Lasa marble

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Lasa marble Vena Oro ("gold vein"), the rare variety of Lasa marble. Pattern approx. 20 × 13 cm
Broken block of marble from Lasa with blue veins
Piled marble blocks, in the background the Lasa inclined railway
Weißwasserbruch in the Lasa Valley

Lasa marble is a very hard, tough and weather-resistant marble from South Tyrol ( Italy ). It is mined on the Vinschger Nördersberg , in the Laaser Valley (municipality of Laas ) under the name Laaser Marmor , and on the Göflaner Berg (municipality of Schlanders ) as Göflaner Marmor . The name Lasa marble for the stone, which had long been known as Tyrolean marble or Vinschgau marble , began to gain acceptance around the middle of the 19th century. At least since the world exhibition in Vienna in 1873 , at which it was presented by two companies in the extensive area of ​​the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute , marble has been gaining increasing popularity under this brand name , regardless of where it was mined between the Lasa and Martell valleys Notoriety. In the 19th century in particular, Lasa marble was preferred by several architects and stone sculptors .

geology

The Lasa marble deposit belongs to a line of other isolated marble deposits in the Ortler Alps in the southern valley of the Vinschgau, which are not far from and parallel to a large geological fault line ( periadriatic seam ). These marble deposits can be traced as a band from Lasa in the west to the Pustertal in the east. Not all of the marble deposits in this zone were the subject of stone quarrying . They are mostly embedded in polymetamorphic gneisses that have achieved a medium to high degree of conversion in the course of their formation . South of Laas, in addition to mylonitized mica schists , paragneiss and amphibolites, the predominantly white marble comes to the surface (together called Laas unit ).

This massive marble deposit on the northeast flank of the Ortler group comprises an occurrence of around 500 million cubic meters. It is located about 40 kilometers west of Merano and was formed 400 million years ago during the Variski mountain formation , when the limestone stored in the north of Africa was transported to the area of ​​Laas by the continental plate drift . This limestone was transformed into marble through heat and pressure.

Quarries

Gallery entrance of the Weißwasserbruch
Loading ramp of the Upper Jennwandbruch ( 2288  m slm )

Lasa marble was quarried in 2009 in the Jennwand and Weißwasserbruch. Another quarry of this occurrence is the Mitterwandl quarry, in which the commercially known Göflaner marble is extracted. There was also the Tarnellerbrückl and Nesselwandbruch in the Lasa area. In the Jennwand this marble deposit shows impressive fold structures.

Properties and mineral composition

Lasa marble is frost-resistant and the suppliers guarantee resistance to deicing salt . Its calcium carbonate content is 96.4 to 98.6 percent. The compressive strength at the fresh break is about 118  MPa . Includes quartz - and mica layers and there are large calcite crystals in Rhomboederstruktur on.

Other mineral components in this rock are actinolite , dolomite , pyrite , titanite , rutile and zircon .

Commercial grades

The following trade names for Lasa marble are known: " pure white Statuario , Bianco Lasa Classico , Bianco Lasa Ortles , Bianco Lasa Cevedale , Bianco Lasa Cevedale Nuvolato , Vena Oro , Vena Verde , Arabescato , Fior di Melo and Lasa Fantastico ."

A total of fourteen types of marble are differentiated from Lasa, of which only four are on the market today. The share of the fine-grained, pure white Statuario in the usable marble is only 4 percent. Most of the light marble is of the Lasa Ortles variety . The blurry blue or gray-blue veining of the Arabesco and the bluish color of the Cevedale are due to inclusions of tourmaline or graphite . The finest distribution of graphite gives marble a bluish-gray color, and iron oxides such as clinozoisite and limonite make it appear reddish or yellow. The marble, which is colored red and slightly translucent due to mineral deposits, is very rare.

History of marble quarrying from Lasa

Statues in the State Hall of the Austrian National Library (formerly the Vienna Court Library)

First mentioned as useful rock

Lasa marble was already used in Roman antiquity for the manufacture of milestones on the Via Claudia Augusta in Vinschgau .

The earliest documented reference to the Lasa marble is carved in writing into a tombstone that the Chur bishop Viktor III. brought from the Vinschgau around 720 AD and had it built for someone who can no longer be identified by name: Hic sub ista lapide marmorea, qvem Vector ver in lvster preses ordinabit venire de Venostes, hic reqviescit dominus (“Here under this marble stone , whom the respected Count Victor had brought from the Vinschgau, this gentleman is resting ”).

First dismantling

The marble-bearing layers on the Schlanderser and Laaser Nördersberg are otherwise not recognizable as clearly as in the Laas Valley, in the Jennwand mountain range and in their immediate vicinity . The appearance of pending marble can be traced in the rubble of the streams of the Lasa Valley and in the mud flats of the Nördersberg. The stonemasons will probably have followed these traces in earlier times. Because until the opening of the first quarries, boulders had been exploited in the forests on the Silandro and Laas Nördersberg and in the Laas Valley . Such collections of boulder blocks reaching far down into the valley have formed in the course of mountain erosion through the breaking off and displacement of rock blocks originating from marble layers through the movement of glaciers and other natural events.

