Heidwinkel
Heidwinkel is a residential area (district) in the community of Grasleben in the Helmstedt district in Lower Saxony . The place is in the Elm-Lappwald nature park , about 2 km northwest of Grasleben at about 120 m above sea level.
At the beginning of the Second World War , the Wehrmacht set up the Heeresmunitionsanstalt (mine) Grasleben in a potash and salt mine . The European Salt Company has been mining salt from two pits again since the early 1950s. An industrial area of 22.8 hectares was developed in the vicinity of the village.
history
In April 1912, the Braunschweig-Lüneburg trade union began digging the Heidwinkel shaft ; previously, the area of today's Heidwinkel residential area was still undeveloped. On November 1, 1913, the extraction of potash began. The extracted raw salt was first transported by cable car and later by a narrow-gauge railway to the factory at the Grasleben mine. In 1922, the extraction of potash ceased again, and in 1925 the extraction of rock salt was started.
In 1936 the Heidwinkel mine was taken over by the Wehrmacht and from then on was no longer available for rock salt extraction. Ammunition produced above ground should be stored in a protected manner in the mine rooms . A second shaft was needed to make the ammunition plant independent of the mine. From 1937 to 1939 the 662 meter deep Heidwinkel II shaft was sunk. In 1941 an access system with a steel headframe was set up. A total of 72 storage chambers for the storage of ammunition were set up on two levels. An ammunition production site was built above ground west of the first shaft, and east of it a housing estate with four apartment buildings for the Muna workers and their families. About one kilometer west of the two pits, the Heidwinkel forest camp was built, a labor camp to accommodate additional workers. The army ammunition facility started operating as early as 1938. Shortly before the end of the war, the mine was also used to store cultural goods.
In April 1945, Heidwinkel was captured by American combat troops and later handed over to the British Army . From 1946 onwards, refugees and displaced persons from eastern Germany also moved to the Heidwinkel forest camp, and a Catholic chapel was set up there as early as 1946 . In 1949 the Heidwinkel I / II mine was returned by the Allied military to the Braunschweig-Lüneburg union after the ammunition chambers had been cleared and filled. Funding was resumed in the same year. In 1957, the two Heidwinkel mine and the Grasleben mine were first penetrated over a 2500 meter long connecting stretch.
Personalities
- Peter Miklusz (* 1983), German theater, film and television actor, lived in the former administration building from 1990 to 1994
Economy and Infrastructure
Mine
The Braunschweig-Lüneburg rock salt works in Grasleben includes the two shafts in Heidwinkel, with the respective headframes and hoisting machine houses, as well as a shaft hall at the Heidwinkel I shaft. The Heidwinkel II shaft has an emergency access facility. The two shafts are now used to ventilate the Grasleben mine.
Infrastructure
The one-class elementary school, the Catholic chapel, the restaurant, the grocery store and the "Heidwinkel Holiday Center" with the campsite no longer exist.
traffic
District road 56 runs north of the village, federal road 244 to the west . The Helmstedt-West junction of federal motorway 2 is about seven kilometers away .
religion
Since the expellees living in Heidwinkel from 1946 onwards were predominantly Catholic, the Catholic priest who lived in Grasleben held services and religious instruction in Heidwinkel. In the summer of 1946, a 73 m² former labor service training room was rented in the farm building of the Heidwinkel forest camp and a chapel was set up in it, which existed until at least the beginning of 1964. The bell in the wooden bell tower came from Ottendorf in the Sprottau district and came to Heidwinkel via a bell cemetery in Hamburg . It was cast in Breslau in 1776 and was consecrated to St. James the Elder . From 1953 to 1960 the Corpus Christi processions of the parish vicarie Grasleben took place in Heidwinkel. In 1957 there were already 145 Catholics living in Heidwinkel. In December 1962 the bell was placed in the St. Norbert Church , which was newly built in Grasleben the previous year . Today the Catholic and Protestant churches in Grasleben are the closest churches.
literature
- Heinz Pohlendt: The district of Helmstedt. Bremen-Horn 1957, pp. 30, 195, 229, 273
Individual evidence
- ↑ Johannes and Helma Paus: Chronicle of the Catholic Church Community of St. Norbert, Grasleben. Grasleben 1986.
Coordinates: 52 ° 18 ′ 58.5 ″ N , 10 ° 59 ′ 10.7 ″ E