Home throat

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Home throat

View into the great cathedral of the Heimkehle (2009)

View into the great cathedral of the Heimkehle (2009)
Location: Uftrungen , Saxony-Anhalt , Germany
Geographic
location: 		51 ° 29 '49.1 "  N , 10 ° 57' 16.8"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 29 '49.1 "  N , 10 ° 57' 16.8"  E
Heimkehle (Saxony-Anhalt)
Home throat
Type: Karst cave
Discovery: 1357
Show cave since: 1920
Lighting: electric (since 1920)
Overall length: 2000 meters
Length of the show
cave area: 		750 meters
Average annual number of visitors: approx. 16,600 (2012-2016)
Current visitors: 15,704 (2016)
Website: The home throat

The Heimkehle in the Harz is one of two large gypsum caves in Germany that are accessible as show caves . It is located east of Nordhausen near Uftrungen , on the border between Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt . During the National Socialist era, the cave was expanded and used as a weapons production facility, with concentration camp prisoners being used - many died.

Geographical location

Heimkehle is located in the southern Harz in the Harz / Saxony-Anhalt nature park near the border to the southern Harz nature park in Reesberg ( 325.2  m above sea  level ), an elevation of the Alter Stolberg ridge ( 357.7  m ). It is located about 11 km east of Nordhausen (Thuringia), 2.2 km south-southeast of Rottleberode and 1.8 km (as the crow flies ) west of Uftrungen (both in Saxony-Anhalt). The cave belongs to the districts Uftrungen, Urbach and Görsbach (both in Thuringia). Your current entrance (approx.  200  m ), which allows access via a narrow tunnel , is located in Saxony-Anhalt about 100 m west of the confluence of the Krummschlachtbach in the Thyra . On the Saxony-Anhalt side are the nature reserve Gipskarstlandschaft Heimkehle and the Biosphere Reserve Karstlandschaft Südharz .

Details of the cave

The Heimkehle is a plaster / passage cave about 2000 m long. 750 m of this is accessible; In 2008 it was only 600 m due to construction work. The largest room, the Great Cathedral , has a diameter of around 65 meters and is around 22 meters high. The high solubility of the gypsum leads to intensive karstification and the formation of large-scale cave systems. Due to the proximity to the groundwater , many rooms are or were filled with water.

Guided tours and events

Large parts of the cave can be visited as part of a 45-minute guided tour, including some lakes . The annual number of visitors averages around 16,600.

history

The Heimkehle was first mentioned in a document in 1357. In 1649 she was visited by the Prince of Anhalt . It was not until 1920 that Theodor Wienrich opened it up , and electric light was also installed; on September 12, 1920 it was opened as a show cave. Since most of the Heimthehle was covered by a continuous lake at that time, it was traveled by boats.

Source: Höhle Heimkehle Uftrungen (cave operator)

