Prescenyklause

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Prescenyklause 2018
Prescenyklause 1913

The Prescenyklause is a massive hermitage near the village of Weichselboden in the municipality of Mariazell in the Bruck-Mürzzuschlag district in Styria . It is the largest massive cave in Austria and the only remaining structure of the once large-scale water transport facilities in the Enns , Salza and Mürz regions . The Prescenyklause in the Styrian Eisenwurzen Nature Park is a rare example of a stone hermitage and the only hitherto known hermitage in Austria that was used for rafting . As a monument of forest engineering achievements from the first half of the 19th century, it has been under monument protection since 1974 ( list entry ).

history

The Salzatal became increasingly scoured from the Middle Ages to the enormous demand for wood of the Styrian Erzberg and the hardware industry on the Enns cover. Until the 16th and 17th centuries, the forest deposits near the hut were largely exhausted and the more remote valleys were opened up. Bringing wood to the Salza is documented in 1373. As early as 1570 the Großreiflinger rake was built at the mouth of the Salza in Großreifling , where the wood was partly recovered and floated further down the land route to Eisenerz and partly the Enns. Upstream of the Salza, trift clauses were built everywhere, with which the collected wood was fed to the Großreifling rake. In 1750 the first hermitage was built near Gußwerk.

The Prescenyklause near Gußwerk, which opens up the entire upper Salzatal valley, was built between 1841 and 1848 after the wooden hermitage from 1826, which previously stood in the same place, had become dilapidated. Forester Presceny was responsible for the preparatory work, the actual construction of the hermitage from 1843 was under the direction of the architect Johann P. Padok from Eisenerz .

The use of Klausen for rafting is known in Austria only from the Prescenyklause. Rafting was possible every day thanks to the additional water supplied by the Prescenyklause, except in midsummer when water was scarce - after the transition from coal and firewood industry for iron smelting to timber industry, it played an economically important role for the region. With rafts, long wood could be transported much more gently - and also in longer logs - and thus brought much more money than firewood, and the Styrian iron industry was already on the wane from the beginning of high industrialization . The Salza has a special position in Austria in that on the one hand it is long and wide enough that raft building is profitable, on the other hand it only comes from the Limestone Alps and therefore has enormous low water at times. Due to the large river hermit, it was possible to keep the Salza floodable for most of the time through controlled water supply. Their main purpose was to catch the felled wood from the area, then the rafts were built, the hermitage opened and the groups of rafts washed away.

In the years 1926 to 1928 and 1951 extensive renovations were carried out. In 1954 the rafting was stopped. The massive construction of the hermitage made it possible to use it as a forestry structure for over 100 years.

1985-1987 it was for the new plant Prescenyklause of Maria cell readapted. For this purpose, the existing dam wall was renovated and reinforced and a tunnel was cut through the rock next to the wall. The dammed water flows through this rock tunnel and drives two Voith turbines that produce electricity. The entire power plant is underground and therefore not visible. Which is controlled underground power station from the headquarters in Mariazell. Through this construction, the original hermitage could be preserved, and at the same time its continued use was secured (the other old forest hydraulic structures in Austria have fallen into disrepair and largely disappeared due to the enormous maintenance effort). The power plant has an output of around 1.5 MW.

Today the Prescenyklause exists in its original form thanks to careful repair measures. It is owned by the City of Vienna , the small power plant is operated by Stadtbetriebe Mariazell  GmbH.

architecture

The Prescenyklause was built as a massive masonry hermitage between two rock walls - this made it possible to dammed the Salza over a length of 1.2 km to a maximum water depth of 7.25 m. The water and air side dams and their connecting transverse walls consist of ashlar stones, the cavities were filled with loose stone material and clay. The length is 47.5 m, the thickness in the middle is 8.5 m, at the edge 15 m, and the height 9 m. The dam wall has three throughflow openings, of which the two outer openings were also used for drifting and rafting operations, the middle one was used to drain off the dammed floods; Here, wooden impact pipes released the flow openings in a matter of seconds. The lifting gates of the two outer locks could also be operated manually from the top of the wall using cogwheels.

literature

Web links

Commons : Prescenyklause  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Styria - immovable and archaeological monuments under monument protection. ( Memento from August 20, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF), ( CSV ). Federal Monuments Office , as of January 19, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c Helmut Wilsdorf, Walther Herrmann, Kurt Löffler: Mining, forest, rafts: Studies on the history of rafting in the service of the mining industry and the mining transport problem. In: Bergakademie Freiberg: Freiberger Forschungshefte , issue 28, German publishing house for basic industry, 1960
  3. ↑ Almost every Austrian work from the 19th century that deals with the subjects of rafting and drifting refers to the Prescenyklause.
  4. ↑ Small power station Prescenyklause in operation . In: ÖZE. Österreichische Zeitschrift für Elektrizitätswirtschaft , Volume 41, 1988, p. 37 ff.
  5. ↑ References ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bhm-ing.com archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , BHM Ingenieure Engineering & Consulting GmbH, bhm-ing.com
  6. ↑ Stadtbetriebe Mariazell Gesellschaft mbH , in compnet.at

Coordinates: 47 ° 39 ′ 30.4 ″  N , 15 ° 9 ′ 10.5 ″  E