Prince of Hesse pit
| "Prince of Hesse" pit | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
 |
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| Mining technology | Funnel chute operation | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Operating company | Union of Prince of Hesse | ||
| Employees | 150 | ||
| Start of operation | 1909 | ||
| End of operation | 1924 | ||
| Successor use | Bathing lake | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Brown coal / shale coal | ||
| Greatest depth | 40 m | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 49 ° 53 '58.5 " N , 8 ° 44' 1.9" E | ||
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| Location | east of Darmstadt | ||
| local community | Darmstadt | ||
| Independent city ( NUTS3 ) | Darmstadt | ||
| country | State of Hesse | ||
| Country | Germany | ||
| District | Messel district / South Hesse | ||
The Prince of Hesse mine is a former open-cast mine in the city forest east of Darmstadt . The decarbonized residual hole of the pit was filled after the cessation of dewatering of groundwater and rainwater, creating a more than 6 ha was large lake.
Geology / origin of the occurrence
The Prince of Hesse pit is located in the northern foreland of the Odenwald , in the Sprendlinger Horst , a ridge on the eastern edge of the Upper Rhine Rift created by volcanic activity . As boreholes from 2001 showed, shallow freshwater lakes ( maars ) with thick vegetation formed here in former volcanic craters . In the oxygen-poor water, parts of the plants that had fallen into the weather weathered only slowly, sank to the bottom and formed oil shale and other sediments . The oil shale consists of a mixture of brown coal, bituminous mudstone and turf iron mixed with layers of marl , sand and fine gravel .
The pit Prinz von Hessen is located just 2 km southwest of the Messel Pit , as fossil site and World Heritage of UNESCO is known and where also oil shale and brown coal was mined. The occurrences are geologically related and arose around the same time in the Eocene , around 47 million years ago.
History of the pit
The operating company of the Messel pit, the Messel trade union , carried out a series of mutation wells in the area around Messel in order to develop new deposits. Among other things, she struck gold in 1908 southeast of Messel in a forest area that belonged to the city of Darmstadt. On August 14, 1909, she was, for now emerging pit Prince of Hesse , the right to the mining of lignite awarded . It is unclear who the name of the Prince of Hesse pit refers to. Living princes of the then ruling house in the Grand Duchy of Hesse were:
- Hereditary Prince Georg Donatus of Hesse and the Rhine (1906–1937)
- Prince Ludwig of Hesse and by the Rhine (1908–1968)
The Prince of Hesse mine was operated between 1909 and 1924 . The degradable here coal, which quickly became apparent, however, was not suitable to them to Messel in the relevant appendices of the pit carbonize . As a result, work began as early as 1910 to spin off the Prince of Hesse mine from the operation of the Messel trade union. A consortium was formed for this purpose, in which the city of Darmstadt also participated. However, the parties entered into fundamental disputes and so it was not until 1916 that the operation of the mine could be outsourced to a separate, newly founded Prince of Hesse union . During this time, the Messel union carried out further exploration work, so that it came to commercial extraction in the last years of the First World War . The dismantling took place in the funnel chute operation . Brown and shale coal ("oil shale") were mined . The degradation product was removed from the pit with horse-drawn vehicles.
At the time of the largest expansion, the pit reached a depth of up to 40 m below the surface of the site at that time. Up to 150 miners worked here . The coal extracted was transported to the loading point on the northern edge of the mine via a chain conveyor . For the horizontal transport of the overburden from the edge of the pit to a neighboring dump there was a mine field railway on which both steam and gasoline locomotives were used.
After the First World War , the mine was used by the city of Darmstadt to supply its residents with house fire . The quality of the brown coal for this purpose was praised. The city had set up its own sale for the coal. After the end of the shortage economy as a result of the First World War, the coal from the mine proved to be no longer competitive with other products offered in the trade. The insufficient size of the deposit, the quality of the mining product and the inadequate connection of the mine to efficient modes of transport meant that operations were stopped as early as 1924. After switching off the sump pumps, the remaining hole quickly filled with groundwater .
Use of the rest of the lake
The resulting forest lake (size approx. 130 m × 400 m, 6.3 ha; depth up to 13 m, average depth 5.41 m) is today a popular bathing lake due to its remote location, where nudist bathing has been practiced for decades becomes. There is a lawn for sunbathing and a beach that is only supervised by the DLRG on weekends in summer . Water sports and scuba diving are not permitted, as are barbecues and open fires due to the proximity to the forest (fire hazard).
Especially outside the bathing season, the Darmstädter Angelverein manages the lake as a fishing water.
The Ytong company (now Xella) has had permission to withdraw water since 1967, which led to a noticeable drop in the water level in 2019.
The former pit is station no. 43 on the route of industrial culture Rhein-Main Darmstadt Nord .
literature
- Georg Beeger: Chronicle of the Messel Pit 1884–1964. In: Stephan Schaal, Ulrich Schneider (Ed.): Chronicle of the Messel Pit . Gladenbach 1995, ISBN 3-88343-016-1 , pp. 3-195.
- Franz-Jürgen Harms: Former lignite opencast mine "Grube Prinz von Hessen", Darmstadt, on historical photos. In: Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein Darmstadt - report NF 28 (2005), pp. 57–78.
- Franz-Jürgen Harms: History of the lignite opencast mine "Prince of Hesse Pit" between Darmstadt and Dieburg. In: Heimatverein Dieburg e. V. (Hrsg.): Yearbook 2008. Dieburg - Erbe und Gegenwart . Dieburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-021847-7 .
- Franz-Jürgen Harms u. a .: Map showing the distribution of the Messel Formation and the depth of the base of the overburden (Miocene, Pliocene and Quaternary) on the eastern edge of the Sprendlinger Horstes. Wiesbaden 1999.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Hessian State Office for Environment and Geology: Occurrence of the Messel Formation
- ↑ Hessian State Office for Environment and Geology: Stehendes Gewässer s62 Grube Prinz von Hessen ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Hessisches Landesamt für Umwelt und Geologie: Grube Prinz von Hessen ( Memento of the original from 10 July 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Volcanic rocks of the Sprendlinger Horst on Geognosie.de ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ GGA Institute Hannover: Borehole as an observatory in the earth - geophysicists from Hannover look into the subsurface at Prince of Hesse
- ↑ GGA-Institut Hannover In search of traces: volcanism and (maar) lakes in the Tertiary east of Darmstadt
- ↑ Senckenberg Research Institute and Nature Museum: Excursion on June 5, 2006 - Whitsun (Monday) hike around the Prince of Hesse pit
- ↑ a b c Route of Industrial Culture Rhine-Main, Darmstadt North. (PDF)
- ^ Harms: Map for the distribution of the Messel formation .
- ↑ Beeger, p. 107.
- ↑ Beeger, p. 107.
- ↑ Beeger, p. 108.
- ^ Mineralienatlas - Prince of Hesse oil slate mine
- ^ Rüdiger Fach: Addendum. to: Harms: Former lignite opencast mine. In: Natural Science Association Darmstadt - Report NF 28 (2005), p. 79f.
- ↑ Beeger, pp. 107, 109.
- ↑ a b c See Grube Prinz von Hessen on www.seen.de
- ↑ Hessian State Office for Environment and Geology: Grube Prinz von Hessen ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed August 30, 2011.
- ^ Angelverein Darmstadt eV: Grube Prinz von Hessen
- ^ Echo Newspapers GmbH: Ytong draws water from the Prince of Hesse pit - Echo Online. Retrieved October 7, 2019 .
