King Albert Factory
The König-Albert-Werk (also Maxhütte ) was a Saxon ironworks in Lichtentanne near Zwickau in the Saxon district of Zwickau . The plant belonged to the ironworks Maximilianshütte based in Sulzbach-Rosenberg . It was in operation between 1898 and 1930. Its corridor has belonged to the city of Zwickau since 1939.
history
The history of the Maxhütte settlement, which is now part of Zwickau, southwest of Zwickau's main train station, began in the last decade of the 19th century. In August 1893, the Queen Marienhütte in nearby Cainsdorf , designated in 1892 as the largest ironworks in Saxony, stopped the production of pig iron in the blast furnace ( Bessemerstahl ) due to the drying up of ore supplies from the surrounding area . This ended the block delivery contract that the Bessemerstahl producing Maxhütte (Unterwellenborn) , a Thuringian branch of Maximilianshütte founded in 1872 in Sulzbach-Rosenberg in Upper Palatinate , had with the Königin-Marienhütte in Cainsdorf. The general director of Maxhütte in Rosenberg decided to build a new Thomas Stahl plant with an attached rolling mill on the area south-west of Zwickau's main train station , which was then part of the Lichtentanne community . This method had u. a. the Bessemer process was replaced at the main plant in Rosenberg. For the new plant in West Saxony spoke u. a. the location in the Kingdom of Saxony , which was the main sales area for rail deliveries due to the increasingly dense railway network, and the direct proximity to the Zwickau hard coal district , which served as an energy supplier in addition to the North Bohemian lignite districts ( North Bohemian Basin and Falkenauer Basin ).
For the new Maxhütte plant, land was acquired in the west of the city of Zwickau and in the neighboring community of Lichtentanne in 1893. In 1895 the construction of the steelworks named after the then Saxon King Albert began with block and prefabricated streets. Commissioning took place on August 10, 1898. The pig iron was supplied by Maxhütte Unterwellenborn, whose blast furnace facility had meanwhile also been converted to the Thomas process. The first period of the new steel mill was difficult because there was a lack of trained staff. In 1899 a factory bathing establishment was built. With the construction of the sheet rolling mill in 1901/02, sales increased. In 1907 the factory was expanded. During the First World War (1914 to 1918), the sheet rolling mill was shut down for the first time in 1914. On the other hand, full employment could be achieved one year later, but this was followed by another standstill in 1917 after the coal emergency in 1916.
The death of the smelter's director Josef Baum in 1917 and the takeover of the Saxon State Railways by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1920, through which the railroad's rail requirements could now also be met from other sources, had further negative effects on the development of the König-Albert-Werk . In 1922 a new thin sheet mill was built, which went into operation in 1926. In 1925 the plant was stopped again. After resuming in the following year, operations were partially discontinued in 1926.
In December 1930 the König-Albert-Werk was finally shut down. At that time, the plant comprised three converters , each with a capacity of 16 tons and a crude steel capacity of around 120,000 tons per year, two rail and shaped iron lines and two sheet metal lines. The three converters were subsequently relocated to Unterwellenborn.
Data from the König-Albert-Werk
Employees
388 people were employed in the plant.
Steam engines
The factory had a steam pump from the company Klein, Schanzlin & Becker A.-G., as well as a steam engine each from the company Maschinenbau-Aktiengesellschaft Marktredwitz vorm. Rockstroh (built 1911) and the company Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg AG, Nuremberg plant (built 1910).
Products
The following products were manufactured in the König-Albert-Werk:
- Sheet metal (1902 to 1930)
- Rails (1898 to 1930)
- Steel profiles (1899 to 1930)
- Thomasstahl (1898 to 1930)
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 42 '14.7 " N , 12 ° 26' 48.9" E