Historic mining area

The quality of these marble boulders is different as in the massive benches or marble layers. The marble deposits seem to have been used by the stonemasons as required, without having to obtain historically verifiable permits.

A preferred target area for the stonemasons were the various so-called pits in the Göflaner and Kortscher forests on the Nördersberg, the wide Karsenke of the Göflaner Alm with the Alpbruch and the Mitterwandl at 2,200 m, mining sites in the Laaser Valley on the Nesselwand and the Jennwand, from 1865 the Zelimbruch at the exit of the Martell valley, from 1883 the Weißwasserbruch and the Tarnellerbruch in the Laaser valley.

Today's dismantling

In the Laas valley, which geographically belongs to the municipality of Laas, Laas marble is mined all year round in the white water quarry. In the area of ​​the municipality of Schlanders, Göflaner marble is mined in the Mitterwandlbruch.

In the underground white water quarry, the pure white marble is extracted in mining halls with a length of 100 m, a width of 20 m and a height of 30 to 40 m. The diamond wire saws and a diamond cutting machine used for this cut marble layers of up to 8000 t individual weight from the mountain, which are then formatted into standard block sizes of around 3.20 × 1.20 × 1.40 m.

The raw blocks produced in this way are lowered down to the Weißwasserbruch loading station by means of a cable crane . From there, the raw blocks have been pulled on wagons by a diesel-electric locomotive to the top station of the inclined elevator, the Weißwasserbruch loading point. In the Weißwasserbruch it is possible to mine marble in 24-hour shifts all year round.

Underground in the Göflaner Mitterwandlbruch (on the occasion of a concert)

In the Göflaner Bruch, which is between 2,200 and 2,500 meters in altitude, mining can only be carried out in the summer months, as snow and ice make mining impossible in winter. In the meantime, stone mining has started there. The stone blocks of the Göflaner Bruch are also roped with a cable crane system to the Weißwasserbruch loading point and then brought down to the valley.

The form of this quarrying is the "most environmentally friendly industrial transport option within the Stilfserjoch National Park."

use

Historical use

In the Middle Ages , marble from Lasa was used as a material for portals, coats of arms and ornaments from Vinschgau castles, such as the Palasportal of Tyrol Castle , in whose tympanum the Archangel Gabriel welcomes visitors with a gesture of blessing. Anonymous artists made baptismal fonts , altars , tombstones and portal frames for churches from Lasa marble . The marble reliefs in the Carolingian St. Benedict Church in Mals are among the oldest known workpieces made from Lasa marble . Of the Romanesque parish church in Lasa , only the apse could be saved and reconstructed.

During the Renaissance , marble from Lasa was used to decorate some of the Vinschgau castles ( Churburg , Goldrain , Dornsberg , Obermontani , Schlandersburg ). Jakob Trapp VII, pilgrim to Jerusalem and Lord of the Churburg, had a grave monument erected in the Schludernser parish church by Wolf Verdroß in 1573 .

The baroque sculptor Gregor Schwenzengast , who came from the Martell Valley , used the marble for numerous works around 1700. His Madonna reliefs in the form of marble medallions decorate the portals of various buildings in Vinschgau, including the rose queen of the St. Annakapelle in Latsch and the town hall of Schlanders. A large relief portrait of Leopold I carved by Schwenzengast is exhibited in the courtyard of the Schlandersburg. The grave monument in the Latsch parish church for the noble Kleinhans, the builder of the Red Castle in Latsch , also comes from him .

Sculptures of the fountain " The Power of the Land " on Michaelerplatz in Vienna (1897)

In Vienna, architects, including Theophil von Hansen , used Lasa marble for the magnificent facades and statues of the buildings on Ringstrasse, which were mostly built before 1870 . Very large amounts of material were required, especially for the former Reichsratsgebäude and later parliament .

Usage today

Today the marble blocks are mostly cut into slabs and processed into floor coverings, tiles and facade panels.

Today (2008) there are only two marble processing companies and two sculptors in Lasa besides the marble factory. Another marble processing company is in the Eyrs fraction . The townscape of Laas is characterized by cobblestones , decorative elements and sculptures made of marble. Since 2000, Lasa marble has also been brought into the limelight by exhibiting small marble works of art as part of the annual Lasa culture festival marmor & marillen .

Attempts to make Lasa marble interesting again for artists led to the re-establishment of the vocational school for stone processing in Lasa in 1982 .

One of the greatest current environmental problems and thus the mining of natural stone in the Lasa mining area is the question of transporting the marble, as all the quarries are located in the area of ​​the Stilfserjoch National Park .

Transport of the Lasa marble

Sketch of the transport from the quarry to the marble factory
Former loading station with a cable crane that leads across the gorge.

In Central Europe, stone was transported by means of rollers or carts pulled by oxen. With the development of the steam engine, steam-powered tractors were first used in the quarries in Carrara and then a Belgian built a railroad through the Carrara mining area.

In Laas, the marble blocks were originally loaded onto grinding trees and braked down into the valley with ropes. Wooden sleds were used on the flatter sections of the route. A kind of slide was built on Göflaner Berg in 1882, with which the stones were dragged across cross-cut logs. The rough stones were slowed down with hemp ropes that were looped around wooden posts down the valley. This transport technology is called Lizzatura (sledge transport) in Italian . In Lasa, these dangerous weights had to be moved safely and the steep mountain slopes from the quarries located 1500 to 2200 m above sea level had to be overcome into the valley.

