Oberscheld blast furnace plant
The iron and steel industry in the Lahn-Dill area has faced a fundamental structural challenge since the 1840s. The three most important production factors ore, charcoal and water favored the location of the Nassau mining industry for a long time. However, the decline in wood resources already led to considerable difficulties with a sufficient supply of charcoal in the late 18th and first half of the 19th century. The new technology of iron smelting based on coke, which came from England, relocated iron production to the abundant hard coal deposits on the Rhine and Ruhr. The former location advantage has now turned into a serious location disadvantage with the more cost-effective coke smelting. The smelters in the Lahn-Dill region were forced to shut down the charcoal-based blast furnaces in the last quarter of the 19th century because they were unprofitable.
The Jung family and the Oberscheld blast furnace
The Hesse-Nassau Hüttenverein HNHV, owned by the Jung family, gradually ended the smelting of charcoal in its huts in the 1880s. The Eibelshäuser Hütte was the last hut of the HNHV and the Lahn-Dill region to shut down its charcoal blast furnace in 1898. The Hessen-Nassauische Hüttenverein was now on the one hand a pure foundry company and on the other hand a pure mining company. The previous intermediate production stage of smelting for the production of cast iron was now completely missing. He sold the iron ore obtained in his mines to foreign coke oven works and obtained the cast iron required for the cupola from outside, in some cases from competitor Buderus.
However, the Hessen-Nassau Hüttenverein was now heavily dependent on the market environment without its own smelting facility. The purchase of the cast iron and the sale of the iron ore obtained were subject to economic fluctuations in prices and quantities. The ore mined in the Lahn-Dill area was hardly competitive due to the increased extraction costs and the high rail freight costs to external customers, especially in the Ruhr area, and was therefore difficult to sell.
Finally, in 1903, under the leadership of Gustav Jung , the Hüttenverein decided to build its own blast furnace again in the Schelden Valley near Oberscheld on the basis of coke smelting in order to become independent of market fluctuations and to counterbalance the price policy for pig iron dictated by the Rhenish-Westphalian pig iron syndicate form. It was thanks to the foresight of Gustav Jung that a plant was created in the Scheldal valley that enabled the smelting of the local ores obtained for the next few decades up to 1968 in order to supply the surrounding foundries with quality pig iron.
Another advantage of the blast furnace plant was that the Jung family were able to smelt the inferior ores from their mines themselves, the sale of which was hardly worthwhile due to the high transport costs. The blast furnace plant in Oberscheld, which is relatively close to the ore mines, went into operation in July 1905, initially with one blast furnace, which was followed by a second in July 1910 due to the good economic situation. The blast furnace works mainly obtained the ores it needed from its own mines and from the Burger iron works, which the Jung family also owned. The blast furnace not only supplied the Hessen-Nassauischen Hüttenverein, but also the Burger Eisenwerke with pig iron for the foundries. A 3.5-kilometer cable car used to transport ore connected the pits in the Scheldal valley with the blast furnace.
The Jung family and the overland headquarters of the blast furnace plant
When planning and building the blast furnace, the Jung family also acted with far-sighted entrepreneurship in another direction. In order to make the blast furnace operation as economical as possible, emphasis was also placed on the extensive recycling of the by-products. It connected the smelter with an electrical power station in order to profitably use the excess furnace gas from the blast furnace to generate electrical energy. The power center went into operation at the end of 1905. The electricity was initially used to electrify the pits in the Scheldt Forest.
In addition to the pits in the Scheldt Forest, the towns of Ober- and Niederscheld were connected to the power supply. The cities of Dillenburg and Herborn followed in 1910. When, with the commissioning of the second blast furnace, there was more and more blast furnace gas to generate electricity, the blast furnace plant set up an overland control center in 1910 to supply the foundries of the Hüttenverein and neighboring villages with electrical energy via an overland line. The line network of the HNHV reached a total length of 148 km in 1913 and finally supplied 31 communities and twenty huts with electrical energy.
