Weiherhammer ironworks
The ferrous Weiherhammer was in the same-day Bohemian community Weiherhammer between mantle and Etzenricht to the pelvic pond and its tributary, the in the Haidenaab opens Röthenbach built.
history
Around 1674, due to the increasing shortage of wood and charcoal in the area of Amberg and Sulzbach , the sovereign considered building a blast furnace at the pool pond . There was enough wood in the Mantler and Parksteiner Forests to run an ironworks; The long journey to get the iron ore from Amberg or Sulzbach had to be accepted. When the Hammer Philippsburg was shut down due to a lack of coal, Prince Theodor Eustach set about building a blast furnace (the so-called blast furnace next coat ) on the eastern bank of the Beckenweiher around 1700 .
For this purpose, a square 15 by 15 m and 2 m deep was dug for the blast furnace. Because of the marshy soil, a layer of pine needles was first put in and then a grate made of fir trees was created on which the walls of the furnace could then be built (this fir grate was exposed in 1935 and the fir trunks preserved in the bog soil were processed into wooden planks). The furnace shaft was not round, but built in a square. It had a height of 8 m, was built from rubble stones and had a clear width of one meter. Inside it was lined with refractory bricks. The air necessary to start the fire was initially brought in by a blower that was kicked with the foot. Over time, the surrounding swampy area was filled with furnace slag, some of which were also stored on grates made from tree trunks. After the furnace shaft was built, a smelter, a casting hut, a coal mine, material sheds and houses were built for the workers who had moved from Rosenberg. This preparatory work should have taken eight to ten years. Iron was smelted for the first time on November 3, 1717. A hammer master from the old hammer at Floß was hired as Hüttkapfer (= administrator) . About every hour the blast furnace was pierced by a smelter and the incandescent iron was drained into sand molds. Oven ports, kettles, frying pans, hot plates, oven parts, fittings for plows and wooden wagons, axle boxes and, for war purposes, bombs and grenades were produced. In addition to the cast goods, dolls weighing several hundredweight were also produced. These served as a reserve for the time when the blast furnace was not in operation and this pig iron could be further processed in the forge. The annual output was around 300 tons of iron. Once the furnace was blown on, it would operate day and night for several months, as long as the ore and charcoal were available and the brickwork withstood the heat in the smelter. The blast furnace is restarted about every three, four or five years. The stove used between five and six thousand fathoms of wood while it was in operation . Around 1781 26 men were working in the plant.
On October 17, 1719, a hammer hut was inaugurated, which was operated with the water from the pool pond. Now the majority of the pig iron could be forged into used iron here. As can be seen from the hammer calculations, rail irons, round irons, shear irons (plowshares), wagon tires, wagon axles, flat irons, horseshoes and coarse sheet metal were produced. The iron was forged with two large tail hammers , popularly known as bow hammers . The forge burned day and night and the blacksmiths had to work in shifts. Between October 21, 1732 and January 2, 1734, income of 14,649 guilders and 42 kreuzers could be earned. The expenditure was 11,799 guilders and 18 cruisers, i.e. H. there was a profit of 2,850 guilders and 24 cruisers. The expenses also included so-called horse pollen , which was used by the molders as a means of ventilation to make the mold clay permeable to the vapor of the molten iron (a fuder cost 1 fl and 14 kr).
In 1727 the first hammer workers at the plant applied to the government in Sulzbach to be allowed to settle in the vicinity of the plant. The houses of Weihersdorf were built on the west side of the basin pond so that the wooden houses were protected from flying sparks; the settlement was named Beckendorf. In 1801 a tavern was built, which only had to give way to a plant expansion in the 1960s. In 1906, the residents wished to name the place like the ironworks, but it was not until 1934 that the Ministry of the Interior approved the renaming to Weiherhammer.
Around 1781 there is a report of a water-powered cable lift, with which iron ore and charcoal could be brought alternately to the gout stage and tipped into the blast furnace from above.
