Alexandria Pit

This article describes the Alexandria lignite mine in Germany. There was also a lignite mine of the same name near Oleksandrija , in German Alexandria , in the Ukraine.

Alexandria Pit
General information about the mine
Headframe and mine train
other names	Alexandria colliery
Mining technology	Civil engineering ( shaft extraction )
Funding / year	Max. 88,000 t
Information about the mining company
Operating company	Elektrizitätswerk Westerwald AG (EWAG)
Employees	Max. > 1000 (1923)
Start of operation	1826
End of operation	April 1961
Successor use	- (Demolition of daytime facilities 1989)
Funded raw materials
Degradation of	Brown coal ( lignite )
Greatest depth	80 m (main shaft)
Geographical location
Coordinates	50 ° 37 '35.5 "  N , 7 ° 59' 4.3"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 37 '35.5 "  N , 7 ° 59' 4.3"  E
Location of the Alexandria mine
local community	Heck
District ( NUTS3 )	Westerwaldkreis
country	State of Rhineland-Palatinate
Country	Germany
District	Westerwald lignite mining area

The pit Alexandria , full name (1917) Westerwald Lignitflammkohlen mine union Alexandria , rarely, as mine Alexandria called, was a brown coal - mine at Hoehn in the Westerwald , in today's state of Rhineland-Palatinate . The mine was the largest and most important in the Westerwald lignite mining area and the last to be shut down in 1961.

The two main shafts and the daytime facilities were located north of Höhn-Urdorf, between the Scharfenstein mountain and the valley of the Great Nister . From here an extensive, underground network of routes extends , to which several other pits in and around Höhn are connected.

history

Exposure and early time

The lignite deposits in the Westerwald had been known since the 16th century, but up until the 19th century, predominantly inferior, near-surface soft lignite was extracted and used as domestic fuel. At the beginning of the 19th century, due to the shortage and increase in the price of firewood and hard coal, the demand for cheaper fuel from the region increased significantly and they set about looking for and extracting the higher quality, deeper hard lignite. In the course of this development, the Alexandria field was also awarded in 1826 and a pit was excavated there, the lignitic coal of which turned out to be particularly hard (for brown coal), high in calorific value and therefore of high quality.

In the middle of the 19th century, steam engines were installed for dewatering and for hoisting the shaft . The latter replaced previously existing horse gangs . In addition to the main shaft, the Alexandria shaft , the mine u. a. also the Anna shafts (about 400 m east of the main shaft ; 50 ° 37 ′ 26.9 ″  N , 7 ° 59 ′ 33.3 ″  E ), Christian (between Höhn and Ailertchen ; 50 ° 36 ′ 50.1 ″  N , 7 ° 58 ′ 21.6 ″  E ) and Maria (location?).

Around 1865 the Alexandria mine was owned by JE Siebert from Hadamar , who also owned the Siebert mine in Höhn and the Eduard mine near Kaden .

Heyday

The Alexandria mine (center) with the power station (NW), the Anna shaft  (O) and the Nassau mine  (SW).
(Excerpt from the table sheet of the Prussian Land Survey from 1907, added in 1927)

In 1907, the mine was connected to the Westerwaldquerbahn , the Westerburg-Rennerod section of which led directly past the mine. This improved the sales of the pit.

In 1911, the Nitric Acid Industry Company in Gelsenkirchen bought a large part of the Alexandria trade union's kuxe and planned to build a factory for the production of air nitric acid and ammonium nitrate as raw materials for the manufacture of explosives . In addition, a power plant with 10,000  hp was to be built. The saltpeter factory was never built, but the power plant was - but by a new owner.

In 1914 all Kuxe of the Alexandria union were taken over by Elektrizitätswerk Westerwald AG (EWAG). EWAG was founded by Elektrizitäts-AG formerly W. Lahmeyer & Co. (EAG; later a subsidiary of Rheinisch-Westfälische Elektrizitätswerke AG (RWE) ) and Coblenzer Straßenbahn-Gesellschaft (later KEVAG ) and their mother, Gesfürel (later AEG ). In the same year, EWAG opened an electricity station and a steam brickworks 600 m northwest of the mine ( 50 ° 37 ′ 47 ″  N , 7 ° 58 ′ 37.5 ″  E ) . A material ropeway connected the mine and the power station. The power station soon became the main purchaser of the inferior Westerwald brown coal, not only from the Alexandria mine, but also from other mines in the area.

In 1925, Preussische Elektrizitäts AG (PREAG) acquired a majority stake in several fields in the mine.

At its peak, in the 1920s, the Alexandria union employed about 1,000 people and extracted more than 150,000 tons of coal a year. In addition to the Alexandria mine field, the union has meanwhile built numerous other fields of its own and leased to it, including the fields Nassau (near Schönberg ; 50 ° 37 ′ 11.1 ″  N , 7 ° 58 ′ 14.8 ″  E ), Orange (between Stockhausen and Eichenstruth ; 50 ° 38 ′ 49 ″  N , 7 ° 58 ′ 4.1 ″  E ) and Waffenfeld (between Hellenhahn-Schellenberg and Fehl-Ritzhausen ). The pits were connected underground .

Decline and closure

With the global economic crisis , lignite mining in the Westerwald fell into a serious crisis from the 1930s onwards due to sales difficulties and a drop in the price of coal. As a result, the pits died out and a concentration process took place . Bit by bit, EWAG and its power plant took over all the mines in and around Höhn as the main buyer of coal. From 1954 Alexandria was the last remaining mine in the Westerwald lignite mining area. After the decision to shut down the power station in Höhn was decided in the mid-1950s and the main buyer of coal ceased to exist, the end of the operation of the Alexandria mine was in sight.

