Lahn marble
As Lahnmarmor (formerly Nassauer marble polishable are called) limestones of the Middle Devonian in the southeast of the Rhenish Massif summarized. The extraction centers were Balduinstein , Diez (both Rhein-Lahn-Kreis , Rhineland-Palatinate), Villmar and Schupbach (both Limburg-Weilburg , Hesse). The quarrying of this natural stone, which is also in demand internationally, has been proven to date back to the 16th century.
Petrography and Distribution
The term " marble " is petrographically incorrect, as this carbonate rock is not overprinted metamorphically . Instead, "marble" is used here as a cultural term for limestones that can be polished and have a marbled texture .
The lively structured Lahn marbles appear in the colors black and gray (colored by carbon ), red and numerous other colors (mostly colored by iron minerals), rarely even white. Sometimes dense deposits of hematite are clearly visible.
All Lahn marbles are 380 million years old biogenic sedimentary rocks . Many of these rocks are so-called mass limestone from the remains of reef- forming organisms. The main reef formers were stromatopores , an extinct group of animals that is systematically mostly placed next to the sponges . Other common fossils in the rock are sea snails and tabulate and rugose corals . Also included are dinoflagellates , foraminifera , non-stromatoporic sponges, goniatites , trilobites , ostracods , bryozoa , brachiopods , echinoderms and others. Even then, the reefs were cemented to a relatively solid limestone, mainly through the activity of cyanobacteria . The current texture and hardness of the rock, however, only emerged later through diagenetic processes .
Regional Geologic are the Lahnmarmor deposits in the Lahn trough , a tectonic bulk structure at the edge of the Southeast Rheinische Schiefergebirges between Westerwald and Taunus .
History of mining
The extraction and use of Lahn marbles has been documented over a period of approx. 400 years. Over 100 extraction sites have been identified for this period, which differ significantly in color and structure. Some quarries produced multiple grades, in the case of the Bongard quarry there are around 15 different species. For this reason, certain Lahn marble types are very difficult to identify on historical objects today. The area around Villmar (16th century) and the area around Schupbach (17th century) are among the earliest mining areas for the Lahn marbles . Increased numbers of applications of the material from the quarries around Villmar have been handed down from the 18th century. This includes u. a. the Benedictine Abbey of St. Matthias in Trier.
The beginning of the mining around Schupbach is not exactly clear. In chronicles between 1610 and 1612 "black marble" is mentioned from this place. The Weidemann family of stonemasons had lived in Schupbach and Gaudernbach since 1678, and the popularity of the varieties obtained there increased.
In 1715 the operator delivered eight pillars for the chapel of the Würzburg Cathedral from a quarry near Katzenelnbogen .
Numerous clues emerge from the history of the prison in Diez . In the 18th and 19th centuries, prisoners worked there to a large extent on the limestone mined in the region. As a result, Diez became a center of Lahn marble processing for over 100 years. For example, a fountain (1835–1837) for the market square in Idstein or the base (1836) of the Gutenberg monument in Mainz come from this production . Noteworthy are ten border pillars for the Duchy of Nassau made in Diez prison , which were erected in two stages in 1825 and 1827. After the union with the Weilburg prison in 1811, production in Diez dominated the Lahn marbles market. Despite the well-known high death rate in Diezer Prison, it appeared as an exhibitor at the World Exhibition of 1851 in London with an extensive sample presentation. When the Prussian administration privatized the prison in 1880, the Hergenhahn brothers took over the now well-known stone processing. Since then the sales market has expanded to include the entire German Empire and overseas customers.
As far as we know today, the 19th and first half of the 20th century belong to the period of the most extensive use of Lahn marbles. Modern machine investments and prudent activities, for example by the marble entrepreneur G. Joerissen, enabled successful processing and supra-regional distribution of numerous varieties. The marble works Balduinstein (Guido Krebs) and their later owner W. Thust should also be mentioned here .
The importance of the deposits was estimated to be so high that it was also extracted during the Second World War. From this time deliveries (1940) made of Balduinsteiner gray for the checkout area in the building of the Reichshauptbank by Heinrich Wolff in Berlin are documented.
The mining and processing of Lahn marble ended in 1970. For technical purposes there is still active limestone mining in some places.
Roman times applications of Lahn marble in Xanten are suspected in 1997, but have not yet been proven after closer investigations (2006).
use
In addition to the marble bridge in Villmar and the furnishings of the Weilburg Palace , Lahn marble has been used, for example, for the foyer of the New York Empire State Building , for the palace of the Maharajah of Tagore, for the St. Petersburg Hermitage and for the Kremlin in Moscow. In addition, the Berlin , Würzburg and Mainz cathedral and the Amorbach monastery church were equipped with it. It was also used in the only grave of the apostles north of the Alps in the Trier Benedictine Abbey of St. Matthias . Numerous magnificent buildings in Wiesbaden are also adorned with Lahn marble. Stone sculptors often used the Wirbelau marble for sculptures, which belongs to the group of Lahn marbles .
The foyer of the Wiesbaden Museum is one of the many representative examples of the application of Lahn marbles. Although the deposits are not yet exhausted, stone quarrying is currently not being carried out due to economic and specific demand conditions.
Empire State Building foyer
The base of the Gutenberg monument is made of Lahn marble
Tomb of the apostle Matthias: dark parts of the tomb and altar are made of Lahn marble
Column and wall cladding in Wiesbaden Castle Biebrich
Altar in Ahlbach made of Wirbelau marble
Former Laufbrunnen (1829) from Villmar, today a Cologne fountain
Marble bridge in Villmar
Floor made of Lahn marble in St. Peter and Paul, Villmar
Border column of the Duchy of Nassau, Dillenburg
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Selected Lahn marble types
- Wirbelau marble at Wirbelau
- Edelfels marble near Diez on the Lahn
- Villmar limestone ( Bongard type ) near Villmar
- Villmar limestone (type Unika ) near Villmar
- Steedener Kalkstein ( Steedener Rot ) near Steeden
- Schupbach limestone (type Schupbach Schwarz ) near Schupbach
- Schupbach limestone (type Famosa S ) near Schupbach
Natural monument Quarry Unica and Lahn Marble Museum
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The Unica quarry in Villmar is the only one of over one hundred former Lahn quarries that is accessible. In this abandoned quarry of the Nassauische Marmorwerke Dykerhoff & Neumann there is mainly red Lahn marble ( Unica A ), which was mined with wire saws . This method resulted in a wall about six meters high and 15 meters long, divided into two terraced terraces, which allows a very rare three-dimensional view of the structure of a stroma pore reef from the Devonian .
The Unica municipal quarry was declared a natural monument in 1996. In 2006 the quarry won the Hessian Nature Conservation Prize and was also included in the list of national geotopes . The new building of the Villmar Lahn Marble Museum was opened in the immediate vicinity in 2016 . It shows the origin of the Lahn marble as reef limestone from the Middle Devonian , the history and technology of rock mining and the use of the Lahn marble for buildings and works of art worldwide. The museum is operated by the Lahn Marble Museum eV and has a large collection of samples for the most diverse Lahn marble varieties and selected arts and crafts and artistic objects.
The quarry and museum are designated as a geotope or geopoint of the Westerwald-Lahn-Taunus Geopark, which is certified as a National GeoPark .
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- Thomas Kirnbauer: Nassau Marble or Lahn Marble - a famous Devonian dimension stone from Germany . In: S. Siegesmund, R. Snethlage (Hrsg.): Denkmalgesteine. Festschrift Wolf-Dieter Grimm. Series of publications of the German Society for Geosciences. Issue 59, 2008, pp. 187–218 ( PDF 1.75 MB)
- Website of the Lahn Marble Museum
- Villmar and the marble ( Memento of May 5, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Website of the municipality of Villmar
Web links
- 360 ° panorama tours through the Lahn Marble Museum and Unica Bruch, Villmar
- Villmar and Lahn marble
Individual evidence
- ↑ Susanne Petra Schwenzer, Helga Reucker, Thomas Kirnbauer: The marble border columns of the Duchy of Nassau . In: Nassau Annals. Vol. 113, 2002, pp. 341-394
- ↑ Dietwulf Baatz: Lahn marble in the Colonia Ulpia Traiana? In: Xantener reports , Volume 14, 2006, pp. 303-306
- ↑ for further information about the use of Lahn marble in Weilburg see Helga Reucker: Lahn marble in Weilburg an der Lahn. In: Lahn-Marmor-Nachrichten. Issue 5, 2002, pp. 6–11 ( PDF 1 MB)
- ↑ Willi Wabel: Form Color Shine. Lahn marble in the baroque era. Historical commission for Nassau Wiesbaden 2015. ISBN 978-3-930221-33-2
- ^ Brigitte Schwenzer: Club outing to Wiesbaden. In: Lahn-Marmor-Nachrichten. Issue 7, 2003, pp. 8–11 ( PDF 1 MB), p. 9
- ↑ a b Heiner Heggemann, Adalbert Schraft, Helmut Weinberger: geotopes in Hesse. Hessian State Office for Environment and Geology, Wiesbaden ( PDF 1.2 MB), p. 5 f.
- ↑ Highlights in the Devonian of Germany. Senckenberg World of Biodiversity, accessed July 8, 2015