In 1738 the ironworks was leased to the Sulzbach court chamberlain von Hann . The annual rent was 1,500 guilders. In 1753, after his death, the factory returned to the electoral government, but all buildings and trades were in a neglected condition. In that year Johann Wolfgang Allio was appointed as administrator of the electoral blast furnace. He got into a dispute with the electoral forest master Franz Benno von Hann zu Mantel over hunting in the pool pond and the removal of wood, which brought the plant into distress due to the lack of charcoal deliveries; the quarrel could first be ended by government intervention. In 1755 the plant was administered by Georg Windisch , who had no interest in hunting and was more concerned with fish farming. In 1771 the blast furnace manager Johann Thomas Bauer is here again, who was interested in hunting again, which led to the well-known quarrels being revived. The lower jurisdiction exercised by the respective administrator is also connected with the work . In 1794, the factory received a major order to produce thousands of cannonballs and grenades. For this purpose, the Weiherhammer smelter Pezler and the form master Achaz Pöll were initiated into the production technology by the Bodenwöhrers formers and sand caster . In 1797 Weiherhammer and the plants in Bodenwöhr and Fichtelberg received the order to produce 45 150 twelve-pounders, 53 412 six-pounders and 2,654 three-pounders.
In 1799 a new blast furnace for 9,000 guilders was built under the manager Pindl , replacing the old one from 1717, which had been badly damaged by the French in the coalition wars. The new plant now had a machine house with a hydrostatic blower and new water wheels, two hammer hammers , four stretching and zain hammers with their own water wheels, a ball hammer, an ore punching mill , a grinding mill for polishing the cast goods, two charcoal skulls and two material sheds . A crane had also been erected for the blast furnace and it was fed by two elevators. This year, a Barbara chapel was built on the factory premises. In 1806 the furnace produced 8,000 quintals of pig iron. In 1808 a brother fund, a forerunner of the pension fund, was set up, which paid 15 fl to the family in the event of the death of a worker. On June 16, 1833, an elementary school was founded on the factory premises, whereby the teacher Johann Baptist Rabs came to Weiherhammer in 1830 as a private tutor for the children of hammer master Schmid .
In 1840 the plant began to be heated with peat . It turned out that dry and pressed peat could well replace the charcoal. On July 1, 1840, the construction of a rolling mill began, as the demand for railroad tracks could no longer be met by the hammered iron. Another change was the smelting of iron using coke from hard coal from the Ruhr area around 1850. While this innovation meant the end of many plants in the Upper Palatinate, Weihergut was able to keep pace with the innovations. Two cupola furnaces were built here, with which pig iron and scrap iron could be processed. In 1864, the smelter Georg Mayr reported a pig iron supply of 24,000 hundredweight, which had been produced by two blast furnaces. In 1875 the Ostbahngesellschaft built the line from Weiden via Weiherhammer to Nuremberg. Now the logistical problems with the supply of pig iron and coke could also be overcome.
In 1882 ore smelting was stopped and the two blast furnaces demolished. In 1890 the two hammer smelters also ceased operations. But that did not mean the end of the work, because the iron foundry and the locksmith's shop were still in operation. In 1913 there were even 268 employees in the plant, in 1933 there were 800 men. Locomotive parts, traveling grates, road rollers, milling machines and machine parts of all kinds were now manufactured.
Weiherhammer in the 20th century
In 1927 the Weiherhammer plant was incorporated into the BHS-Bayerische Berg-, Hütten- und Salzwerke . In 1993 this company was privatized and still operates as a GmbH today .
The plant survived the Second World War undamaged, and an air raid on April 11, 1945 did little damage. The destruction of the bridges over the Heidennaab and the Röthenbach by the SS was more problematic . This brought the railway connection to Weiden to a standstill for half a year. The dismantling of the factory facilities threatened in 1947, but could be averted. After the currency reform of 1948, an upward trend began, and in 1952 a second foundry was established that produced drainage pipes and fittings using the centrifugal casting process with machines manufactured in-house. With a Bessemer pear set up , machine parts weighing up to 3,000 kg could be manufactured in the mid-1960s. A special furnace was used to produce spheroidal graphite cast iron for high-quality machine casting (machine parts up to 7 t) and steel sand in 10 grain sizes for the cast plaster.
In 1960 the business area of the ironworks was expanded: Now, in addition to cast iron, corrugated cardboard machines were also designed and manufactured. Today, BHS Corrugated , the world market leader for corrugated cardboard plants, produces on the site of the former ironworks . 900 employees currently work in the Weiherhammer plant.
literature
- Zenger, Hans: This is how Weiherhammer came about. Notes from the 250-year history of an ironworks. Oberpfälzer Heimat , 1971, Volume 15, pp. 73-87.
- Zenger, Georg: From the history of the Weiherhammer ironworks. For its 250th anniversary. Die Oberpfalz , 1968, Volume 56, pp. 81-85, 108-112, pp. 129-132.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Weiherhammer: 300 years of competence. In Oberpfalz TV from September 22, 2017. ( Memento of the original from February 9, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 49 ° 38 '9.9 " N , 12 ° 3' 35.5" E