Around 1883 the marble from the Weißwasserfall (Torneller Wand) and the Jennwand became well known. The largest block, still transported with grinding trees, weighed more than 80  tons , measured 30  cubic meters and was ordered in 1903 for the Moltke monument at the Victory Column in Berlin .

The extraction of Lasa marble is burdened by considerable transport difficulties due to its location and its difficult mining conditions in a relatively inaccessible area that is now under nature protection. These difficulties, which result from the underground mining and the transport to the processing sites in the valley, are reflected in higher costs compared to other marbles. To compensate for this competitive disadvantage, an inclined elevator was completed in 1930, which solved the technical problems of transporting stones into the valley. Because the entire system is out of date, there are cost problems for stone transport. The so-called Lasa marble railway transports raw blocks to this day. Recently there have been discussions about whether trucks should replace the marble railway.

The inclined railway was built between 1928 and 1930 as an inclined elevator with a length of 950 meters to overcome the height difference of 474 meters into the valley. The incline has a slope of max. 624 per mille. Originally, 40 tons of weight could be loaded onto the approximately 8 meter wide platform. Due to the age of the entire system and for safety reasons, the transport weight has been reduced to 18 tons today. The transport on the inclined railway takes place at a speed of 3.6 km / h and takes about a quarter of an hour down to the valley.

The raw blocks are extracted from an underground quarry located at an altitude of 1,500 meters on the Jennwand. From there, the raw blocks are transported from the quarry with a cable crane and placed on a wagon that is transported by a locomotive with a diesel-electric drive from 1930 on the 1.8-kilometer-long railway on the mountain to the so-called Bremsberg . There, the wagons are pushed onto the platform of the inclined elevator for onward transport and secured with fasteners. In the valley station, a locomotive from the 1930s is ready to transport the marble, which pulls the marble blocks the last 800 meters to the factory premises of the company "Lasa Marmo" next to the Laas train station . From Monday to Friday there are usually two trains to the upper loading area at Parnetz and one train in the valley. Parnetz can only be reached from Lasa via a narrow road.

Since 2012, the upper railway line has been shortened to around a third of the original route by a new, longer cable crane.

Steinmetz company history

Peter, Paul and Dominik Strudel

The two sculptors Paul and Peter Strudel developed marble for Viennese architecture. From 1696 onwards, the Habsburg statues in the Laxenburg palace area and in the Viennese court library are documented. The Strudel brothers Peter , Paul and Dominik Strudel from Cles in the Non Valley obtained approval from the authorities . One of her ancestors, Magister Paulus de Mitebolt , who married an Antonia, Cavalier de Clesio in 1611 , may have come to the Non Valley from Mittenwald in Bavaria . The three brothers began their training in the carving workshops of their homeland and continued in the workshops of Carl Loth, who came from Munich, the native Ticino Baldassare Longhena and the Flemish sculptor Giusto de Corte in Venice .

From 1686 they were in Vienna and fought with the greatest tenacity for the favor of various patrons, such as Prince Johann Adam I. Liechtenstein and Johann von der Pfalz. Dominik Strudel (1667–1715) was an inventor and developer who managed to conclude contracts for improvements in the drainage of mine shafts. His brother Peter soon became court and chamber painter.

Vienna plague column

Paul did not succeed in making such a leap into the imperial court, but in 1696, after the plague column in downtown Vienna had been completed under his direction, he was given a position at court and was commissioned to build a Habsburg ancestral gallery of the emperor and his ancestors from white Tyroleans Create marble. While working on the plague column, Paul Strudel came across the Tyrolean marble deposits in the Sterzing area and in Vinschgau , which he claimed to have discovered for himself. He employed more than twenty workers, stone masons, four Italian sculptors, a marble polisher and an iron smith, who, under the supervision of his brother Dominik in Vinschgau, brought the marble to Slanders via Greflen in Thaal Fraz (probably near Tafratz near Göflan or on the Göflaner Alm). The marble was transported by cart to Hall in Tirol and from there by ship to Vienna. After the death of Paul Strudel in 1708, his brother Peter continued his business until his death in 1714.

After the Strudel brothers passed away, references to marble deliveries became rarer again. In 1717 the Ötztal sculptor Matthias Braun received permission to break four large blocks of marble for a figure of Christ on the cross on Charles Bridge in Prague . A delivery to the Lambach Abbey in Upper Austria is documented from the same year , which the master stonemason Petro Antonio Maggi from Schlanders handled.

Johann Schmidinger

Around 1750, the stonemason Johann Schmidinger, who came from Bavaria and followed the call of Count Friedrich Adam Brandis from Lana , came to Göflan. In addition to his work as a stonemason, Schmidinger provided services as a forest overseer and in 1778 was the first historically known private person to be awarded by the Hall Mining Court the initially not precisely defined breaking rights for marble quarrying in the Göflan area. He partially mined the marble himself, and many Göflan's residents were able to earn extra income through various services. The Schmidinger family leased their rights after 1830 and later sold them.

