Large stone from barrel heather
Coordinates: 52 ° 25 '21.4 " N , 8 ° 42' 8.8" E
The Große Stein von Tonheide is one of the largest known erratic boulders in northern Germany . It is located in the village oftonsheide in the East Westphalian town of Rahden in the northeast of North Rhine-Westphalia .
history
History of origin
Due to the geological regulations, the boulder probably comes from the Swedish province of Blekinge County . Blekinge län is about 615 kilometers northeast of Ton Heath. The rock consists of biotite granite . It originated about a billion years ago. With the glaciers of the penultimate ice age, the Saale Ice Age, advancing from Scandinavia , the Great Stone was transported to its present location in Westphalia. Accordingly, it would have been there for about 200,000 years when the glaciers melted.
Discovery and recovery
Geologists were already investigating the stone around 1900, but its size was still underestimated at the time because it was largely hidden in the earth. It was not until 1915 that the stone was exposed and correctly measured for the first time. In 1915 it was still considered the largest boulder west of the Oder. In what was then northern Germany, only the Großer Stein in Klein-Tychow was considered larger. Attempts to recover the stone after the first exposure failed. It was then initially covered with soil again. In 1972 a new attempt was made to rescue the ship. Both a British pioneer unit and the Federal Railway Central Office in Minden did not have the technical means to lift the stone. The stone could only be lifted in 1981 and transported to its current location. Using two cranes (including a Demag CC 600) from a Bremerhaven company, it was lifted and transported to its current location. The transport distance was around 70 meters. A 300-year-old half-timbered storage facility, which was located close to the stone, had to be relocated for recovery .
Dimensions and classification of size
The big stone is ten meters long, seven meters wide and three meters high. Its weight is around 350 tons. This makes it one of the largest known erratic boulders in northern Germany. It is often said that it is the largest boulder in northern Germany or the largest boulder west of the Oder. Some boulders, however, are significantly larger and heavier, including the Buskam (probably around 1,600 tons) and the "Big Stone" in Altentreptow (around 360 tons). Once upon a time, the Markgrafenstein was also significantly heavier than the Great Stone from Ton Heath. So one cannot assume that the Great Stone of Tonsheide is a boulder of unique dimensions. In any case, it is assumed that many of the boulders known today - many are probably also unknown - are only a selection of boulders that have been decimated by weathering, economic use or mere destruction. We know from the traces of processing that a piece of stone of an unknown size - it is estimated at least 20 cubic meters - was blasted from the Ton Heider stone. The find of a similarly large boulder (10 × 10 × 1.40 meters) is also known from the Ton Heid sand pit, which was blown up in 1920 for construction purposes.
Since the Buskam is lying, and the weight of the Altentreptower stone is only an estimate, because the stone was never lifted and is partly underground, the Great Stone of Ton Heath can be considered the largest, not lying, even exposed boulder in Northern Germany, whose weight is known with sufficient accuracy. Farther south of Tonheide, there are no longer any known foundlings of similar dimensions from Scandinavia. The next stone of this dimension is the Giebichenstein (about 330 tons) near Nienburg / Weser not far north-east of Ton Heath.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wolfram Alpha
- ↑ a b c City of Rahden in conjunction with the Association for Home Care of Tonneheide (ed.): The Great Stone of Tonneheide. A witness to the ice age . mittwaldmedien.
Web links
- City of Rahden: The Great Stone
- Mindener Tageblatt: The foundling from Tonneheide. Great stone in the flat land. ( Memento from February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )