing pond until the 1920s.

Operation of the ironworks

Langen obtained the iron ore for operating his works from the Segen Gottes and Morgenröthe mines (later Finkenkuhle mine ), from the ore fields Zuversicht and Hinterlist near Kniestedt (later the Hannoversche Treue mine ) and from an iron stone gallery at the Grenzlerburg (between grid and Liebenburg ). In 1868 Langen acquired the Geviertfeld Salzgitter in the vicinity of the later ( grid shaft ), which had emerged from the earlier Längenfelds Untere Landwehr , Ferdinandine and Gut Glück . In the area of ​​the later Haverlahwiese mine , Langen owned the fields "Bergmannstrost" and "Glücksrad" (Bartelszeche near the village of Steinlah ). Since his fields of the Fortuna mine near Groß Döhren were too far away and therefore caused too high transport costs, Langen sold them in 1869 to Strousberg, the owner of the Othfresen ironworks founded in the same year .

To transport the ore, Langen had narrow-gauge railroads laid from the ironworks to the fields of the Finkenkuhle and to Hanover's Treue. The ore from the Bartelszeche was brought in by horse and cart, as was that from the nearby Grenzlerburg. The aggregate lime for the blast furnaces was taken from the Fleischerkamp limestone quarry (between Salzgitter-Bad and Haverlah , about 500 meters west of the Finkenkuhle pit), and the lime was transported by lorries over a specially laid railway line.

Langen had brought many of the skilled workers from his homeland, the Bergisches Land , to Salzgitter, as there were not enough trained miners and smelters here. Figures on production and employment have been handed down for 1873, after which 9146 tons of pig iron were produced, the blast furnace had 250 employees, and another 450 miners worked in the ore mines of Langen.

A number of accidents occurred during the factory's operating hours, some of which were caused by the inexperience of the employees; Inadequacies in technology were also the reason. The first serious accident occurred on July 10, 1870, when the upper part collapsed while a blast furnace was being repaired and several workers suffered so severe burns from the falling embers that four of them died. Emil Langen also fell victim to an accident when he was inspecting a blast furnace on September 30, 1870 and an explosion occurred as a result of which he died the next day. Langen was buried in the Vöppstedter cemetery , his grave is no longer preserved today.

Another serious accident occurred in September 1873 when a steam boiler exploded. The cause was probably defective iron sheets. Five employees died as a result of this accident. Further accidents worsened the economic situation, so that the balance sheet for 1873 was closed with a loss of 119,765 thalers.

In addition to the accidents, sales difficulties meant that one of the two blast furnaces was shut down in the following year. The reasons for the dwindling sales were, on the one hand, problems with the smelting of the acidic ores, so that the pig iron produced was of comparably poor quality. On the other hand, after the incorporation of Lorraine as a result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, higher-quality minette ores could be used, which enabled more economical smelting and resulted in better steel quality. The Salzgitter ironworks was therefore closed on October 31, 1874, the stock corporation was dissolved in 1877 and the facilities were demolished by 1892. What has been preserved is a residential building on the lattice gate that Langen had built for his employees.

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 .
  • 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 .
  • Franz Zobel : The Eisenwerk Salzgitter corporation (1886–1874) . Salzgitter 1924 (history supplement to the Goslarschen Zeitung of December 31, 1924).
  • 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 , Albert Schloenbach, p. 140-141 .
  2. ^ Quote from Salzgitter Yearbook 1990 , p. 119
  3. ^ Salzgitter Yearbook 1990 , pp. 118–119
  4. ↑ Salzgitter Yearbook 1990 , pp. 114–116
  5. ^ Archives of the city of Salzgitter and the village community grid (ed.): Grid - Twelve centuries of history . 1996, p. 254-255 .
  6. ^ Mining in Salzgitter , pp. 20–21
  7. ^ Ernst-Rüdiger Look: Geology, Mining and Prehistory in the Braunschweiger Land (=  Geological Yearbook . Issue 88). Hanover 1985, Fleischerkamp - Pläner limestone quarry west of Salzgitter-Bad, p. 265 .
  8. ^ Salzgitter Yearbook 1990 , p. 145
  9. ^ Salzgitter Yearbook 1990 , p. 114
  10. ^ Salzgitter Yearbook 1990 , p. 128

Coordinates: 52 ° 2 ′ 35.5 ″  N , 10 ° 21 ′ 38 ″  E