Wittekind-Hildasglück potash plant
| Wittekind-Hildasglück potash plant | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
 |
|||
| other names | Justus union | ||
| Mining technology | Chamber construction | ||
| Funding / year | approx. 70,000 t | ||
| Rare minerals | Hard salt , rock salt , sylvinite , kainite | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Operating company | Burbach-Kaliwerke AG / Wittekind Group | ||
| Start of operation | 1898 | ||
| End of operation | 1938 | ||
| Successor use | U-shift | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Potash salt | ||
| Mightiness | 6 to 11 m | ||
| Greatest depth | 949 m | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 51 ° 39 '39 " N , 9 ° 44' 58" E | ||
|
|||
| Location | Industriestrasse, 37170 Uslar | ||
| local community | Uslar | ||
| District ( NUTS3 ) | Northeim | ||
| country | State of Lower Saxony | ||
| Country | Germany | ||
| District | South Hanover potash district | ||
The Wittekind-Hildasglück potash plant in Volpriehausen in the south of Lower Saxony is a disused mine for the extraction of potash salts . During the Second World War, the facility served as an ammunition plant for the Wehrmacht . In the final phase of the war, cultural assets were stored underground to protect them from destruction.
geology
The formation of the Volpriehausen salt dome
The Volpriehausen salt dome is one of around 200 known deposits of this type in northern Germany. The salt layers from which the deposit arose were formed at the time of the Zechstein around 260 million years ago, when sea water evaporated in a shallow basin. The salt layers were later covered by further deposits and are now at a depth of around 3000 meters. In a weak zone of the basement, the salts have penetrated the slope layers (→ halokinesis ). The salt in the upper part of the salt dome was dissolved and washed away by the groundwater. Hardly soluble anhydrite and clay remained. These formed the so-called gypsum hat over the actual salt deposit.
History and technology
Revelation story
In the Nov. 27, 1895 Cologne , founded union Justus I owned several Berechtsame in space Uslar with an area of 17.1 square kilometers together. From 1896 three deep wells were drilled to find potash deposits. While boreholes I and II detected potash salts with up to 97.5% potassium chloride at depths of 545 and 463 meters, respectively , borehole III was set unsuccessfully in older rock salt at a depth of 485 meters .
Wittekind (Justus) mine
This mine was located in the east of Volpriehausen.
Work on the civil engineering shaft , initially known as Justus , began in 1898 and ended in 1901 without any major difficulties. The round shaft had a diameter of 4.25 meters and was 558 meters deep. Production levels were set up at depths of 480, 494, 518, 534 and 540 meters and crosscuts to the east and west were driven . It turned out that the deposit was heavily folded and that blind shafts and substations were necessary for further exploration .
After the sinking work was completed , the daytime facilities such as the hoisting machine house , shaft hall with headframe , raw salt mill , boiler house and electrical center, as well as the potassium chlorine factory for processing the potassium salt into fertilizers were built. In 1904 the factory started production. 300 to 400 tons of hard salt could be processed daily . In addition, there was a salt works for the production of table salt .
In 1906, the Justus union was converted into a public limited company based in Volpriehausen in order to acquire additional capital through the sale of shares . In 1915 financial transactions were carried out in the course of which Justus AG acquired the majority in the Ellers and Carlshall potash plants . Together with the Hildasglück union , a mining group was formed that was named Wittekind-Bergbau AG . At the same time, the Justus shaft was renamed Wittekind . In 1921, the shares in Wittekind-Bergbau AG were taken over by the Krügershall union and so came to the Burbach concern , part of what later became Burbach-Kaliwerke AG.
As part of rationalization measures , the Burbach-Kaliwerke shut down the potassium chlorine factory in 1921 and only had kainite and rock salt extracted at the Wittekind-Hildasglück potash works . In the years 1924 to 1925, further digestions of high-quality potash salts were started. Due to the improved economic situation, investments were made in a separate Weser port in Bodenfelde and the salt works comprehensively modernized.
Hildasglück mine
This mine was located in the northwest of Ertinghausen.
The history of the Hildasglück trade union goes back to the Hardegsen potash drilling company , which acquired 16.8 km² pit fields in the Hardegsen , Ellierode , Lichtenborn and Ertinghausen districts in 1896 . The Kalibohrgesellschaft was sold to the Dortmund union in 1905 and renamed Hildasglück in 1906. A total of four deep wells carried out between 1896 and 1909 showed only moderate potash outcrops. Nevertheless, the majority of the Hildasglück union was acquired by Justus in order to sink a second shaft for the potash works in the Hildasglück field. To finance this, the Justus potash plant leased its stake in the German Potash Indicator for five years to the Günthershall , Alexandershall , Glückauf-Sondershausen potash plants and the Prussian state.
