Rüblinghauser Hut
The Rüblinghauser Hütte also called Henriettenhütte near Rüblinghausen (today the city of Olpe , Olpe district ) was an early industrial steelworks . It was one of the first in Westphalia to use coke for smelting ore.
history
Friedrich Harkort had acquired various ore mines and deposits in the Olpe area. From 1822 he owned the Vahlberger Zug mine. He planned to build an ironworks for smelting. When the first plans became known in 1825, Harkort encountered opposition from operators of existing businesses, especially the Wendener Hütte . They feared that a new operation would make the charcoal more expensive and that the prices for industrial mining products from the hammer and smelting works in the area would have to rise. Harkort then acquired the rights to the Elbener Hütte, which had been closed for a long time , and successfully applied for it to be relocated to the place of a no longer operated sheet metal hammer near Rüblinghausen, despite the ongoing opposition from existing companies .
The furnace was blown for the first time in December 1831. In 1855, it was 30 feet tall and 8.5 feet wide. The frame space was made up of brick pillars. Thereupon, against the advice of experts, the blast furnace jacket, made of cast iron plates, rested. The smelter was the first company in the Olpe district and one of the first in the province of Westphalia to use coke for the smelting process. However, this turned out to be too costly. In practice, the hut seems to have continued to use mostly charcoal from the area. From 1852 onwards, coke was used more and more again. Hydro power was used to operate the fan.
In particular, the smelter processed ores from the nearby Vahlberg , Löh and Molitor mines as well as from the Kirchen district . About 20 men were employed in the hut. In 1855 the smelter produced almost 20,000 quintals of iron and thus earned almost 50,000 thalers .
Harkort left the company in 1833. Heinrich Kamp took over the hut for almost 30,000 thalers. In the same year he pledged the hut with various pits to a Frankfurt bank. In 1836 the merchants Jung and Siebel from Kirchen bought the hut. August Jung later ran the company alone. The hut was sold in 1856 to a merchant Lehrkind from Haspe . With the construction of the Ruhr-Sieg-Bahn in 1861, it, like other iron industries in the area without a rail connection, found itself in a peripheral geographical location. In contrast to the companies in Siegerland, they were no longer competitive. As a result, operations were discontinued.
The already dilapidated hut was bought in 1887 by external tradesmen from Amsterdam , Witten and Horchheim , who sold it to a merchant Nölling from Siegen in 1899 . The Kemper brothers bought the smelter from him and set up a foundry and wire drawing shop with a bronze and brass rolling mill . The company Gebr. Kemper still exists today.
The conflict with the existing companies is recorded in the files on the Wendener Hütte in the Westphalian Economic Archives. Sources for Henriettenhütte can also be found in the inventory of Märkische Maschinenbauanstalt AG.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Clemens Wischermann: On the threshold of industrialization (1800-1850). In: Westfälische Geschichte Vol. 3 Düsseldorf 1984, p. 104
literature
- Franz Sondermann: History of the iron industry in the Olpe district. A contribution to the economic history of the Sauerland. Münster 1907, p. 138f.
- August Hirschmann: History of the parish Olpe. Olpe 1930, p. 369f. Partial digitization
- Gabriele Unverferth: Sources on the economic history of the Siegen and Olpe districts in the Westphalian Economic Archives in Dortmund. In: Archivpflege Westfalen and Lippe 16/1981 p. 21