Saltworks Salt Love Hall
The saltworks Salzliebenhalle was a saltworks in the area of today's old town of Salzgitter-Bad that was operated from the 7th century and into the 20th century . It was located to the west of the Ratskeller at the point where the spa gardens were later laid out and where the rose garden is now. The saltworks were also known as the Liebenhalle saltworks or Salzgitter saltworks .
geology
Salzgitter-Bad lies on the axis of the Salzgitterer Saddle , one of several narrow saddles in the northern Harz foreland, which were created by the rise of salt walls . The corresponding salt layers were deposited in the Zechstein Sea about 250 million years ago. The basis of this sequence is today at a depth of around 2000 to 3000 meters. Thanks to its special physical properties, the salt has almost risen to the surface due to the pressure of the overburden over the course of millions of years of faults (so-called halokinesis ), thus forming salt domes and salt walls. In Salzgitter-Bad the salt level (the upper limit of the salt) lies at a depth of 180 to 200 meters.
History of the salt works
Beginnings of the salt works
The salt spring in the area of today's old town of Salzgitter-Bad was probably known as early as the Neolithic Age . This is indicated by sites around the old town of today's Salzgitter-Bad. During excavations in the 1970s before the construction of an underground car park at Marienplatz, boiling residues were found, according to which salt was extracted as early as 600. At that time the area was very swampy and difficult to access. The salt boilers therefore lived in the neighboring towns of Vöppstedt (formerly Veppstedt, in the east), grid (in the west) and Kniestedt (in the northeast).
Around 800 the Salzgau (then called "Saltga" or "Soltga") appears in the Franconian Gau constitution. Popularly it was also called "Dat Grote Solt", which indirectly confirms the use of the salt spring. In a document from Heinrich III. from 1051 the name "Salzgau" (comecia Saltga, pagus Saltgo) is mentioned for the first time.
At least two salt springs that were exploited are known from the early days. The "grote Soltborn" was in the middle of the swamp; Here the Vöppstedter settlers had built a well to promote the brine . A second well, which the settlers operated from a grid, was located further west on the edge of the swamp on the "Soltkamp". When the Vöppstedter Brunnen dried up in 1272, it was repaired by the Steterburg Monastery with the help of the well builder . The following year the Gittersche Brunnen also dried up, but could no longer be repaired. The salt boilers from lattice then obtained their brine from the Vöppstedter spring.
In 1086 Emperor Heinrich IV transferred the Werla Palatinate with about 300 Hufen land to Bishop Udo von Hildesheim . This also included the salt springs around Vöppstedt, lattice and Kniestedt, which until then belonged to the royal shelf . Finally, many aristocrats and monasteries in the area were involved in the salt exploitation through further awards. B. von Wallmoden , von Cramm , von Oberg , von Schwichelt and von Bortfeld . The justified monasteries in the area included the monasteries Steterburg , Ringelheim , Grauhof , Dorstadt , Heiningen and Wöltingerode .
The first direct mention of the salt springs can be found in a document dated May 22, 1125, in which Bishop Berthold I of Hildesheim assigned a pan point in a grid ("unum panstel in Gethere") to the convent Backenrode (today Marienrode near Hildesheim ). After the place was known for a long time only as "Dat Solt" or "Dat Saltz", in 1344/45 also as "salina Knistidde" (Saline near Kniestedt) and "Salz to Vepstedt", the name "appeared for the first time in 1370 to distinguish it from other salt works. Up dem Solte to Gytere ”(ie“ The Salt at Lattice ”), from which the name“ Salzgitter ”developed by 1533.
As early as 1273, the saltworks district of the communities grid and Vöppstedt was surrounded by a palisade-reinforced wall with a ditch in front of it. The swampy area around the salt springs had previously been drained by up to seven meter high embankments. The people of Vöppsted had also made their access route passable through planks - the street still bears the name "Bohlweg" today. At this time there were already 47 salt pans that were operated by residents from Vöppstedt, Grid and Haverlah. A piece of salt (50 to 55 liters in Salzgitter at that time) had to be paid for each manure for the right to boil.
In the western part of the salt springs, the salt boilers from lattice had settled, those from Vöppstedt in the eastern part. The place was about 10 hectares in size, three gates led to the outside, the Vöppstedter Tor in the east, the Kniestedter Tor in the northeast and the Haverlaher or Lattice Gate in the west. The gates were officially confirmed in 1531 and 1549. By 1350 the residents of Vöppstedt had also moved into the fortified area, after which their place became desolate .