Ludwig Schwanthaler

Ludwig Michael von Schwanthaler

In June 1826, the visit of the Bavarian privy councilor and court building manager Ritter Leo von Klenze in Schlanders and Laas, who came to the Vinschgau with a building inspector, to inspect the marble deposits and to check their suitability for various large building projects in Munich, is recorded. Although the quality of the marble was found to be suitable, the first preparations and attempts to mine were abandoned after a while. Nevertheless, some local people began to see a very promising business potential in marble: Josef Blaas, Sternwirt in Schlanders, used the Schmidinger rights in Göflan for some time, and Ludwig Veith, Kronenwirt in Laas, settled with the Berggericht Hall with six marble pits in Laaser Lean valley.

Because the local suppliers were obviously not able to fulfill the delivery orders from Bavaria, Bernhard Schweizer, a confidante of the artist Ludwig Schwanthaler , came to the Vinschgau in 1829 . Ludwig Schwanthaler was one of the busiest sculptors in the service of Ludwig I of Bavaria . Schweizer used the existing mining rights to mine the marble quantities intended for Munich both in the Göflaner Alm area and in the Lasa Valley. For almost twenty years he supplied the marble to his clients in Bavaria. Schwanthaler died in 1848, and Bernhard Schweizer, who at times had up to seventy workers in his service, began to sell the marble on his own account.

Carl and Johannes Steinhäuser

Olbers monument by Carl Steinhäuser in Bremen

Professor Carl Steinhäuser , a sculptor from Bremen , came into contact with the work of Ludwig Schwanthaler in Munich and got to know the Lasa marble at a young age in 1835 while traveling to Rome , where he completed his training and embarked on a successful career as an artist . In 1863, Carl Steinhäuser finally received a professorship for the newly established chair for sculpture at the Karlsruhe Art School and was also supposed to create sculptures for the palace gardens of Karlsruhe for his sponsor, Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden . Carl Steinhäuser intended to be supplied by Bernhard Schweizer, who, however, was more interested in leasing his rights on as lucratively as possible. In 1864 he concluded an after-lease agreement with Carl Steinhäuser in 1864 for the exploitation of the Göflaner and Lasa deposits. The experienced quarry operator saw his chance not to lease the marble, but the quarry rights. Schweizer did not want to give any stone houses, says Köll.

Steinhäuser won his Roman artist colleague Peter Lenz as a partner, with whom he founded the Lenz εt Steinhäuser company in 1865 . In 1866 the construction of a workshop began in Laas, in 1867 three saws, a lathe and a grinding machine were installed and the first workers were hired. The removal of the marble from the quarry was done with grinding trees over a track consisting of cross-cut tree trunks, whereby more than 1,500 meters of altitude were overcome from the quarry to the valley. Hemp brake cables regulated the speed of the sledges sliding down the valley. On horizontal stretches, the marble was pulled by carts of oxen on wooden wagons.

Financial difficulties prompted Peter Lenz to dissolve the partnership with Carl Steinhäuser in 1869. Carl Steinhauser's son Johannes, who was soon given the management of the Lasa marble works and founded a marble technical school in Lasa in 1874 with government help, managed to keep the undercapitalized company afloat for more than a decade with family support and assigned orders, but was in 1879 the economic difficulties have become hopeless. Johannes Steinhäuser's father-in-law, a wealthy merchant in Bremen, arranged the transfer of Steinhauser's economic rights to the Wiener Union-Baugesellschaft , which had previously represented Steinhauser's interests in Vienna. The contract became legally binding on July 1, 1881. Johannes Steinhäuser stayed with the company as artistic director until his death in 1892.

Viennese company

Inclined elevator for marble blocks of the Lasa Marble Railway
Lion in front of the Feldherrnhalle in Munich

The Union-Baugesellschaft was a civil engineering company and belonged to the cream of the corporate landscape in the Danube Monarchy at that time . Her field of activity included the construction of railway lines. It was she who later built the Vinschgerbahn, which opened in 1906. The company secured all available mining rights not only in Laas and Göflan, but also in Sterzing, invested massively in infrastructure such as workers' accommodation, transport routes, slideways for the marble blocks in the steep terrain and in sinking measures (uncovering the minable rock layers) in the quarries. It increased the machine park in the workshops and adapted the buildings on the factory premises to the requirements. The company temporarily had up to 200 workers on its payroll, who were also offered exemplary social framework conditions for the time: shopping in the company's own food store at cost price, coverage in the event of illness and accidents. The marble initially held its own in the buildings on Vienna's Ringstrasse , but was due to the higher price compared to others, such as the marbles from Germany, for example the Saubsdorf marble from the Sudetenland and the Carrara marble from Italy as well as the Pörtschach marble from Germany in disadvantage. In addition, masses of polished limestones came into the trade, and the increase in German import duties had an impact on trade to Germany. Sales of Lasa marble fell, as did the business profit situation. The union separated on March 18, 1899 from its business activities in the marble sector.

The buyer of these rights was Fritz Zeller from Vienna, who harbored idealizing artistic visions for the future and primarily propagated the artistic use of Lasa marble, had to file for bankruptcy at the end of 1905 .

