Bentheim sandstone
The lighter Bentheimer sandstone - type Gildehaus and the brown to red Bentheimer sandstone (the color varies with the iron content in the sandstone ), occur in a sandy, spatially limited sandstone deposit of the eastern marine Lower Saxony basin of the Lower Cretaceous , during the Lower Valanginian removed material of the red sandstone was stored. The deposit reaches a maximum thickness of 60 to 70 meters and is about nine kilometers long in a west-east direction. The sandstone deposits that come to the surface east and west of Bad Bentheim have been mined in numerous quarries for 800 years. The Gildehauser sandstone occurs not far from Bad Bentheim. It was broken earlier near Suddendorf .
Occurrence and use
The deposits extend from Gildehaus in the west to Suddendorf in the east. In the 1930s, the sandstone types were quarried in three large quarries, in Bad Bentheim, Gildehaus and Suddendorf. This sandstone is also known as Bentheimer Gold and the regional quarries are called "Bentheimer Gruben".
The Bentheim sandstone, which today (2008) is only quarried in a quarry, is a pure, uniform-grain quartz sandstone of high strength, weather resistance and hardness, which is nevertheless easy to work with.
The sandstone deposit has a high porosity and can act as storage rock , as it can absorb large amounts of groundwater . In the northern county of Bentheim and in the southern Emsland , the sandstone that runs underground there also forms the storage rock for crude oil . The oil deposits there are among the largest in Germany and were created around 125 million years ago.
The Bentheim Castle stands on a nearly seven-kilometer hill, a spur of the Teutoburg Forest , which consists mainly of sandstone and Bentheimer ridge is called. It rises south of the town of Schüttorf from the Vechte Valley and extends from east to west via Bad Bentheim to Gildehaus, where it runs out near the Dutch border. The ridge in Bad Bentheim reaches its highest point of around 90 meters.
It occurs in two color variants:
- The type "Bentheim" was broken in Bad Bentheim and is light red in color,
- the “Gildehaus” type is extracted from the Princely Quarry in Romberg near Gildehaus and is white to grayish-orange. The Gildehauser sandstone is mined in the lower area of a historical quarry in the so-called main sandstone and the block sizes are 4.50 × 1.50 × 1.00 meters due to the existing fissures , which are further divided. Part of the orange variety is occasionally broken on the eastern outskirts of Bentheim.
Frequently occurring Liesegang rings of precipitation give the rock a brownish texture (popularly spoken grain). Especially in northern Germany and the Netherlands there are not only some important buildings made of this sandstone, but also a whole range of baptismal fonts ("Bentheimer type") and grave slabs, steps, well slabs, grindstones and stone troughs. Well-known buildings made of Bentheim sandstone are the Bentheim Castle, the town hall facades in Münster and Gifhorn and the Amsterdam Palace .
Rock description
The Bentheim sandstone is a fine to medium-grain quartz sandstone, the grain binding of which is largely caused by grain intergrowth. It is of great strength, weather resistance and hardness, which is nevertheless easy to process. There are two color variants of this sandstone. The "Gildehaus type", which is extracted in the Princely Quarry in Romberg (Gildehaus-Romberg), is white to grayish-orange. The rarer "Bentheim type", which is hardly broken any more, is a small to coarse-grained sandstone with a whitish to reddish color. The rock banks have different thicknesses . Both the Bentheimer and the Gildehauser sandstone, if they are used as building blocks, can be described as frost-resistant.
The yellow or brownish color is caused by limonite and the reddish color by hematite .
History, use and structures
Since the Middle Ages and in the later centuries, builders have used Bentheim sandstone to build churches and for representative secular buildings. Significant buildings made of Bentheim sandstone are, for example, the Royal Palace in Amsterdam , the theater and the Frauenkirche in Antwerp , the Catholic Church in Aarhus as well as the town hall in Münster and Bentheim Castle , the largest building made of Bentheim sandstone.
The stone was also used for mills, bridges, walls and dikes. It was used to make grindstones , willow posts, corridor and paving stones, well surrounds and rainwater basins. Around 1900, advancing industrialization and a sharp decline in demand led to the decline in the mining of Bentheim sandstone. Today it is only broken in the Bad Bentheim district of Gildehaus.
In the 12th and 13th centuries, baptismal fonts made from Bentheim sandstone were the most important export item. They were made from one piece on site in the quarries in Gildehaus and Bentheim. Stone coffins and grave slabs were also made from Bentheim sandstone in medieval times. There are also many sculptures made of Bentheim sandstone, including the Lord God of Bentheim and figures in the central part of the Wilanów Palace . 300 years ago there were 22 quarries in Bentheim. Many of the stone blocks extracted there were processed in the county. Others were brought to Schüttorf or Nordhorn by horse and cart and loaded onto flat boats. Today a street in Nordhorn is still called Steinmaate . The boats then drove down the Vechte to Zwolle on the IJsselmeer . Today the sandstone is used to manufacture floor and facade panels, solid parts and for stone carving.
This stone became known through the mutiny ship Batavia , which sank off the west coast of Australia on June 4, 1629, while it was on its way to the East Indian colonies of Holland. The Batavia carried a six meter high portal made of Bentheim sandstone made of 137 pieces of stone as ballast, which was lifted by ship in the 1970s and is now in the Western Australian Maritime Museum in Fremantle , Australia. It should for the citadel of the port city of Batavia, now Jakarta in Indonesia used. After a geoscientific investigation by the Lower Saxony State Office for Soil Research in Hanover, the sandstone could be assigned to the Bentheim rock deposit.
Lord God of Bentheim
Until mid-2016, the historically significant Herrgott von Bentheim stood in the inner courtyard of the castle . This 2.80 meter high and 1.40 meter wide free-standing sculpture depicting the crucified Jesus has been in the castle church, also known as Katharinenkirche, since the beginning of September. It was carved out of a sandstone block in the 11th century.
The Lord God of Bentheim is one of the oldest testimonies to the Christian faith in the region. It probably originally stood as a statue at an intersection of important long-distance trade routes. It was overturned and buried during the Reformation. It reappeared in the first half of the 19th century and was installed in the castle courtyard in 1868.
Noteworthy is the upright and rigid posture, which is unusual for a representation of Christ, as well as his full clothing and particularly bent arms. There are also no signs of wounds.
Sandstone museum
The Sandstone Museum Bad Bentheim is located in a historic farm bourgeois house below Bentheim Castle in the castle park on the Funkenstiege and has an exhibition area of around 180 m² as well as exhibition space for large exhibits in the outdoor area. The Association for the Promotion of Museums in the Obergrafschaft eV is the sponsor of the museum
The museum focuses on information on the history and geology of the Bentheim sandstone as well as exhibits, models, pictures and information about the origin of the Bentheim sandstone, stone cutters in the quarry, mining and processing, transport and trade, Dutch architecture in the golden age of the 17th century, Jacob van Ruisdael and Bentheim Castle , Bentheim baptismal fonts, the decline of the sandstone trade etc.
See also
literature
- Heinrich Voort: mining, sales and use of Bentheim sandstone in 800 centuries. In: Series of publications by the Bad Bentheim sandstone museum. Issue 1, Bad Bentheim 2000.
- Wilhelm Dienemann , Otto Burre: The usable rocks in Germany and their deposits with the exception of coal, ores and salts. Enke-Verlag, Stuttgart 1929, p. 293.
- Herbert Lange, Steffen Burkert: Mute witnesses. Monuments and cultural sites in the Upper County of Bentheim. Grafschafter Nachrichten, Nordhorn 2009, 174 pp.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jochen Lepper: … In: Natural stone . 2/98, p. 75f.
- ↑ a b Kulturportal Northwest: "Bentheimer gold" - sandstone from Bad Bentheim. 4th july 2016.
- ↑ Jochen Lepper: … In: Natural stone. 2/98, p. 76.
- ↑ Monuments online: lions, dew sticks and palmettes. Fonts in the Low German region , accessed on December 11, 2011.
- ^ Sandstone deposits in Germany: Bentheim sandstone. On: geodienst.de .
- ↑ Delivered from Amsterdam across the sea . In: Der Grafschafter February 2000 . S. 1 .
- ↑ Jochen Lepper, Jutta Weber, Josef Mederer: Archaeological search for traces with geoscientific methods. A Weser Renaissance portal in Australia. Edited by the Lower Saxony State Office for Soil Science, Hanover, (leaflet).
- ↑ Herbert Lange, Steffen Bunkert: Mute witnesses, monuments and cultural sites in the Upper County of Bentheim . GN book, p. 17, 18 .
