Finkenkuhle pit
| Finkenkuhle pit | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
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| other names | Finkelkuhle pit | ||
| Mining technology | Open-cast mining, funnel mining, broken disk mining | ||
| Funding / year | up to 795,000 t | ||
| Funding / total | 7.73 million tons of iron ore | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Operating company | Ore mining Salzgitter AG | ||
| Employees | up to 1218 | ||
| Start of operation | 1865 | ||
| End of operation | 1956 | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Iron ore | ||
| Greatest depth | 202.5 | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 52 ° 2 '55 " N , 10 ° 21' 24.6" E | ||
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| Location | Salzgitter bath | ||
| local community | Salzgitter | ||
| Independent city ( NUTS3 ) | Salzgitter | ||
| country | State of Lower Saxony | ||
| Country | Germany | ||
| District | Peine-Salzgitter area | ||
The Finkenkuhle mine is a former iron ore mine in the Peine-Salzgitter district, which was also run under the name Finkelkuhle until 1937 . The mine was located south of the Hamberg on the Salzgitter ridge in the west of today's Salzgitter-Bad district . Iron ore has been mined here with interruptions since 1865 . The promotion was stopped in 1956.
geology
The iron ore deposit was located between the districts of Salzgitter-Bad and Salzgitter-Ringelheim . The ore deposit extended to the valley of the Innerste with a length of 5 km, an average width of 2.56 km and an area of 12.9 km². The camp came to light in the area of Salzgitter-Bad (on the Finkenkuhle) and Salzgitter-lattice (on the later site of the lattice shaft ) . The camp fell steeply to the southwest, in the area of the Ringelheim deposit to a depth of 1000 m to 1400 m.
The deposit belonged to the Lower Cretaceous ores of Salzgitter, which had formed in the Neocom period through deposits in the coastal areas. The process of sedimentation was repeated here several times and resulted in the ore being formed in several superimposed deposits. Later mountain movements raised the camp steeply and was repeatedly disturbed and severely rejected .
The thickness of the deposit fluctuated greatly. In the area of the 230 meter long “Großer Kolk” of the Finkenkuhle the ore deposit was 40–60 m thick, in the area of the grid only a few meters, the ore also changed several times with the dead rock . The Fe content ranged between 28% and 34%, in the majority it was 30%. Like all Salzgitter ores of the Lower Cretaceous Period, the ore from Finkenkuhle and lattice was very acidic - it had a silica content of over 20% - which led to problems and additional costs in smelting and resulted in a lower steel quality. The ore was therefore - until the invention of the Paschke-Peetz process for smelting acidic ores in 1934/35 - used by the steelworks only to a small extent.
Operation until mid-1937
Iron ore mining has a long history in this region. A kiln from the Roman Empire found near Lobmachtersen was operated with various ores from the surrounding area.
In 1682, the later Hildesheim prince-bishop Jobst Edmund von Brabeck (1688–1702) built an ironworks near Kunigunde on the Innerste, which was initially operated with ore from the nearby fishermen's heads at Dörnten . Five years later, on December 4, 1687, Brabeck granted a mining license for a tunnel near grid .
In 1866, the saltworks inspector Alfred Schloenbach reported on the ore deposits of the Segen Gottes mine (later Finkenkuhle) near Salzgitter and the Zuversicht und deceitful mine in the area of the later Hannoversche Treue opencast mine near Kniestedt (today Salzgitter-Bad). On the basis of this report, Emil Langen , General Director of the "Sieg-Rheinischer Bergwerks- und Hüttenverein", founded the AG Eisenwerke Salzgitter in 1868 and had a blast furnace built with two blast furnaces at the Gittertor (today Salzgitter-Bad) . Langen obtained the ore from the mine “Segen Gottes” and from the ore fields near Kniestedt. In 1868, Langen acquired the Geviertfeld Salzgitter in the area of the later grid shaft, which had emerged from the earlier Längenfeld Untere Landwehr , Ferdinandine and Gut Glück .
In 1874 this first high phase of ore mining and smelting operations in Salzgitter ended and most smelters and mines had to be closed. The reasons were, on the one hand, the unsolved problems in smelting the acidic ores. On the other hand, the incorporation of Lorraine made it possible to use higher quality minette ores , which enabled more economical smelting and resulted in better steel qualities.
It was not until 1887 that ore mining was resumed in the area of the Segen Gottes mine. The company "Heisler and Co." from Vienenburg now operated the mine and achieved an annual output of 800 tons of ore. In 1900, a 10 m deep test shaft sunk .
