Kopalnia Węgla Kamiennego Polska Wirek
The Polska Wirek mine ( Kopalnia Węgla Kamiennego Polska Wirek ) is a decommissioned coal mine and covers areas in the three cities of Ruda Śląska , Chorzów and Świętochłowice in southern Poland.
history
As the double name of the mine already indicates, the composite mine had two roots, namely that of Hugo-Zwang / Wirek and that of Deutschlandgrube / Polska . However, since there are other mergers, shutdowns and separations associated with their history, the diagram opposite shows the most important relationships.
Polska
The history of the mine began in 1831 with the first coal mining in the south of Świętochłowice. The individual mines were initially very small before consolidation took place in 1873.
Germany pit
Already in 1831 the mining of coal began from the seams "Clara" (1.58 m thickness), "Fausta" (1.31 m) and Güttmannsdorf (1.05 m) on the southern outskirts of Świętochłowice through the Fausta mine (pit 5 ha ), which was in the possession of Lazarus Henckel von Donnersmarck (Tarnowitz-Neudecksche line). The coal mined served to supply the Bethlen-Falva-Eisen- and the Clara-Zinkhütte.
When in 1866 the coal reserves were exhausted to a depth of 81 m, the mining was transferred to the sloping pit in 1869 , which had to contend with floating sand problems from the start. This is why further mining was carried out through two extraction shafts from the Falva station pit . Until the Polska mine was closed in 1995, the Falva train station ( Lage ) was the central production and processing site of the gradually expanding colliery.
All of these pits had very little field holdings; it ranged from “Faustin IV” with 199 m² to “Falva-Bahnhof” with 5 hectares to “Ottilie / Odilia” with 41 hectares.
In 1873, under Lazarus' son Guido, the fields “Bohlen”, “Gefäll”, “Faustin”, “Falva-Bahnhof”, “Göttmannsdorf” and “Hexenkessel” were consolidated to form the consolidated Germany mine . "Heyduk" (18 ha) and "Kleinigkeit" (5670 m²) were added later, so that in 1912 the authorized area comprised 5.4 km².
In addition to the two shafts in Falva-Bahnhof, a third extraction shaft was sunk in the Deutschlandgrube field , from which the 7 m thick “Gerhardflöz” was taken from 1872. In 1880 the three shafts were sunk to a depth of 225 m, and in 1912 a depth of 412 m was reached. At this point in time 986,516 t of coal were unearthed by 1,818 employees. In addition to these production shafts, there were three other shafts for ventilation, IV (195 m), VI (262 m) and VII (310 m). In addition, the mine had sorting, laundry and a thermal power station. The headframe above Shaft III was built according to plans by the architect Hans Poelzig .
The mine kept its name Germany until 1922 and changed it to Niemcy in 1922 when this part of Upper Silesia fell to Poland; In 1937 the name was changed to Polska . The administration was carried out by the "Prince of Donnersmarck'sche Mining and Hüttendirektion" based in Świetochłowice. In 1923 the mine had 14 steam engines with a total output of 13,450 hp, 20 generators with an output of 15,182 kW, 395 electric motors with an output of 9,640 hp and compressors with a capacity of 2,565 m³ per hour. At that time it was mined 704,265 tons of coal annually with 17 horses and 2,420 employees (including 1,651 underground). This made the mine one of the most efficient in Upper Silesia in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century.
During the occupation in World War II, it was renamed Germany again and belonged to the OHG “General Directorate Fürst von Donnersmarck, Kraft Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck”. At that time it had three production and three ventilation shafts and produced 1.17 million t of hard coal with 2,092 employees.
In 1945 the mine was nationalized and in 1972 merged with Prezydent (Königsgrube Ostfeld) in Chorzów.
KWK Polska
After the Second World War, the colliery belonged to the Chorzów Union for the Coal Industry and was merged on January 1, 1972 with Prezydent ( Lage ) - the southeastern field of the former royal mine in Chorzów - under the name Polska . Although in 1995 the union with Nowy Wirek resulted in the name of the composite mine Polska Wirek , Polska was shut down and the coal on Nowy Wirek alone was unearthed . Two scaffolding on the old premises of Falva-Bahnhof, one of them a hammer head tower, have been preserved.
KWK Nowy Wirek
The history of this mine is closely connected to the Catholic Beuthen-Siemianowitz line of the Henckel von Donnermarck family.
Hugo and Zwang
The award of "Hugo" (1824) and "Zwang" (1828) to Hugo Henckel von Donnersmarck marked the beginning of this mine. The “Alexandrine”, “Paul”, “Köpfeloben” and “Beatensegen I” mine fields were added by 1897. By enlarging the rights to further fields in the areas Kochlowitz, Bärenhof and Radoschau up to the Pleß border along the Klodnitz this could be enlarged to 19.30 km².
However, the southern parts of the field were initially left unscored and coal mining was concentrated in 1912 on the two seams "Jacob" (1.3 m thick) and "Antonie" (2.5 m), whose coal was fed through the "Menzel I / Maciej" shaft (256.5 m) ( location ) was lifted to days. At this point in time, another shaft, “Menzel II”, was sunk and driven under from the “Hillebrand” construction site of the Gottessegen / Lech mine owned by the same owner. This is also where the pit water was drained after it had previously been lifted from the 6th to the 3rd level at Hugo and Zwang . In 1912 the mine had two weather shafts, "Frühling" and "Otto".