In 1954, EWAG was taken over by RWE (as the successor to EAG). In 1955 it was sold to the entrepreneur P. Daelen from Wiesbaden. In 1958, the mine changed hands again and was taken over by G. Dormann KG . The purchase was financed by the Karlsruhe Society for Asset Management . Dormann planned the construction of a smoldering plant for the production of brown coal coke . During preparations for this, Dormann got into financial difficulties, so that the Karlsruhe Society took over the mine and transferred it to its subsidiary, the Westerwälder Bergwerksgesellschaft mbH .

Under the last owner, the power station was shut down in 1959 and the mine in 1961. The shafts of the pit were filled, the railway connection dismantled and the daytime facilities demolished many years later (1989).

remains

Today there are only a few remains of the more than 130-year-old mining tradition of the Alexandria mine:

• The upper part of the conveyor framework , and a pit train (consisting of a Bartz -Akkulokomotive and three trams ) were placed in the marketplace of Höhn as a technical monument.
• The ruins of the neighboring power station are still standing today (as of 2012); it is sometimes used as a paintball area.
• The route system is used today for drinking water. The collected pit water is discharged via the water solution tunnel "Höhn / Alexandria" ("Deep water tunnel "), which drains to the Great Nister.
• Not far from the pit there is still a stone arch bridge of the Westerwaldquerbahn, which was specially constructed for the mine operation.

Web links

Commons : Pit Alexandria  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Historical pictures of our country - July 2010: Picture 4 of 22: Brown coal men from the Alexandria mine. In: Rhein-Zeitung. July 23, 2010, accessed April 10, 2014 . 
• Historical pictures of our country - August 2011: Picture 5 of 28: Lignite from the Westerwald. In: Rhein-Zeitung. August 26, 2011, accessed April 10, 2014 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Gerd Bäumer: pits of the Siegerland. Karl Heupel, archived from the original on May 30, 2013 ; Retrieved May 15, 2013 . 
2. ^ ^{A b} Otto Kleinschmidt: Industries, service companies and unions in the Oberwesterwald . Third, corrected and supplemented edition. Self-published, Koblenz January 2004 ( full text as PDF ). (alternatively with nearly identical content as a Web site: Chronicle of trade unions in Oberwesterwald 1900-2000. Braunkohlenbergbau 2004, accessed on May 13, 2013 . )
    
3. ^ The German lignite industry . tape 1.1 , 1915, p. 309 .
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Alexandria Pit. Municipality of Höhn, accessed on April 4, 2014 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} 50 years ago the end of the Alexandria mine came to an end . In: Westerwälder Zeitung . Regional edition of the Rhein-Zeitung . March 9, 2011 ( full text in the RZ online archive ).
6. ^ ^{A b c} Karl Selbach: Geological and mining description of the High and Eastern Westerwald . In: The mining and steel industry in the Duchy of Nassau . Final booklet. CW Kreidels, 1867, p. 1–108 ( full text in the Google book search - with a list of lignite mines on pages 69–70).
7. ^ Friedrich Carl Medicus: Report on the Nassau art and trade exhibition in Wiesbaden in July and August 1863 . Limbarth, 1865, p. 195–196 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
8. ↑ ^{a b} The operating points of the Westerburg - Rennerod line. Interest group Westerwald-Querbahn (IWQ) eV, accessed on April 7, 2014 . 
9. ↑ Message u. a. in the Chemiker Zeitung , Volume 35, p. 475.
10. ↑ ^{a b c} Auktionshaus Gutowski • 50th auction of historical securities on July 16, 2012
11. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Höhn electricity works. Municipality of Höhn, accessed on May 24, 2013 . 
12. ↑ Luck up, Höhn! Geocache description. Geocaching.com, accessed May 24, 2013 . 
13. ^ ^{A b} Jürgen Reusch: Annual General Meeting 2010. (...) The lignite mining in the Hohen Westerwald. (No longer available online.) Gesellschaft für Heimatkunde im Westerwald - Verein, April 19, 2010, archived from the original on January 10, 2014 ; Retrieved May 13, 2013 . 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.  
14. ↑ Note: It was probably Paul Felix Daelen, manager of Glyco-Metallwerke , son of the founder Felix Daelen and his wife Katharina
15. ↑ ^{a b} Konrad Fuchs: The development of lignite mining in the Oberwesterwald . In: Association for Nassau antiquity and historical research (Hrsg.): Nassauische Annalen: Yearbook of the association for Nassau antiquity and historical research . Volumes 73-74. Publishing house of the Association for Nassau Antiquity and Historical Research, 1962, p. 183-203 .
16. ↑ Axel. O .: Demolition of the Alexandria / Höhn mine. Picture gallery. Fotocommunity.de, accessed on April 4, 2014 . 
17. ^ ^{A b} Philipp Giebel: Alexandria mine. Picture gallery ruins of the Höhn electricity works. Stimpys Precious Moments (stimpyrama.org), June 30, 2012, accessed April 10, 2014 . Note: In the description on the page, the author wrongly suspects that the ruins are a processing facility for the mine ("some processing facility for the Alexandria mine"); but in fact it is the power station. 
    
18. ↑ Jens Merte: Railroad Express: Mining Monument, 56462 Hoehn. Travel report. May 3, 1997, accessed April 9, 2014 . 
19. ↑ Higher permit Alexandria mine. (No longer available online.) Structure and Approval Directorate North (SGD North) of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; Retrieved April 7, 2014 . 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.  
20. ↑ The structures along the route. Interest group Westerwald-Querbahn (IWQ) eV, accessed on April 7, 2014 .