Royal Powder Factory

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The Royal Prussian Powder Factory,
excerpt from the Berlin city map by Johann David Schleuen from 1757
( north at the bottom of the map )

The Royal Powder Factory in what was then Jungfernheide in Berlin was a powder mill that was used to manufacture gunpowder for the Prussian Army . It was laid out in 1717 by the Dutch Brauer and Van Zee on the orders of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm I. After the powder mill was built, they took over management of the company. The Royal Powder Factory was initially on the northern side of the Spree . In the 1830s it was moved to Spandau and closed in 1919.

history

The saltpetre necessary for production was imported from Holland or obtained from collection points in the cities of Magdeburg , Halle and Halberstadt at fixed prices. The sulfur came from Goslar , Holland and Nassau . The charcoal was obtained from Spandau and Hennigsdorf near Berlin. The powder factory was a measure in the development of the arms industry in Prussia .

During the Silesian Wars , King Frederick II had the production capacity increased to 1,500  quintals a year, in 1761 to 3,000 quintals and finally in 1763 to 6,000 quintals a year. For this expansion of production under the direction of Christian Nicolaus von Linger , the factory was considerably expanded. In order to prevent a disaster in the event of a fire, the buildings were far apart. The finished powder was stored in powder towers that were distributed in Berlin and across the country. Nobody really knew whether the planned safety regulations were sufficient, but the citizens had to live with these dangerous facilities in their immediate vicinity. On August 12, 1720 a catastrophe occurred in Berlin when the Spandauer Tor with the powder tower in the street Am Wall was about to be demolished. The tower exploded while it was being cleared. This accident claimed 72 lives.

The powder factory was relocated from Moabit to Haselhorst near the Spandau Citadel in 1832–1837 . There was already a rifle manufacture and other armaments factories here. This first powder factory in Spandau was later called the “old powder factory”. This name came about when a second, the "New Powder Factory Spandau" went into production in 1890. A modern smokeless powder was produced in the new powder factory, which was directly north of the old one. This began to replace the traditional gunpowder at this time . The newly developed powder consisted of cellulose nitrate and was called "gun cotton". It was purified by nitration of cellulose produced. The nitrating acid required for this , a mixture of concentrated nitric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid , was produced in a factory at Salzhof in the Berlin district of Haselhorst . After losing the First World War , Germany had to disarm. Due to a cabinet decision in this context, all arms factories in Haselhorst were closed on April 17, 1919.

The name of a residential area in Haselhorst (Quartier Pulvermühle) and the Pulvermühlenweg in this district are reminiscent of the Prussian armaments factory at that time. Some buildings of the former powder factories in Haselhorst have been preserved. The charring building of the old powder factory is at Telegrafenweg 21. The water tower of the new powder factory is still in the Kleine Eiswerderstraße 14 and was part of the studio area of ​​the CCC-Film by Artur Brauner .

literature

  • Martin Guddat : Gunner, Bombardier, Pontonier. The artillery of Frederick the Great. Mittler & Sohn publishing house, Bonn 1992, ISBN 3-8132-0383-2 .
  • Hubert Olbrich: Black powder from Berlin. In: Berlinische Monatsschrift , issue 2/2001, pp. 92–95.
  • Alexander Kraft: Royal Powder Factory. In: Chemistry in Berlin. History, traces, personalities. Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2012, pp. 103-105.
  • Andrea Theisen, Arnold Wirtgen (ed.): Spandau military town - center of Prussian arms production from 1722 to 1918 . City History Museum Berlin-Spandau, Brandenburgisches Verl.-Haus, Berlin, Berlin 1998.

Web links

Commons : Powder mills  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The location of the powder factory on the edge of Moabit corresponds to the main station .
  2. ^ A b Martin Guddat: Gunner Bombardier Pontoniere. The artillery of Frederick the Great . Verlag Mittler & Sohn, Bonn 1992, p. 47.
  3. ↑ On the misfortune see Georg Goens: History of the royal Berlin garrison church . Mittler and Son, Berlin 1897, pp. 27–29
  4. ↑ Citadel Spandau ( Memento from December 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on festungsbauten.de

Coordinates: 52 ° 32 '33.1 "  N , 13 ° 13' 21.9"  E