Takeover of the salt works by the Duchy of Braunschweig
After the end of the Hildesheim collegiate feud (1519–1523), the Hildesheim diocese had to cede large parts of its territory to the Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel . This also included the Liebenburg office , to which Salzgitter and its salt springs belonged at the time. With the enfeoffment by Emperor Charles V , the salt shelf passed to Duke Heinrich the Younger in 1530 , who placed the saltworks under his administration. The now ducal salt works was named "Salt Love Hall" after the nearby Liebenburg official residence and became an independent municipality that was subordinate to the Duke and independent of the city of Salzgitter. Since 1589 the salt works belonged to the private property of the Princely Brunswick family. This remained so even after 1643, when the Duchy of Braunschweig had to return the areas of the former “Großer Stift” to the Diocese of Hildesheim. Since then, Salzliebenhalle has been a ducal-Braunschweig enclave in Salzgitter, Hildesheim.
The Duke's negotiations with the previous feudal lords of the Saline, the nobility and the monasteries, lasted in part until 1558. As a result, the Duke was allowed to operate the Siedekoten, for which in return an annual compensation in the form of "interest salt" totaling 24 tons Salt was payable. After 1897 cash payments replaced this compensation. The salt works was subordinated to the state administration of the duchy and the "Pfänner", the operators of the boiling pans , had to lease their boiling pans to a salt count named by the duke. In return, they received compensation totaling 541 guilders and 41 groschen. Many of the formerly independent salt boilers were later dismissed. In their place came cheaper Hessian labor from the Salzgrafen.
After long negotiations, Duke Heinrich Julius concluded a contract with the municipality on October 20, 1589, in which the residents waived their inherited rights and ceded them to the Duke. The community was granted three pfennigs for each boiled salt work as compensation for the lost income. In addition, the Duke sold the brewery to the city of Salzgitter and granted the city the right to brew.
After the Wolfenbüttel line of the Principality of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel had died out in 1634 with Duke Friedrich Ulrich , the salt works became communion salt works ( communion = joint administration) of the Welfen , with the "Lüneburg House" 4/7 shares and the "New House Braunschweig" 3 / 7 of the shares held. A board of directors was set up for administration, which changed annually between the two houses.
Operation of the salt works from the 16th century
Duke Julius (reign 1568–1589) had the saltworks modernized at the beginning of his term of office. The primary goal was to reduce the immense consumption of wood. For example, in 1548 B. almost 9000 shock wasen is required (wasen are sticks that are bundled into bundles of 60 pieces each [= one shock]). Since three carts were required to transport a Schock Wasen at that time, more than 25,000 carts of wood had to be delivered over the course of a year.
In the early days of salt production, the brine was heated in clay crucibles . In the 19th century, the use of 1–4 m² iron boiling pans prevailed. During the tenure of Duke Julius, the so-called "Juliushaller Siedepfanne" ("Juliushall" was the saltworks of Bad Harzburg founded by the Duke ) was introduced, in which five pans were arranged one above the other. The lowest was the actual pan. In the other pans, the residual heat was used so that the increasingly scarce boiling wood could be better utilized. The number of pans was reduced from thirty in 1548 to nine in 1614.
Experiments were also carried out with straw grading to enrich the brine. The first such graduation tower was built in 1574 near today's train station. In these graduation works, the brine was poured over high layers of straw or, later, brushwood bundles and from there trickled back into the collecting basins. Some of the water evaporated and some of the impurities in the brine settled in the brushwood. With this process, the salt content of the brine could be increased from 6–7% to around 20%, so that only half of the wood was required for the subsequent boiling. After the advantages of the graduation process had become apparent, a larger, 450-meter-long graduation tower was built in 1609 at a location with favorable winds between Kniestedt and Salzgitter (e.g. on today's Pfingstanger). The place was surrounded by walls and ditches to protect against attacks. For grading purposes, instead of the increasingly scarce straw, birch twigs were often used, and in 1745 thorn grading was used (use of black thorn instead of straw).
The brine well was initially about 6 m deep, but had to be deepened more and more and was 15 m deep in 1849, when Schloenbach began drilling into the salt dome. The brine from the well was initially lifted with buckets; After 1273 they were pumped to the boiling pans using pedal bikes or with the help of a horse art ( horse goblet ). With the construction of the first graduation tower, a water art was used as it was already used in the Upper Harz mining industry. Up to four overshot artificial wheels with a diameter of 5 m were used to pump the brine from the well, to push it to the graduation tower and from there back to the boiling pans. The water necessary to drive the artificial wheels came from four ponds in the area, the Salgenteich (south of the brine source), the Schierenteich (near grid), the Westerteich (Kniestedt, today Erikastraße) and the New pond or forest pond (below the thermal brine bath). When water was scarce in summer or when the pipes froze over in severe frost, the horse pegs were still in use until 1837/38.
Duke Heinrich the Younger had issued the first ducal salt ordinance in 1542. It said: “In it he ordered all his servants and all salters that they absolutely had to adhere to the salt regulations, write down wood consumption and salt production at the salt scribe, clean the pans when six plants had boiled salt and have them repaired by the pan smith if damaged To only light a fire in the feces, not to tolerate a beer feast or other gathering of people who are not boiling, and not to steal any salt or wood. For this, corporal punishment is threatened. ”() Duke Julius had this salt regulation expanded in 1579 and the procedure for the salt boilers regulated precisely. They were now obliged to report their production and expenditure to the (head) salt scribe on a weekly basis, who then had to report personally to the duke. In addition, the boiling process now had to be supervised day and night, which required additional staff. The salt scribe was the highest official of the salt works, he was subordinate to the princely chamber in Wolfenbüttel. The seat of the salt scribe was the Tillyhaus (probably built in 1595). After winning the battle of Lutter am Barenberge, the imperial general Tilly set up his headquarters in this house, from which the current name of the house was later derived. Later it was the seat of the salt works administration and the apartment of the respective tenant.
Operation in the 19th and 20th centuries
At the beginning of the 17th century there were first attempts to lease the salt works, but these were soon abandoned due to dwindling income. After the operation of the salt works was no longer profitable at the beginning of the 18th century, it was leased again from 1715. The first tenant was Johann Garßen from grid, who ran the salt works from 1715 to 1745. He was followed by nine other tenants by 1909. After that, the saltworks were again directly subordinated to the ducal administration.
During the Napoleonic period (1806 to 1813), the saltworks became the property of the Kingdom of Westphalia . The name Salt Love Hall was abolished and the saltworks was now part of the Salzgitter community, which belonged to the Goslar district in the Oker department of the Kingdom of Westphalia. After 1813, the saltworks fell back to the Duchy of Braunschweig and from 1818 was placed under a joint directory of the King of Hanover and the Duke of Braunschweig. The manor district of Salzliebenhalle also became a Brunswick exclave again .
Albert Schloenbach (1811–1877), since 1839 the saline inspector and hobby geologist, had researched the area around the salt springs and came to the conclusion that the salt dome could not be very deep. He therefore arranged for a new deep borehole to be drilled near the old well. The work was successfully completed in January 1851 when rock salt was encountered at a depth of 212 m . The borehole was then drilled to a final depth of 224.05 m. The brine had an average salt content of 17 to 20%; it could be used directly in the boiling pans without further enrichment, so that the graduation towers, which were expensive in operation, could be abandoned.
On the night of November 2nd to 3rd, 1913, the saltworks was destroyed by a large fire. It took until May 1915 for the buildings to be rebuilt and for operations to start again.
The salt works were sold in 1920/21 to the newly founded "Saline Liebenhalle GmbH Hanover", a company of the chemical factory Egestorff / Hanover . The new owners had the saltworks modernized again in 1923. Only a little later, in 1925, after the bankruptcy of one of the Egestorff owners, the salt works had to cease operations and was finally shut down in 1926 after another fire. The brine production was continued to a small extent to supply the health resort.
At the end of 1926, the city of Salzgitter acquired parts of the Salzliebenhalle estate, which at that time was still an independent area with customs barriers and customs officers. Following a law passed in December 1927 to dissolve the manor districts, Salzliebenhalle (then 8 houses with 47 inhabitants) was incorporated into Salzgitter on October 1, 1928.
Production numbers
There are only a few sources about the annual production of salt, so that only a rough estimate of the total production is possible. In 1540, around 740 t / year were mined, by 1605 production had risen to 980 t / year and fell to 591 t / year by 1632. In the 18th century, an average of 920 tons of salt was produced each year. At the beginning of the 19th century, the production of the salt works had to be reduced considerably. The reason was the restrictions on the export of Salzgitterchen salt, which had been ordered to protect the other salt pans ( Schöningen , Salzdahlum ) of the Brunswick Duchy. From 1822 onwards, Liebenhaller salt was only allowed to be sold in the Harz and Weser districts (i.e. west of the Oker ). As a result, the earnings potential of the Salzgitteraner steadily declined, which gave rise to the hiking musicians of the Salzgitter Klesmer . When the restrictions were lifted at the end of the 19th century, production rose to over 1000 t / year. According to one estimate, around 700,000 t of salt were produced during the entire operating time of the salt works.
Later use
Salzgitter spa
From 1879, the brine obtained was first used for bathing purposes. The first bathing room was operated in the Tillyhaus and in 1886 a private bathhouse was completed. In 1911 it was replaced by a new building with 20 bath cells in the “spa garden”, for the construction of which some of the old saline workers' apartments and the brewery were demolished. The bath house was operated until 1972 and the spa business was then relocated to the thermal brine bath.
rose Garden
In connection with the new construction of the thermal brine bath at Greifpark, it was decided at the beginning of 1971 not to repair the old brine well from 1852, but to drill a new well instead. It was started near the old well and completed in May 1971 at a depth of 243 m. The drilled brine has a temperature of 20 ° C and a salt content of 20-25%, it is conveyed through a pipeline to the thermal brine bath located 80 m higher and 1.4 km away. The thermal bath was opened on February 16, 1972, and the old bath house built in 1911 in the spa park was then demolished. A little later there was a breakdown in August 1972 when a salt fountain broke out while working on the pump system, which destroyed all the plants in the green area, including the old trees in the spa park.
In autumn 2009 a small graduation tower in the form of a pavilion was inaugurated in the rose garden, which was financed by donations from the population. This graduation pavilion illustrates the principle of brine enrichment with the help of a trickle system and was set up in memory of the origins of the city at the location of the old salt wells. Remains of the wooden conveyor system of the shaft well, which was operated until 1851 and which were recovered in 1969, are on display in the immediate vicinity.
Born in Saline Salzliebenhalle
- Alfred Wagner (1852–1931), Prussian and German district administrator
literature
- Heinz Kolbe, Wolfram Forche and Max Humburg: the history of the saltworks salt-love hall and the old salt town . In: Stadtarchiv Salzgitter (Ed.): Contributions to the city history . tape 1 . Salzgitter 1988.
- Hans Heinrich Quentmeier: Salzgitter - Past and Present of a German City - 1942–1992 . Ed .: Wolfgang Benz . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-406-35573-0 , salt production in Salzgitter, p. 547-564 .
- Hans H. Quentmeier: The economic and social history of the Braunschweigisches Land from the Middle Ages to the present . Ed .: Jörg Leuschner , Karl Heinrich Kaufhold , Claudia Märtl . Volume II: Early Modern Era . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim 2008, ISBN 978-3-487-13597-7 , Salt production and the salt trade in the early modern period, p. 386-407 .
- Franz Zobel : The home book of the district of Goslar . Verlag der Goslarschen Zeitung Karl Krause, 1928, Liebenhalle, p. 9-13 .
Web links
- Liebenhalle manor district. Czauderna / Heubaum, accessed on January 19, 2019 .
- Salt and Salzgitter. City of Salzgitter, accessed on March 23, 2016 .
- Graduation pavilion in the rose garden. City of Salzgitter, accessed on March 23, 2016 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , pp. 9–13
- ^ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , pp. 20–35
- ^ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , pp. 20–21
- ↑ Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Certificate of Heinrich IV. From 1086 ( Memento from April 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , pp. 54–58.
- ^ W. Benz: Salzgitter 1942–1992 , p. 547
- ↑ Mechthild Wiswe : The field names of the Salzgitter area . Self-published by the Braunschweigischer Geschichtsverein, Braunschweig 1970, DNB 458674877 , p. 480/81 (at the same time: Diss. University of Göttingen, 1968).
- ^ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , pp. 55, 58, 177.
- ↑ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , pp. 64–66
- ↑ Economic and Social History , pp. 377–390
- ↑ W. Benz: Salzgitter 1942–1992 , p. 557
- ^ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , p. 141
- ↑ Economic and Social History , pp 396-398.
- ^ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , pp. 131, 142–146
- ↑ Economic and Social History, p. 399 | Author = Hans H. Quentmeier
- ^ W. Benz: Salzgitter 1942–1992 , pp. 557, 563.
- ↑ Economic and Social History , pp. 406–407.
- ^ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , pp. 15-16, 88, 180.
- ^ Zobel: Heimatbuch des Landkreis Goslar , p. 12
- ^ Zobel: Heimatbuch des Landkreis Goslar , p. 12.
- ↑ W. Benz: Salzgitter 1942–1992 , p. 563.
- ^ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , p. 139.
- ↑ Kolbe: Saline Salzliebenhalle , pp. 106-108, 134
Coordinates: 52 ° 2 ′ 47.5 " N , 10 ° 22 ′ 15.7" E