When the iron ores from Lorraine were no longer available after the end of the First World War , people began to be more interested in Salzgitter ores again. On behalf of the Rombacher Hütte from Lorraine, among others , Anton Raky carried out numerous test wells in the entire Salzgitter area from 1919 onwards, which were extremely successful. In 1921 the “ Salzgitter Union ” founded by Raky leased the fields of the Segen Gottes mine. Two years later, the Rombacher Hütte took over the majority of the Kuxen of the Salzgitter union and thus also this mine.
In order to open up the ore deposit of the Finkenkuhle and the neighboring Galberg ( Morgenröthe field ), the Rombacher Hütte brought down a Bremsberg in the opencast mine in 1924 , which began 600 m north of the old tunnel mouth hole and through which the Galberg camp was opened up. An exploratory tunnel was excavated from the open pit to the north, but no ore deposits that could be mined were found. The Rombacher Hütte also had tests carried out to process the ore, but these did not improve the previous processes. Due to these negative results, the Rombacher Hütte ended its activities in the Salzgitter area in 1927.
A year earlier, the Widukind union had already taken over the Rombach fields at Galberg, the fields at grid and the Finkenkuhle mine. At the end of 1927, United Steelworks (VESTAG) gained the Kuxen majority in the Widukind union and thus came into possession of its fields. In 1928, the Finkenkuhle opencast mine was put back into operation with initially only low output. For economic reasons caused by the global economic crisis that began at the end of 1929, VESTAG ended its activities in the Salzgitter area, and operations at the Finkenkuhle mine ceased in 1930.
In 1934/35 the United Steel Works resumed their activities in the Salzgitter area. First south of Salzgitters in the Ida mine field and the Fortuna mine . In 1935 they bought the fields in the Finkenkuhle and Galberg area (blessings of God and Morgenröthe), which had only been leased until then, and resumed production here. In addition, new exploratory crosscuts were driven through which further minable ore deposits were developed in the southern and northern areas.
In the open pit, iron ore was now extracted using the funnel mining method and extracted via a tunnel below the open pit. At the end of 1936, the monthly output of the open pit was between 1000 and 1600 tons of ore, the workforce included around 100 workers and six salaried employees. In 1936/37 a weather section was driven from the open pit towards Galberg, where the United Steelworks had sunk a wooden square shaft with a depth of 84 meters at the same time .
Operation from 1937 to 1945
On July 23, 1937, the "Ordinance on the Merger of Mining Facilities" came into force. In the entire Salzgitter area, the Reichswerke Hermann Göring took over the mining activities of the previous owners on October 1, 1937. At that time, the ore deposit on the Finkenkuhle pit was developed up to the first underground level at a depth of 63 m. Above ground there was a magazine, workshop, chow and a loading station with a rail connection, via which the ore extracted was transported for wet processing at Salzgitter-Calbecht .
The priority for the Reichswerke was to increase ore extraction as quickly as possible. The excavation work for the expansion of the Finkenkuhle opencast mine was awarded to the company "Siemens-Bauunion / Hochtief AG" at the end of 1937. 1.8 million m³ had to be moved here. 6 backhoe excavators, 19 locomotives and 190 trolleys were used to solve this problem ; the work was completed on June 9, 1939.
Even during the excavation work, the opencast mine was producing a record amount of over 770,000 tons of ore as early as 1938; at that time around 250 people were employed here. In the following years, the production fell sharply, since a large part of the quantities intended for the open pit had already been mined. In 1939 it was only 260,000 tons and in 1944 only 194,000 tons.
When the Reichswerke took over, civil engineering was still in the construction phase. In order to expand the civil engineering, the Finkenkuhle shaft with a diameter of four meters was placed in the lying area of the ore deposit. During the assembly of the abyssal tower , the shaft was broken up from the bottom of the tunnel from winter 1937/38. The actual sinking work began in May 1938, the work was carried out by the Reichswerke independently and was completed in February 1939 at the planned final depth of 192 m. Three levels were set about 60 m apart. In the autumn of 1939, mining began in civil engineering.
On September 1, 1939, the first Finkenkuhle floor was penetrated by the second floor of the grid shaft . From December 18, 1939, the lattice ores were conveyed through this route and lifted to the surface via Finkenkuhle. The 2nd Finkenkuhle floor was connected to the Galberg shaft. The expansion of the above-ground structures was completed in 1940, and the wooden abbey tower was also replaced by a steel headframe .
The mining method used in Finkenkuhle civil engineering was predominantly the “brushing disc breakage ”. In the spring of 1943, the “block quarrying” successfully used on Haverlahwiese was tested, but these attempts were soon abandoned because the nature of the Finkenkuhle ore, especially its insufficient “crushability”, was not suitable for this process.