From 1944 onwards, the National Socialists set up a production facility in the cave, protected from air raids, for the Junkers factories in Dessau (cover name Thyrawerk; relocation project A 5), which from March 12, 1944 to April 4, 1945, produced parts for the Ju 88 and Ju 188 fighter aircraft let build. The decision was made at the beginning of February 1944 in the Reich Aviation Ministry (RLM), which instructed the aircraft manufacturer, within 14 days, at the latest by February 15, 1944, to the Heimkehle Rottlbereode special staff set up by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, concentration camp prisoners in the expansion of the tunnel system "Höhlenbau" to submit the necessary construction and planning documents. A compilation of bomb-proof rooms prepared by the special staff on March 12, 1944, which were to be expanded with the support of the SS and thus by concentration camp inmates, named Heimkehle as a relocation project A 5 with a usable area of ​​3,000 m². On March 24, 1944, the RLM issued the preliminary ruling for the establishment of a press shop. “The Junkers company will [. . . ] instructed to relocate the above-mentioned production from the previous production rooms. Via the Reich Ministry for Armaments and War Production [. . . ] the cave Heimkehle near Uftrungen in the southern Harz [. . . ] temporarily blocked ". The construction work began days earlier with the use of 200 prisoners who had been seconded from Buchenwald on March 13, 1944. At the beginning of April and May 1944, two more transports with a total of 350 people added to the construction team. Up to 600 inmates carried out mining work and concreting in the Heimkehle in the following weeks. They had to fill in and level the cave lakes in the “Small” and “Great Cathedral”, had to erect concrete retaining walls and pillars to support the ceilings and to drive further access tunnels, so that the character of the show cave, which had been open to tourism since 1920, was destroyed. An internal letter from the Junkers construction department to the Group's legal department on May 3, 1944 states that work was still in full swing at the time. How exhausting the work and the conditions on the construction site were can be seen from the fact that prisoners were repeatedly transferred back to the Mittelbaues main camp because they were completely exhausted , ten on June 30, 1944, for example, as "incapacitated". The Max Schuck porcelain factory on the outskirts of Rottleberode and the Rottleberode satellite camp were confiscated to accommodate the concentration camp workers . The kitchen, laundry and storage rooms were on the ground floor, while the prisoners' quarters were on the two upper floors. “It is a large, multi-storey stone building that used to be a factory,” recalls a former overseer, Air Force soldier Willy Mirbach. “The rear of the building, separated by a courtyard, is bordered by a steep rock wall about fifteen to twenty meters high, and on top of the rock wall is a watchtower about ten meters high, closed all around with glass and fitted with a spotlight. In addition, there are watchtowers at the four corners of the camp, but they are only a few meters high and open all around. This camp is also secured with an electric fence (...). (...) On the left head side of the camp fence is the entrance gate, strongly secured with barbed wire and a guard with a rifle in front of it ”. The SS housed the office in the requisitioned home of the Schuck family.

Between August 3 and 7, 1944, the Luftwaffe senior staff doctor, Dr. Honestly, the concentration camp external commands A 4 (Hadmersleben rock salt mine near Oschersleben), A 5 (Rottleberode) and A 6 (Wansleben). In his report of August 9, 1944 to the Buchenwald concentration camp, he praised the Rottleberode camp and stated that the infirmary was housed in a bright factory room of the porcelain factory, and that all the prescribed departments had been set up by the prisoner's doctor. The air force doctor nevertheless requested the camp leader of the external command to have the ambulance separated from the other rooms by a board wall. On October 2, 1944, the on-site doctor of the Buchenwald concentration camp visited the Rottleberode external command and confirmed the findings of the colleague in the Luftwaffe. He pointed out that for reasons of secrecy, sick people could no longer be transported to Dora in the infirmary, even in urgent cases. At the end of July 1944, the factory halls in Heimkehle were set up and the installation of the production facilities could begin. The cost of expanding and setting up the factory in the mountain amounted to over 2.6 million RM, which the empire contributed. For the maintenance of the concentration camp in Rottleberode alone, Junkers demanded 16,640.30 RM from the state treasury. Furthermore, the aircraft manufacturer invoiced the "usage fees" paid to the SS for the construction prisoners employed at RM 177,600. The Reichsbahn claimed 13,674 RM from Junkers for transporting prisoners from the camp to the construction site, which the company also had reimbursed. In total, it was “expenses” of 207,940.30 RM for the concentration camp workers deployed in the expansion of the Heimkehle, which flowed fully into the total construction costs. After the work was finished and the Junkers factory was put into operation, the SS pushed the exhausted prisoners from the Heimkehle construction command (A 5) to other construction sites in the “central area”, for example on July 24, 1944, one hundred to project B 3a in Woffleben, where a whole tunnel system had to be driven into the mountain, in which Junkers wanted to employ up to 8,000 workers on at least 80,000 m² with the series production and assembly of large parts. Most of the construction prisoners, however, were relocated from Heimkehle to the Lava building project (code name B 4) near Stempeda, where underground workshops were also to be built for Junkers; a press shop was to be relocated there from Dessau.