Various quarries were in use around 1900 : the Torneller Bruch (municipality break) , the Torneller Wand (Weißes Wasser, Weißwasserbruch) , the Jennwand and the Laaser Leiten (Stierleger) (Laaser Onyx ) in Laas as well as the Alpbruch and the Mitterwandl in Göflan.

The reason why the Viennese kk Hof stonemason master Eduard Hauser got involved in the Vinschgau and bought out Zeller's bankruptcy assets was the upcoming opening of the Vinschger Railway . He ran a stonemasonry in Vienna, which was very modern and machine-equipped for the time, and made hardly any changes to the basic conceptual orientation of the Lasa company taken over. In Lasa he employed up to 14 sculptors. The first marble blocks that were delivered with the Vinschgau Railway were those from which the lions were carved for the Munich Feldherrnhalle . The business prospered for ten years, but stagnation set in with the outbreak of the First World War . After the war, the company was unable to build on the results it had before the war, because competition in Laas and the low demand for buildings and statues made of marble in Austria prompted the heirs of Eduard Hauser to gradually dissolve their property in Vinschgau by 1924. That was the end of the era of Viennese entrepreneurs.

Josef Lechner

Josef Lechner, who came from the mountain village of Parnetz near Laas and was born there on June 26, 1851, did not begin an apprenticeship with Franz Andres, a stonemason from Lasa, who in turn belonged to the first generation of artists who had trained at Steinhauser's marble college. After completing his apprenticeship, Lechner gained work experience as a traveling journeyman in southern Germany and Switzerland and returned to Laas in 1882. There he could not settle economically. Therefore, he founded a workshop in Bolzano on the cattle market square. He mainly worked with Carrara marble because the Union construction company did not supply him with Lasser marble. His business in Bolzano , where he employed 20 to 25 craftsmen, prospered and he settled in Laas as a marble entrepreneur. He leased the break at the Weißwasserfall in the Lasa Valley from the municipality of Laas and also secured part of Ludwig Veith's rights to the Nesselwand and Jenngraben. Josef Lechner, soon to be known as "Marmor-Lechner", was successful, invested in the best of the stone processing technologies known at the time and exported his products worldwide. At times he employed up to 100 workers. This success, especially the fact that many agricultural workers found a well-paid position with him, called envious and directly affected farmers onto the scene, because they dominated the municipal administration and soon thwarted the contracts with Lechner. The community took over the Nesselwandbruch on its own in 1909, and when economic success failed to materialize, it leased it to the Munich sculptor Matthias Gasteiger. In 1921 she resolved the long-term lease for the Weißwasserbruch, from which Lechner had benefited most, and handed it over to the Gasteiger company. Why the community of Laas, which is dominated by the farmers, was not friendly towards the marble companies, especially the successful Lechner: the farmers often went through difficult times, had to suffer from bad harvests and the drop in prices of their products. In the marble factories, which offered their workers a regular income and regular working hours, they saw those responsible for the increased wages of their servants. And the entrepreneur Lechner, who was fully behind his workers and supported the Lasa worker priest Malpaga, felt this aversion in particular: wood deliveries from the community forest were promised and then not delivered. Lechner could bear the fact that the community took over the Nesselwandbruch on its own. The contractual clause in the lease agreement with Gasteiger three years later that Lechner was not allowed to use the road to be built by the community into the Lasa Valley for its marble transports speaks for itself, as does the unilateral termination of the lease agreement concluded in 1906 for a period of 25 years in 1921 for the Weißwasserbruch. The death of his designated successor Julius, who fell in Galicia during the first few weeks of the war, and the obstacles that the commune put in his way, led Josef Lechner to toy with the idea of ​​selling the marble business. In the end, after the war, he handed over his company to his son, Josef Lechner junior. Josef Lechner junior had to try to keep mining in the Jennwand fractures upright. cancel in the first post-war years. He then limited himself to gradually selling his father's large marble warehouse.

Mathias Gasteiger (1920s)

Mozart monument in Vienna

Mathias Gasteiger came from a farming family in the Puster Valley . He was born in Munich in 1871, attended the art academy there and was apprenticed to Victor Tilgner in Vienna at the time he was creating the Mozart monument in the Burggarten from Lasa marble. He began to exploit a quarry in the Franconian Jura in 1904 and came to Laas in 1911. Gasteiger's medium-term interest was aimed at developing a marble company in Laas that was to be equipped with all the infrastructure and mining rights in order to later market it as an attractive investment property to well-funded interested parties.

The First World War ruined these plans. Gasteiger continued his business after the war and in 1921 leased the Weißwasserbruch from municipal property. He took over the Viennese engineer Karl Francini, who worked for the competitor Hauser, as manager and involved him with ten percent from the newly established company Lasa Marmorindustriegesellschaft with limited liability . Francini developed extensive rough projects for plants for the mining and transport of the marble and made calculations about how many cubic meters of marble could be broken per year with appropriate investments. Gasteiger's main focus continued to be on the search for investors. In addition to other contacts, a chance acquaintance with the Berlin geologist and chemist Ernst Schröder led to the desired success and through the intermediary Carl Wölfel from Grasyma AG in Wunsiedel in Germany he was presented with the hoped-for financiers, a financial group that has close ties to the Berlin bank Hardy & Co. stood ready to invest in Lasa.

Società Anonima Lasa per l'Industria del Marmo (1930s)

Locomotive of the Lasa Marble Railway with a marble block

The above-mentioned group of investors made large investments, which can only be explained because of the then prevailing economic mood in America, the prosperity . An expertise on the prospects for marble on the American market and - as it turned out in retrospect - Francini's far too optimistic estimates of the amount of marble that could be mined in one year led investors to join the Lasa company. The International Marble Corporation was founded in the USA, with a capital of two million dollars, and as the parent and marketing company for the American market for the Società Anonima Lasa per l'Industria del Marmo, founded on September 28, 1928 should serve. The expertise, a market analysis of the American market, confirmed that Lasa marble has great future opportunities. A report from Columbia University, which clearly preferred Lasa marble compared to that of Carrara, and another report from the English mining expert AW Ibbett dated April 30, 1928, gave Laas a very good report, and the New York marble expert Borgia gave an economic report Estimate forecasting nearly $ 1 million in profit with 10,000 cubic meters sold annually. The equity contributed to the Laas subsidiary amounted to five million lire and the Gasteiger business was integrated into the new company. Just one and a half years after the start of construction work, which began with the leveling work in the spring of 1929, the then most modern marble quarrying and transport facilities in Europe were built.

The Italian company Lasa Marmo SPA , founded in 1928, made decisive technical innovations and in 1929 opened the initially electrically operated Lasa marble railway, which was converted to diesel-electric drive in 1993, for the removal of the marble blocks. The marble is still transported from the mountain railway station ( 1350  m slm ) to the factory premises ( 867  m slm ) with the 4 km long railway, the most remarkable part of which is the 950 m long inclined elevator .

The stock market crash after Black Friday in New York and the economic depression that began with it ended Lasa's sales hopes on the American market. Because of the miscalculations in the economic plans of the leadership in Laas Ernst Schröder was released and by Arthur Boskamp, the cable car experts of the Leipzig company Adolf Bleichert & Co. replaced. Karl Francini, who was criticized by the board of directors because of his calculations, estimates and expansive mining methods, was initially assigned to the young expert from Carrara and engineer Antonio Consiglio before he was dismissed in 1932. As a result, Lasa was unable to balance the balance sheet. Economic planning was hardly possible in the context of the totalitarian regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. The Lasa was able to evade the sanctions of the League of Nations on the African adventures of the "Duce" (Mussolini) by means of triangular deals with third countries. Access to the German market was severely hampered by high tariffs. In the course of the Aryanization of Jewish property in 1936, the Hardy Bank came under the control of Dresdner Bank, which had operations in Laas ceased in 1938 after an attempt to sell the business was unsuccessful.

Ente Nazionale per le Tre Venezie (1940s)

The fact that the Lasa company changed hands at the beginning of 1943 has to do with the so-called option , signed on October 21, 1939 between Hitler and Mussolini to relocate the German and Ladin minorities . The economic processing of the option was incumbent on the German side of the "Deutsche Abführungstreuhand Gesellschaft - DAT" and on the Italian side of the "Agenzia Economico-Finanziaria per il Trasferimento di Allogeni e Cittadini Germanici". These two institutions set the value of the transfer fee for the emigrating Hardy Bank after lengthy negotiations at 13.8 million lire. The body that made the transfer payments to the DAT and took over the Lasa operation was the "Ente Nazionale per le Tre Venezie", a successor organization to the "ERA", which was founded in 1921 to promote the reconstruction of the three Veneto regions. The "duck" was used by the fascists as an economic instrument for the Italianization of South Tyrol. It bought farms and properties that had gone bankrupt or were offered for sale, in order to then pass them on to Italian interested parties, who also received financial support.

Antonio Consiglio made sure that operations in Laas did not completely stagnate between 1938 and 1947. He continued to run the company in Laas on his own, maintaining lease agreements with the Hardy Bank and then with the "Ente". In the beginning, Consiglio employed over 50 workers at times. In 1947 the management of the "Ente" terminated all agreements with Antonio Consiglio, who then moved his business to Bolzano .

American Battle Monument Commission (1950s)

Marble crosses in American war cemeteries

After 1947, Lasa Marmo was managed by the duck . The president of the company Cesare Bigatello and the vice-president Vincenzo Aureli signed a contract with the Società Italiana Marmi Vicentini , which was to order the mining technology and in return was granted exclusive rights to sell the Lasa marble. The contract was terminated after a year.

The last major order for the Lasa marble came from the American Battle Monuments Commission and included the production of more than 90,000 grave crosses and gravestones with stars of David for the American soldiers who fell in World War II . To this day, damaged grave crosses and tombstones are only replaced with new ones made of Lasa marble.

In the course of the processing of these orders it turned out that the calculations for the production of the crosses had been wrong when preparing the offer. The calculations were made by financial experts from the "duck" without the assistance of competent technicians or specialists. The promise made in the offer to the Americans to deliver only pure white goods had also been neglected, because the Americans refused to accept even the slightest colored inclusions. The company management had also strategically aligned itself with these orders in such a way that they neglected all other sales channels and disregarded the lower quality but not worthless waste material and its marketing. Unplanned investments had to be made. In 1951, the workforce was 594. In order to be able to keep the supply contracts, we worked in three shifts. In addition, Lasa Marmo had entered into very high commission obligations to contract agents. The result was economic difficulties and threatening liquidity bottlenecks.

In 1952, the previous management was dismissed in an extraordinary general meeting, the lawyer Guido Moser from Riva del Garda was appointed as the new managing sole administrator and Antonio Consiglio was brought back into the company as technical director. The duck covered the towering losses. Through rationalization measures and sales efforts in the area of ​​the lower-quality types of marble, the company was slowly renovated.

A high percentage of the workforce in Laas were Italian speakers who had moved here from various Italian provinces. The Lasa placed high funds for the construction of workers' housing available, subsidized club activities and the Company's general store. The oversized workforce was retained even after the major American order was completed. The surplus workers for the marble quarrying were deployed to reactivate the Mitterwandlbruch on the Göflaner Alm, for which Lasa Marmo was able to conclude a lease agreement with the community of Schlanders in 1956. Large sums of money were spent on the construction of a connecting road between the Weißwasserbruch and the "Wandl" as well as on the construction of canteens and accommodation on the Göflaner Alm. The pioneer for the decision of the "Lasa" to lease the Bruch am Mitterwandl on the Göflaner Alm and reactivate it was Antonio Consiglio. His argument that the deposits of pure white marble in the Weißwasserbruch would soon be exhausted was not uncontested in the supervisory board, but the prospect of having a monopoly position in the future prompted the leadership of the "Lasa" to seek the lease agreement with the community of Schlanders . To reactivate this break, in which only the Hauser company was active after the First World War, disproportionately high and economically unjustifiable sums were invested. By 1962 Hauser had only got 624 cubic meters of marble from the Mitterwandl, a small amount compared to 1928 with a volume of around 10,000 cubic meters.

Giuseppe Sonzogno (from 1960s)

Marble works in Lasa. At the bottom left the marble railway crosses the Adige.

1962 sold duck delle Tre Venezie the Lasa Marmo to an internal analysis of the only prospective Aktiengesellschaft Cava Romana from Aurisina near Trieste . In this analysis the accumulated losses have been listed. Up to 1962 600 million lire had been invested, above all to create and secure jobs for the predominantly Italian-speaking workers - as it is said. The expansion of the activity in the Mitterwandl was not initiated on the basis of geological reports, but on the basis of historical reports and once again caused high expenses. Understandably, the personnel change at the top management of the "Ente" was not included in the report. Their sole manager was Giuseppe Sonzogno, born in Credera Rubiano in the province of Cremona, who initially took over the workforce of around 200 for three to four years. After the company ran into economic difficulties and was often unable to pay wages, industrial disputes broke out and most of the workers who had migrated from various Italian regions returned home. During the 1970s, Sonzogno gradually managed to consolidate the company, which began to generate profits from 1981.

In 1979 Sonzogno succeeded in renewing the expired lease contracts for the marble quarries in the Lasa Valley in his favor, as otherwise no interested parties could be found. After Giuseppe Sonzogno's death in 1989, his wife Nadia continued to run the business until her own death in 1999. Her daughter Elisabetta Sonzogno was able to claim the expired mining rights in the Lasa Valley for herself.

Subsequently, the company Tiroler Marmorwerke was able to obtain the rights to the Wandlbruch on the Göflaner Alm for itself, while Georg Lechner, a descendant of the Lechner family mentioned above, began to take care of his breaking rights in the Lasa Valley - with the help of a Swiss investor group .

Examples of its use

Schiller Monument in Dresden
Helmholtz monument in Berlin made of Lasa marble. The base is made of marx green marble
Moltke monument in Berlin
Elisabeth statue in Merano
Pallas-Athene-Brunnen in front of the Parliament in Vienna

Objects erected using Lasa marble can be found in Germany , Great Britain , Italy , Austria and the United States .

Germany

Berlin

Munich

Other cities

Great Britain

Italy

Austria

Vienna

Other cities

Czech Republic

United States

new York

Other cities

literature

  • August Hanisch, Heinrich Schmid: Austria's quarries . Graeser, Vienna 1901.
  • Felix Karrer: Guide through the building materials collection of the Imperial and Royal Court Museum . Lechner, Vienna 1892.
  • Alois Kieslinger : The stones of the Vienna Ringstrasse . Steiner, Wiesbaden 1972.
  • Lois Köll: Tyrolean economic studies . In: Series of publications of the Jubilee Foundation of the Chamber of Commerce for Tyrol. 19th episode: Lasa marble . Wagner University Press, Innsbruck 1964.
  • Manfred Koller : The Strudel brothers . Tyrolia, Innsbruck, Vienna 1993.
  • Alois Adolf Luggin (author), municipality and tourist office Laas (ed.): Encounter with the marble village of Laas . Series Nature and Culture Volume 1. Lana (South Tyrol / Italy) n.d.
  • Helmut Moser (author), municipality and tourist association Laas (publisher): The Laaser valley: steps through its history . Series Nature and Culture Volume 3. Tappeiner, Lana (South Tyrol / Italy) no year (after 1993).
  • Heinrich Schmid: The modern marbles and alabasters . Deuticke, Leipzig, Vienna 1897.
  • Luis Stefan Stecher : In the pictures of my childhood . In: Norbert Florineth (Hrsg.): Bild Schrift Laas . Tappeiner, Lana (South Tyrol / Italy) 2007, ISBN 978-88-7073-416-4 , pp. 116–117.
  • Hansjörg Telfser: Searching for traces of marble. Vinschgau marble between art and speculative objects, Kofel, Schlanders, 2007.
  • Franz Waldner: Lasa marble - South Tyrol's finest natural stone . Athesia Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-88-8266-170-0
  • Hans Wielander : Politics and Marble . In: Norbert Florineth (Hrsg.): Bild Schrift Laas . Tappeiner, Lana (South Tyrol / Italy) 2007, pp. 126–132.

Web links

Commons : Lasa Marble  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kk Geologische Reichsanstalt: Catalog of their exhibition objects at the Vienna World Exhibition 1873. Vienna 1873, p. 147
  2. ↑ a b c d Information from irbdirekt: White marble from Laas / Vinschgau , accessed on October 10, 2009
  3. ↑ Dr. Ernst Ott: On the geology of the Ortler Alps . In: Peter Holl: Alpine Club Guide Ortleralpen
  4. ↑ Enlargement of the geological overview map of the Republic of Austria 1: 1,500,000 (PDF; 20.5 MB), accessed on August 1, 2018
  5. ↑ V. Mair, C. Nocker, P. Tropper: THE ORTLER-CAMPO KRISTALLIN IN SÜDTIROL (PDF; 3.8 MB)
  6. ^ Christoph Franzen: Historic building stones in South Tyrol. Distribution and weathering behavior . (Dissertation) Innsbruck 2002, pp. 48, 57, 71-72
  7. ^ Christoph Franzen: Historic building stones in South Tyrol. Distribution and weathering behavior . (Dissertation) Innsbruck 2002, p. 72
  8. Jump up ↑ Wolfgang Morscher, Hubert Tscholl: Marmorbahn auf haben.net, accessed October 10, 2009
  9. ↑ Johann Conrad Fäsi: Exact and complete description of the state and the earth of the entire Swiss Confederation. Volume 4. Zurich: Orell 1768, p. 135
  10. ↑ Marmorbahn on haben.at
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Morscher, Hubert Tscholl: funicular railway on sagen.net, accessed October 10, 2009
  12. Jump up ↑ Wolfgang Morscher, Hubert Tscholl: Transportbahn Laaser Tal on haben.net, accessed on October 10, 2009
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Morscher, Hubert Tscholl: The marble railway in Laas - a technical wonder of the world, part 1 - introduction / marble quarry. SAGEN.at, 2009, accessed October 10, 2009 .
  14. ↑ Hubert Tscholl: The Lasa Marble Railway . A masterpiece of technology. StudienVerlag, Innsbruck 2009, ISBN 978-3-7065-4800-7 .
  15. ↑ Die Lasa Marmorbahn , homepage of Lasa Marmo, accessed on April 26, 2020.
  16. ↑ Alois Kieslinger: The stones of the Vienna Ringstrasse . Wiesbaden (Franz Steiner Verlag) 1972, p. 71
  17. ↑ Manfred Koller: Gebrüder Strudel , p. 23 (see literature). Paul Strudel often claimed in his petitions to court that he was the discoverer of the marble quarries of Schlanders
  18. ↑ Manfred Koller: Gebrüder Strudel, p. 89
  19. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search, p. 14 and 15 (see literature)
  20. ↑ Lois Köll: Tiroler Wirtschaftsstudien , p. 27 ff. (See literature)
  21. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search , p. 19 ff.
  22. ↑ Lois Köll: Tiroler Wirtschaftsstudien , p. 39
  23. ↑ Schwanthaler also wrote the following saying: “The Carrara [Einf. Carrara marble] is cheese, lifeless, dull, the Lasa living, shining. " Hans Wielander: Politik und Marmor , p. 128 (see literature)
  24. ↑ The Capuchin Father Kofler speaks of 74 workers who are employed on the Göflaner Alm and for whose accommodation a strong stone house has been built there. Spiritual support was provided by the Capuchin Fathers from Schlanders, who now and then read mass in a fully equipped chapel. In addition, a mountain road had been laid out and the mountain had been covered in some places. Ephraem Kofler: Historical and topographical notes on the village of Göflan , 1846, p. 5.
  25. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search , p. 22 ff.
    Lois Köll: Tiroler Wirtschaftsstudien , p. 38
  26. ↑ Lois Köll: Tiroler Wirtschaftsstudien , p. 38 ff.
    Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search , p. 25
  27. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search, p. 28 ff.
  28. ↑ Lois Köll: Tiroler Wirtschaftsstudien, p. 55 ff.
  29. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search p. 66 ff. And p. 86 ff.
  30. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search, p. 116 ff.
  31. ^ Crosses for US military cemeteries (Second World War) . Lasa Marmo. Retrieved May 13, 2020.
  32. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search, p. 155 ff.
  33. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search, p. 153
  34. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search, p. 164 ff.
  35. ↑ Hansjörg Telfser: Marble trace search, p. 170 ff.
  36. ↑ Modern pilgrimage site - SAGEN.at FOTOGALERIE. Retrieved April 14, 2019 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 16, 2009 .