From the end of the 1940s, the sole routes were expanded with steel arches , before that, as was the case during the entire period of operation in the extraction , timber construction had been used. The groundwater in the underground engineering of the Finkenkuhle pit was lifted over the shaft and led directly into the Warne .
After the start of production in the Finkenkuhle civil engineering, the production volumes rose quickly. In 1939 it was 91,000 tons, the next year 329,000 tons of ore were mined. The highest annual production before the end of the war was reached in 1943 with almost 536,000 tons, the highest workforce as early as 1940 with 1200 miners working in opencast and underground mining. Due to the war, the workforce then fell again, as more and more miners were called up for military service. In 1943 there were only 639 miners, in 1944 only 270, of which around 50 were in open-cast mining. Due to the war, open-cast mining was completely stopped at the end of 1944.
When the Americans marched into Salzgitter on April 10, 1945, mining operations were closed and the ore mines were drowned.
In operation from 1946
Open pit
As the first operation of the Finkenkuhle, the open-cast mine resumed production in the spring of 1946 and this year, at 172,500 tons, it reached the level of 1943. In the following year, production fell to around 30,000 tons, and by 1948 it was only 19,000 tons. the deposit was largely exhausted. After 1948, the quarrying volumes were no longer recorded separately, as the mining was deducted from the 1st underground level and was thus added to underground engineering. In terms of the workforce, there was no longer any distinction between opencast mining and civil engineering.
In the fall of 1953, the mine was finally eradicated and was officially closed on October 31, 1953. In the period of operation since October 1938, around 2.5 million tons of raw ore had been extracted from the Finkenkuhle opencast mine. Since then, a lake has formed in the former open-cast mining area.
Civil engineering
The swamp work had started in the spring of 1946, and by the end of 1946 280–300 men were employed here. In 1950 the shaft of the pit was deepened again by another 10 m to 202.5 meters. In December 1950, mining began on the 3rd Finkenkuhle level, and mining on the 4th level began in October 1951. The production in civil engineering had only reached the pre-war level in 1950 with 344,000 tons. In 1952 a maximum value of 557,000 tons was reached, after which production sank to around 60,000 tons in just two years. The workforce has ranged between 300 and 430 men since 1946.
Since the closure of the opencast mine, the Finkenkuhle mine has not been run as an independent operation by Salzgitter-Erzbergbau AG, but was converted into an operations department of the neighboring Georg mine on April 1, 1954 . From now on, the Finkenkuhle shaft only served as a material and weather shaft ; the cable car and conveyance were relocated to the Georg mine .
On July 19, 1956, the underground construction of the Finkenkuhle pit was stopped because the ore reserves were exhausted. The tunnel mouth hole was sealed watertight in 1957. In the same year the shaft was closed with a concrete cover at the height of the tunnel and filled above it . On March 4, 1958, the Finkenkuhle mine was finally closed. The headframe, the hoisting machine building and the shaft hall were demolished from the daytime facilities, the remaining buildings were preserved and are used by various companies today (2011).
A total of 7.73 million tons of ore were extracted from the Finkenkuhle mine. Two miners had a fatal accident during operation.
literature
- Archive of the city of Salzgitter, editors: Heinrich Korthöber, Jörg Leuschner, Reinhard Försterling and Sigrid Lux (eds.): Mining in Salzgitter. The history of mining and the life of miners from the beginning to the present (= contributions to the city's history . Volume 13 ). Salzgitter 1997, ISBN 3-930292-05-X .
- Ernst-Rüdiger Look: Geology, Mining and Prehistory in the Braunschweiger Land (= Geological Yearbook . Issue 88). Hanover 1985, p. 237-266 .
- Heinz Kolbe: The history of iron ore mining in Salzgitter: Part I: The historical periods, ore processing and ore preparation plants . In: Geschichtsverein Salzgitter eV (Ed.): Salzgitter Yearbook 1982, Volume 4 . Salzgitter 1982, p. 40-99 .
- Heinz Kolbe: The history of iron ore mining in Salzgitter: Revealing history of the iron ore mines Finkenkuhle, Salzgitter-Bad and Grid-Georg, Hohenrode to Ringelheim . In: Geschichtsverein Salzgitter eV (Ed.): Salzgitter Yearbook 1983, Volume 5 . Salzgitter 1983, p. 59-77 .
- Four years of Hermann-Göring-Werke Salzgitter 1938–1941, reprint of the anniversary edition from 1941 . Melchior-Verlag Wolfenbüttel, 2009, ISBN 978-3-941555-06-8 , p. 20-57 .
- Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Salzgitter - Past and Present of a German City - 1942–1992 . Verlag CH Beck Munich, 1992, ISBN 3-406-35573-0 , p. 574-588 .