The aircraft manufacturer named its Heimkehle company after the nearby Harz river Thyra plant. It was supposed to deliver landing gear and accessories - especially for aircraft fuselages. Production started in mid-August 1944, although not all machines were installed. Junkers was thus within the framework of the schedule drawn up in April 1944, according to which 1,800 m² should be usable in August of that year and in the following month all 3,000 m² planned. Although it had already been in operation for months, the aircraft manufacturer did not register its Thyra plant in Heimkehle until February 1, 1945 with the main tax office in Dessau, but retrospectively from June 1944. Between August 18 and September 22, 1944, the company also delivered from Schönebeck Outsourced Junkers operation in Mühlhausen - code name Mühlenwerk AG - further machines for the home throat, including five milling machines and eight lathes. Apparently the company gave the entire section for trunk support belts (TM belts) to the Thyra plant, including the prisoners trained on the machines, because on September 25, 1944 the arrival of 36 concentration camp workers from Mühlhausen was registered. The Junkers main plant in Schönebeck also deposited semi-skilled prisoners who were already involved in aircraft production. A first group of 61 forced laborers arrived in Rottleberode on July 31, 1944. Three more transports from Schönebeck followed; 35 concentration camp prisoners on September 25th, 60 on October 23rd and 59 on October 26th. Another transport from Dora caused the number of inmates working in two shifts in Heimkehle to rise to 545 on November 30, 1944. This camp strength remained until the end of March 1945. At times, 80% of the workforce at the Thyra plant consisted of concentration camp inmates. For October 1944 alone, Junkers paid the Buchenwald concentration camp a fee of RM 50,060 for the work of the concentration camp inmates at his Thyra plant. At the end of the war the cave was evacuated and the prisoners were transferred to other concentration camps on death marches . A large number of them perished.

After the war, the Allies viewed the cave as a war facility. In 1946 they had all production facilities and access tunnels blown up. The cave was severely damaged by ceiling falls and the collapse of side parts. From November 2, 1953, the Heimkehle was re-opened. New entry and exit tunnels were created and the fixtures, if not already destroyed, were removed. There are hardly any traces of it in the cave today. The concreted over lakes could not be restored because the thickness and quality of the concrete poured in by the Nazis did not allow them to be removed. Blasting work would have led to further destruction of the home throat. So the cave can now be entered on foot. On April 25, 1954, it reopened as a show cave and in 1979 the karst museum was inaugurated. The GDR set up a memorial for the concentration camp inmates in the small cathedral, where production facilities were also located . In 1990 a laser and light show was installed in the Great Cathedral with only a few traces of production facilities. Until 1996 the festival of 1000 lights took place every year on Christmas Eve . In the outdoor area there is an exhibition about the abuse of the home throat in 1944/45.

Transport links and hiking

Heimkehle can be reached from Landesstraße  236. About halfway between Rottleberode and Uftrungen , a cul-de-sac leads southwest to the parking lot at the cave. The karst hiking trail leads past there. Until 2016, the cave was included in the system of stamping points of the Harz hiking pin as No. 214 . In front of the cave is the restaurant for the Heimkehle cave .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Heimkehle: History , on hoehle-heimkehle.de
  2. ↑ a b c d e Heimkehle: Geology , on hoehle-heimkehle.de
  3. ↑ a b c d Annual average number of visitors: 19,300 (2005-2010)
  4. ↑ Saxony-Anhalt viewer of the State Office for Surveying and Geoinformation ( notes )
  5. ↑ a b Heimkehle: Worth knowing , on hoehle-heimkehle.de
  6. ^ Frank Baranowski: Armaments production in the middle of Germany from 1929 to 1945. 2nd edition. Rockstuhl-Verlag, Langensalza 2017, p. 463 ff.
  7. ↑ Willy Mirbach (Ed.): So that you can tell your son about it later. The autobiographical report of an air force soldier from the Mittelbau concentration camp. commented by Gerd Halmanns, ed. from the Historical Association for Geldern and the surrounding area, Geldern 1997, ISBN 3-921760-29-1 .
  8. ↑ Historical documentation on Heimkehle with historical pictures
  9. ↑ Harzer Wandernadel : Changed stamp locations since April 16 , 2016 , on harzer-wandernadel.de;
    see also former stamp office 214 - Heimkehle ( memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ), from harzer-wandernadel.de

See also

Web links

Commons : Home throat  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files