In 1921 the Donnersmarck family founded a company under English law (The Henckel von Donnersmarck-Beuthen Estates Ltd London; General Directorate in Tarnowiskie Góry), the aim of which was to avoid expropriation in the context of the Silesian referendum.
In 1928 the Hugo-Zwang and Gottessegen / Lech mines in Wirek were incorporated into the newly created Wirek AG , which belonged to the Schaffgotsch , Ballestrem and Donnersmarck families . On this occasion, Hugo und Zwang was renamed Wirek .
KWK Wirek
As part of Wirek-AG, the mine had an area of 32 km² when it was renamed in 1928.
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As a result of the economic crisis in 1933, it was closed despite massive protests by the workforce and flooded in early 1940.
During the Second World War the plant was swamped again and in 1942 the property was divided among the three German companies mentioned above. The Gräflich Schaffgotsch'schen Werke received a share of 50% of the coal fields and were thus "compensated" for the fact that other mines formerly owned by them had "passed" to the Reichswerke Hermann Göring . With God's blessing, the mine formed an operating community until the end of the war, but this was dissolved again when it was nationalized in 1946.
Immediately after the Schaffgotsch works took possession of it, the decision was made to open up the southwest area of the mine field with a new mine and to sunk a new shaft called Godulla near the village of Halemba. As shaft I, it formed the core of the Halemba mine, which was completed in 1957 .
After 1945, the "old" mine Wirek successfully mined coal at depths of 636 m and 711 m, before the decision was made in 1953 to shut it down and to build a new mine called Nowy Wirek in its place .
Nowy Wirek
The new facility Nowy Wirek , founded in 1950, was designed by Ruda Słaska as a successor to Wirek in the Kochłowice district and had an area of 23.10 km². The mining area of this new plant, however, was not identical to the field of Hugo-Zwang / Wirek, but also included the southern part of Gottessegen / Lech, namely the fields Jennywunsch and Neue Reinerz.
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On August 1, 1955, the newly built mine began operations. Until 1957 it belonged to the Union for Coal Industry Ruda (Rudzkie Zjednoczenie Przemysłu Węglowego) and later to the Union in Bytom. In the 1970s, the colliery's annual production was around 1.9 million tons.
In 1995 the alliance with Polska to form the Polska Wirek mine and Polska was closed . At that time, the new mine had a central shaft system with the Maciej, Wirek and Nowy Wirek shafts and a secondary system with the Wschodni I / II weather shafts.
KWK Polska Wirek
The Polska Wirek mine was the successor to the Polska and Nowy Wirek mines and belonged to Kompania Węglowa SA. In a mining area of 23.10 km² it produced 8,000 tons of coal daily on two levels at 636 m and 711 m depth.
CHP Halemba-Wirek
On August 1, 2007, the Polska Wirek colliery was merged with the Halemba KWK to form a composite mine with two production sites. However, since the supplies at the Nowy Wirek site were running low, the two mines were separated from each other and preparations were made to liquidate the Nowy Wirek production site at the end of 2014. The first demolition work began in winter 2013/14 and has since been completed.
Funding figures
Germany / Polska 1873: 6676 t; 1913: 1.03 million t; 1938: 800,200 t; 1970: 946,585 t; 1979: 2.04 million t
Hugo-Zwang / Wirek / Nowy Wirek 1873: 50,729 t; 1913: 455,977 t; 1970: 1.94 million t; 1979: 2.65 million t
literature
- Paul Deutsch: The Upper Silesian coal and steel industry before and after the division of the industrial area . Bonn 1926.
- Jerzy Jaros: Słownik historyczny kopalń węgla na ziemiach polskich . Katowice 1984.
- Yearbook for the Upper Mining District Wroclaw . Phönix-Verlag, Kattowitz / Breslau / Berlin 1913, digitized version at http://www.dbc.wroc.pl/dlibra/publication?id=3349&tab=3 (last accessed on May 5, 2015).
- Kurt König: The coal mining in Upper Silesia from 1945–1955 . Scientific contributions to the history and regional studies of Eastern Central Europe. Published by the Johann Gottfried Herder Institute. Marburg 1958.
- Damian Recław: Przemysł górnego Śląska na dwanej fotografii . Muzeum w Gliwiach, 2015.
- Werner Röhr: On the role of heavy industry in annexed Polish Upper Silesia for Germany's war economy from 1939 to 1949 . Yearbook for Economic History Volume 130. Downloaded as a PDF file from www.digitalis.uni-koeln.de/JWG (last accessed on October 5, 2015).
Web links
- 43 seam maps (sic) of the Upper Silesian coal basin as JPG files, the field boundaries, seams and shafts according to the inventory from 1902, published by the "Verlag von Priebatsch's Buchhandlung, Breslau" (accessed on July 14, 2015)
- The location of the shafts of all mines listed in the diagram can be found on the website https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=ziy6aLIARhEE.kbbOzF3tvwc8&msa=0 (accessed on October 9, 2015)
- Under http://www.wnp.pl/artykuly/kwk-polska-wirek,-5308.html (accessed October 21, 2015) can be found in Polish concise instructions to the mine Polska Wirek.
Map with all coordinates: