Nesselberg sandstone

Welfenschloss in Hanover with Nesselberg sandstone

The Nesselberg sandstone (also Nesselberg sandstone and Nesselberg sandstone) occurs in a sandstone deposit in the Nesselberg ridge near Hameln in the vicinity of Altenhagen I , a district of Springe in Lower Saxony . It belongs to a group of sandstones, the Wealden sandstones . It is a sandstone from the Lower Cretaceous . No quarry has been in operation since the 1950s . This sandstone is used in a number of important structures in northern Germany .

Mineral inventory

According to Grimm, this sandstone fluctuates like the Süntelsandstein and Deistersandstein from 78 to 82 percent quartz , 18 to 20 percent rock fragments, heavy metals up to 2 percent and the accessories below 1 percent. The heavy metals and accessories are: zircon , rutile , apatite , tourmaline , muscovite , leucoxene and opaque grains. The grain size is between 0.06 and 0.4 mm.

Rock description and use

The Nesselbergsandstein is a clayey-pebbly sandstone with little shale deposits. Its color is gray, whitish gray and light gray with partially flamed textures. This sandstone mainly contains quartz , in an angular shape, and small amounts of mica . The sandstone is very fine-grained and uniform, its pore volume is significant. There are always clay, the smallest amount of sericite and kaolin in this rock. Since it is a spatially small occurrence, the qualities change little. The rock layers are 12 to 15 meters high.

Already in the late Middle Ages, the Nesselberg sandstone was used in secular and ecclesiastical buildings, as well as masonry, columns , profiled cornices , steps, monuments, tombs and stone carving work . It was mainly installed in the Hanover and Hameln area. Nesselberg sandstone was installed on the Welfenschloss in Hanover, on the Reichstag building in Berlin , and the church in Altenhagen I is made of this sandstone.

A little appreciated quality was installed in 1904/1906 at the Friedenskirche (Grünau) in Berlin.

Changes in the facies in a small space resulted in fluctuations in the quality of the stone . Petrographic investigations were carried out by the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Raw Materials (Berlin-Spandau office).

Development of the quarries

Quarry near Altenhagen (1905)

Quarry operations on the Nesselberg (Leinebergland) are documented from 1732 to 1975 (?). The high point of use and quarries was in the early days and 300 stone workers worked in the main quarry . As early as 1914, the demand fell considerably. In 1938 there was only one quarrying and processing company with 50 stone sculptors and stone masons, in 1948 a small business with 37 employees was counted. In 2008 there was no quarry in operation.

Other sandstone deposits in the region:

literature

Otto Sickenberg, Kurt Brüning: The deposits of Lower Saxony and their management. Dorn, Bremen 1951 ( Geology and Deposits of Lower Saxony. Volume 5), p. 134 ff.

Individual evidence

^ Wolf-Dieter Grimm: Pictorial atlas of important memorial stones of the Federal Republic of Germany. Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation, Munich 1990. ISBN 3-87490-535-7 .
↑ ^a ^b ^c K. Steinike, U. Steinike: In the footsteps of the Nesselberger sandstone - a stone of the late 19th century . (with a contribution by Angela Ehling), Geohistorica, Berlin 2010, issue 6 pp. 42–49, ISSN 1865-0155

[1] Wolf-Dieter Grimm: Pictorial atlas of important memorial stones of the Federal Republic of Germany. Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation, Munich 1990. ISBN 3-87490-535-7 .

[Steinike-2] K. Steinike, U. Steinike: In the footsteps of the Nesselberger sandstone - a stone of the late 19th century . (with a contribution by Angela Ehling), Geohistorica, Berlin 2010, issue 6 pp. 42–49, ISSN 1865-0155