Wohlfahrt pit (mine)

The visitor mine Grube Wohlfahrt is a former lead ore mine near Rescheid ( Hellenthal municipality ) in the Euskirchen district in North Rhine-Westphalia .

location

The Wohlfahrt pit is located on an approximately 60 km long "strip" (Bleialf-Rescheid-Mechernicher Gangzug) of lead ore deposits in the Eifel , on which six mines were active - from southwest to northeast: Reuland on Belgian soil, Bleialf ( Mühlenberger tunnel ) , Wohlfahrt mine, Schmidtheim ( Silberberg mine ), Kall ( Tanzberg mine ) and Mechernich ( Günnersdorf mine, etc.) in Germany.

history

Stollen with rose

Aster course

According to coin finds, the Celts and later the Romans mined ores in the Eifel . Lead was used in the Eifel since ancient times through the Middle Ages to modern times, as they did not know about its toxicity in a variety of ways: water pipes, for projectiles (spin, buckshot and large-caliber ammunition), glazes for ceramic vessels, stained-glass windows and roof coverings such as those of Cologne Cathedral .

The lead ore mine near Rescheid has been known in documents since 1543. The first ore graves were left behind by Pingen . Then you worked your way down with mallets and irons until the groundwater made the work so difficult that you couldn't get any further. For this reason, a drainage tunnel (so-called deep tunnel ) was gradually created from the main entrance , which had to be done in sections by means of 21 narrow vertical shafts (so-called light holes ), through which one could advance to the respective next section. The deep tunnel is at its end after 2.4 km about 100 m below the surface , where it meets the shaft of the neighboring mine (Schwalenbacher tunnel); this was achieved in late 1893. The miners transported the chipped rock in carts through the deep tunnel via the mouth hole at the main entrance and into the open air.

After the mine had been under Prussian administration since 1815, the mining concession was awarded to competent industrial entrepreneurs from 1839 . The British John Cockerill , who had previously worked in Seraing , Aachen and Stolberg , among others , was the first to acquire this concession . After Cockerill's sudden death just a year later, Barthold Suermondt took over the concession and started using the first steam engine in 1849 . In the same year Suermondt founded the Commandit-Aktien-Gesellschaft from "Wohlfahrt und Glücksanfang" . Only now was civil engineering possible on a large scale. H. the extraction of lead ores below the level of the deep adit. Because before the steam engine was used, the large amounts of water could not have been lifted from these depths, although the ancients in the Schwalenbach district had used wooden pumps long before . The debris (ore and stone) was brought to the surface by means of horse pegs . Later, a hoisting machine was installed on the shaft , which was also driven by the steam engine, in order to raise the debris to the level of the deep tunnel. Instead of the pit hunt being pushed by hand , a compressed air locomotive was initially used for transport outside. From 1907 an electric mine train (electric locomotive) operated with a voltage of 1000 volts DC . For this purpose, a contact wire was installed in the deep tunnel , which, however , posed an increased risk for the miners . The fixings of the contact wire or remnants of this are still in place today, while the tracks were dismantled and the electric locomotive is missing.

The deep lead ores were extracted along so-called magma bubbles - fault zones in which the pure lead ore, which only occurs naturally at a depth of around 10 km at a temperature of around 200 ° C, was driven upwards through cracks and crevices under high pressure. 4 main corridors were exploited in this way: the Astert corridor (500 m lateral extension), the iron door corridor (up to 1000 m), the Bärwurzel corridor and corridor no. 4 (approx. 1300 m). Other trials were abandoned because they were unproductive.

Until the middle of the 19th century, mallets and irons were used in the Wohlfahrt mine; From the second half of the 19th century, gunpowder was used to blow up (so-called shooting ). Measured against the time when this technology was invented (16th century in Veneto), it was only used very late in the Eifel.

The mining was initially operated until 1920; then it was considered to be exploited, because the extraction of the ore from even greater depths became unprofitable. From 1936 to 1940 the plant was reactivated again during the National Socialist era because of the increased need for lead in the armaments industry, but then finally abandoned. In 1967 the mouth of the deep tunnel, through which the mine railway once ran, and most of the light holes were filled ; Little was left of the mine, and it was forgotten.

From 1985 onwards, members of the Heimatverein Rescheid eV together with scientists from RWTH Aachen University began to uncover the former mine. After a restoration, it was made accessible again in 1993. The visitor access is 150 meters from the previous entrance, and a winding tower is also new.

The outdoor area with heaps and (filled-in) clarification ponds, where the processing of the rock (i.e. the separation of lead ores from worthless rock) has taken place has not yet been restored for the visitor . However, models and historical photos are still on display in the mine house (museum wing).

The visitor mine

The Wohlfahrt pit has served as a visitor mine since 1993. There are daily guided tours (11.00 a.m., 2.00 p.m. and 3.30 p.m.) into the world underground. Admission is € 3 for children (up to 15 years of age) and € 5.50 for adults.

Around 800 m of the deep tunnel are "driven" (on foot) and u. a. the following striking points are explained:

Several of the six light holes preserved,
Contact wire (overhead line) of the former electrified mine railway,
Fossilized shellfish (brachiopods) and wave-shaped prints in the rock (ripple marks) document that the rock in the Devonian was once the seabed around 400 million years ago.
A coal seam ( fire slate ) underground, which comes from the oldest land plants in the Devonian.
Fault zone in the rock that gave hope for an ore; Misjudgment (the gait that was started was abandoned)
Miner's lamp with Fimmel; Visitors are shown how pitch black it becomes in the tunnel when this light goes out. That is why a miner never went into a corridor alone.
43 meter deep borehole (Bundeswehr borehole), today a light hole
Work sample with mallet and iron
Curiosity and attraction of the tour, especially for children: historical graffiti that the workers used during breaks: figures, heads, animals, words and numbers.

literature

Bernd Hübinger: History of the lead ore mine of the Wohlfahrt and Schwalenbach pits near Rescheid / Eifel 1543 to 1940 , 1991 (dissertation)
Brunemann, Kasig, Katsch: The geological and mining history teaching and hiking trail in the community of Hellenthal , Heimatverein Rescheid eV (ed.), 1994
Knauf, Norbert / Reger, Karl: On the trail of the Eifel lead ... , ed. from Heimatverein Rescheid eV, Hellenthal 2004 (also for children and young people), ISBN 3-00-014502-8
Knauf, Norbert: Insights into the mining history of the "Grube Wohlfahrt" mine in Hellenthal-Rescheid in: Proceedings (old) Mining and Research in NRW 2012 [1]

Web links

50.434637 6.4550469444444Coordinates: 50 ° 26 ′ 4.7 ″ N , 6 ° 27 ′ 18.2 ″ E

Remarks

↑ As a brand shale refers mixed with thin carbon layers shales . The coal and the shale can also appear in alternating layers. Fire slate has a high ash content. (Source: Walter Bischoff , Heinz Bramann, Westfälische Berggewerkschaftskasse Bochum: Das kleine Bergbaulexikon .)

[Anm._BergbauLex.-1] As a brand shale refers mixed with thin carbon layers shales . The coal and the shale can also appear in alternating layers. Fire slate has a high ash content. (Source: Walter Bischoff , Heinz Bramann, Westfälische Berggewerkschaftskasse Bochum: Das kleine Bergbaulexikon .)