The expansion of the electricity business made it necessary to separate the entire management of the power station, the line network with its ancillary and auxiliary systems as well as the commercial administration from the blast furnace plant and to transfer it to an independent company. The Jung family founded this new company at the end of 1913 as Hessen-Nassauische Überlandzentrale GmbH , based in Oberscheld.
The difficult sales situation for blast furnace products after the end of the First World War and during the period of hyperinflation forced the Jung family to shut down blast furnace operations and shut down one of their two blast furnaces. Due to the reduced blast furnace gas emissions, the intercity center was no longer able to generate as much electrical energy to meet its delivery obligations. However, the decline in electricity production and the upcoming investments brought the Jung family into financial difficulties. Finally, on January 1, 1925, it sold the overland headquarters to the Wiesbaden district association, which incorporated it into Nassauische Energie-GmbH.
The blast furnace plant in the First World War and in the interwar period
During the First World War, the Oberscheld suffered a severe shortage of coke and could only be operated with restrictions, until finally blast furnace I had to be shut down due to a lack of coke in 1917. By then, it had produced 261,476 t of pig iron since it was commissioned in 1905. Even in the difficult first years of the young Weimar Republic with the occupation of the Ruhr by the French and hyperinflation, regular operation of Blast Furnace II was hardly possible. It was blown out in 1926 and since its commissioning in 1910 had produced 288,555 t of pig iron. Blast furnace I was renewed again in 1918 and was now back in production instead of blast furnace II. Through rationalization measures, the HNHV increased the efficiency and profitability of the blast furnace plant and thus of the entire company; however, the loans taken out for the modernization of the production facilities led to the company's over-indebtedness. However, due to the global economic crisis of 1929, continuous pig iron production was hardly possible.
The Oberscheld blast furnace plant in the Buderus Group
When the HNVH had to enter into an interest group with the Buderus Group in 1933 due to its tense financial situation and finally transferred entirely to Buderus in 1935, the Oberscheld blast furnace was also affected. Since 1935 it has been completely in the hands of the Buderus Group. In the course of the self-sufficiency efforts and rearmament in the Third Reich, the demand for domestic pig iron rose sharply, so that blast furnace II went back into operation in May 1937. Blast furnace I was blown out for operational reasons. The Oberscheld blast furnace was an important part of armaments production in the Lahn-Dill region during the Second World War , until it had to cease production in December 1944 due to the war.
The end of iron smelting in Oberscheld
The Oberscheld blast furnace was incorporated into the newly founded Hessische Berg- und Hüttenwerke AG Wetzlar in 1952. The great demand for pig iron during the reconstruction in the 1950s resulted in good utilization of the smelter. But the first signs of the crisis appeared as early as the early 1960s. The elimination of state subsidies, in particular the reduced rail tariffs for the delivery of coke from the Ruhr area and the transport of pig iron to the Ruhr area, the high production costs of ore extraction in the Lahn-Dill region and the increased import of inexpensive foreign ores left pig iron production in Oberscheld forever become unprofitable. Finally, in April 1968, the smelter had to be shut down for good due to a lack of profitability and competitiveness. The systems of the blast furnace plant were dismantled. Today there are hardly any remains that remind of this once so important industrial location in the Lahn-Dill region.
literature
- Michael Ferger: Blast furnaces on Lahn, Dill and in Upper Hesse. From forest forge to global player , Petersberg 2018.
- Michael Fessner: The greens. An entrepreneurial family in Hessen-Nassau , Kiel 2013.
- Michael Fessner: The Young and Green Families , Kiel (2016).
- Georg Schache: The Hessen-Nassauische Hüttenverein, GmbH, Steinbrücken, later Biedenkopf-Ludwigshütte , in: Hans Schubert, Joseph Ferfer, Georg Schache (ed.): From the origin and development of the Buderus'schen Eisenwerke Wetzlar , vol. 2, Munich 1938 , Pp. 183-338.