In 1910, work began on the Hildasglück shaft , which reached a depth of 160 meters in the same year. Due to the strong water inflow, which at times amounted to 1200 liters per minute, the shaft tube was extended to a depth of 578 meters with segments . In June 1915 the final depth of 949 meters was reached. Floors were driven at depths of 794 and 917 meters and then connected to the Justus shaft. The daytime facilities consisted of only a few buildings and a cable car to the Justus potash plant. Between 1913 and 1922, the trades demanded a total of 16.5 million marks in additional fines for raising the construction and sinking costs .
In the following years, the Hildasglück shaft served exclusively as a weather shaft for the potash mine.
Subsequent use as an army ammunition facility from 1938 to 1945
The Wehrmacht was interested in the mine as early as 1936, but initially found the location unsuitable. The Burbach-Kaliwerke then offered the facility for rent to the Wehrmacht, which accepted the offer and moved in in July 1937. In 1938 the potash extraction was stopped and massive renovations and new installations of various plants began with the aim of building an army ammunition plant. In the forest between the two shafts, an industrial area consisting of 12 factory buildings was created; the mine building , expanded to around 200 cells, was intended for the storage of ammunition. In 1940, the Volpriehausen Army Ammunition Plant started manufacturing infantry shells. During the Second World War , forced laborers and prisoners of war were increasingly used to manufacture ammunition. In addition, large parts of the production were relocated underground in order to maintain ammunition production despite the bombing by the British and Americans. From 1944 onwards, more and more cultural goods were temporarily stored in lower-lying parts of the mine that were not used for ammunition storage; including parts of the library of the nearby University of Göttingen .
After the forced laborers were liberated and the US Army occupied the facility in April 1945, the entire complex was damaged and looted in a chaotic manner. At that time there were still around 20,000 tons of explosive material underground, some of which were damaged by looters. This created a considerable risk, which made the controlled removal of the ammunition, but also the inspection and recovery of the stored cultural treasures very difficult. On the night of September 29, 1945, there was a devastating underground explosion that severely damaged the mine and made it impassable. The shaft could only be temporarily used again in the next spring, the cultural assets were partially salvaged by volunteers from August to October 1946, before seeping groundwater flooded the sections and made any further salvage impossible. The cultural assets remaining in the shaft are therefore presumably irretrievably lost, especially since they are often only temporarily packed.
Current condition (2010)
The former colliery site of the Wittekind mine is located on the south-eastern outskirts of Volpriehausen in a triangle between Schachtstrasse , the B 241 and the Ottbergen-Northeim railway line . Most of the buildings have disappeared, in their place there is now a residential and industrial area. The former electrical center, a workshop building and the foundations of the cable car are still preserved. The shaft is Wittekind and fenced a concrete slab covered . Some residential buildings from the first ten years of the plant are better preserved than the plant, such as the former Steigerhaus and a dormitory for single workers on Bollertstrasse and the director's villa on Schachtstrasse.
The production area of the former ammunition factory is located northwest of the Wittekind mine on the edge of the forest halfway to the Hildasglück mine.
From the Hildasglück shaft deeper in the forest there are almost no traces left today, only an overburden dump with salty rock lying directly to the south of it on a mountain slope can now be seen as remains. Due to the lack of vegetation and leaching processes, this has an appearance that is colloquially described as the "moon surface". Until well into the 1990s, the site of this shaft was fenced in with a high chain-link fence. The actual shaft, about 3 meters in diameter, was provided with a concrete dome and about 15 meters further to the west was a large, uncovered hole of about 10-15 meters in diameter. Nowadays, these two turn out to be a dredged depression, with the shaft still being covered.
The Potash Mining Museum in Volpriehausen is a reminder of these facilities.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christian Kämmerer, Peter Ferdinand Lufen: District Northeim, part 1. Southern part with the cities Hardegsen, Moringen, Northeim and Uslar, the spots Bodenfelde and Nörten-Hardenberg, the community Katlenburg-Lindau and the community-free area Solling . In: Christiane Segers-Glocke (Hrsg.): Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany. Architectural monuments in Lower Saxony . tape 7.1 . CW Niemeyer, Hameln 2002, ISBN 3-8271-8261-1 , p. 359 .
- ↑ Potash Mining Museum Information on the City of Uslar website .
literature
- Frank Baranowski: Secret armaments projects in southern Lower Saxony and Thuringia during the Nazi era. Mecke, Duderstadt 1995, ISBN 3-923453-69-8 .
- Arbeitsgemeinschaft Südniedersächsischer Heimatfreunde e. V. (Hrsg.): Armaments industry in southern Lower Saxony during the Nazi era. Wagener, Mannheim 1993, ISBN 3-910085-05-9 .
- Rainer Slotta : Technical monuments in the Federal Republic of Germany - Volume 3: The potash and rock salt industry . German Mining Museum, Bochum 1980, p. 390-401 .
Web links
- Heeresmunitionsanstalt (Bw) Volpriehausen. In: relict.com. Retrieved October 31, 2015 .
- The "Wittekind – Hildasglück" potash and rock salt mine in Volpriehausen - Volpriehausen Heimatverein ( Memento from December 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive )