Sleeping house

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Sleeping house in the former Von der Heydt mine .

A dormitory was a type of structural accommodation that was particularly widespread in the Saar district and was used as a place to sleep by miners during the working week. Sleeping houses were built by the Prussian state mines in the 19th century near the conveyor systems.

In the iron industry, too, dormitories were built to provide accommodation for workers who came from further afield.

history

Since 1815 the coal mines of the Saar region were owned by the Prussian state . With a total of less than 2000 employees, there were already problems in the 1830s to find living space for new hired miners. Hundreds of them lived in pit buildings, some in attics , where they slept on the wooden floor with a straw mattress. Leopold Sello , from 1816 to 1857 President of the Royal Prussian Mining Directorate in Saarbrücken, suggested in 1842 in a “letter on the accommodation of foreign miners in dormitories” the recruitment of “unemployed hands” from remote areas: “These people go to their homes on Saturday On Mondays, groceries for the whole week and sleep tightly in the rooms they have been given ”. For the miners commuting between the pit and their hometown, the terms Saarganger , Satchel man or Hartfüßer became common . In the longer term, Sello sought to enable miners to build houses near the mine in the form of so-called premium houses through loans and cash bonuses .

The construction of dormitories could not keep pace with the rapid expansion of mining: From the Von der Heydt mine built in 1850, it is reported in 1854 that 160 workers sleep on straw sacks and are so crowded that "not every one of these people can use this poor camp" . Bergrat Sello admitted in 1855 that these miners could not charge any sleeping fees, "as happens in properly furnished dormitories." From 1855 onwards, 400 of the 1,583 miners employed at the Von der Heydt mine were able to spend the night in two temporary sleeping sheds.

In the 1870s, a new sleeping house concept was developed, which tried to take into account the criticism of the conditions and to stand out from the old sleeping sheds. Sleeping house I in Von der Heydt, which was built between 1873 and 1875 for 250,000 marks , is regarded as the prototype of this type, also known as the “representative sleeping barracks”. The two-storey building, designed for 250 miners, with a floor area of ​​70 by 19 meters is made of sandstone , and a central projecting emphasizes the symmetry of the building. In addition to the bedrooms, there were washing facilities, toilets divided into individual cells , cooking and dining rooms and entertainment rooms. Sleeping house II was built between 1886 and 1890; Both buildings are currently used by the Saarland State Office for Cadastre, Surveying and Mapping and the SaarForst State Office.

Between 1911 and 1912, in the late phase of the dormitory system, a dormitory was built on the Maybach mine , which was built in the "pavilion style". During the time of the French mine administration, a last large sleeping house was built in 1920 on the Sulzbacher Mellin mine .

In 1902 there were 29 dormitories with 4,755 residents in the Saar district; In 1910 there were 39 houses with almost 5,000 residents. Due to the reduction in the workforce that began in the mid-1920s, the importance of the dormitories declined; In 1939 there were four facilities that were used by 372 miners. As early as the end of the 19th century, the increasing spread of the railroad had reduced the relative proportion of Saar travelers , which in 1875 had made up a third of the workforce.

everyday life

Dining room in dormitory I of the Von der Heydt pit (around 1905).

"As soon as a worker has arrived in the dormitory, he is under the supervision of the caretaker, to whom he owes obedience in all matters of the house."

- House rules for dormitories dated April 7, 1858.

The miners had a bed, bed linen and a locker at their disposal in the dormitories for a monthly rent of two marks . In addition, communal kitchens could be used, in which food brought from home, mostly potatoes, could be prepared on stoves that were kept constantly under fire. In addition, sales outlets of the “Royal Prussian Consum Association” set up right next to the dormitories often served to supply the miners.

A caretaker appointed by the Mining Authority was responsible for keeping things tidy in the sleeping quarters, and he appointed room elders for the individual bedrooms with usually seven to twelve beds. Gambling, spitting out and knocking out the pipes were forbidden in the sleeping quarters. The residents had to be in proper suit ; Work clothes were only allowed to be worn at the beginning and end of the shift. The dormitory residents had to be washed within half an hour after the end of the shift. Women were only allowed to enter the dormitory for a short time in order to provide their relatives with food or clothing. The front door was closed at 9:30 pm; the light extinguished at 10:00 p.m.

The dormitory rooms were decorated with pictures of the emperor, various mountain officials, princes, generals and politicians; the bunkhouse IV of the pit Heinitz are wall sayings known:

Germany, Germany above everything, above everything in the world, if it always sticks together in a brotherly manner for protection and defiance!
Do you want to borrow, come tomorrow!
Only moderately brave boys who have the leather behind !
A good drink made from barley and hops, these are the best miracle drops!

rating

The industrial archaeologist and art historian Rainer Slotta counted the dormitories “undoubtedly among the most remarkable and typical phenomena of Saarland mining in the 19th and early 20th centuries.” For Slotta, the wall slogans placed in the dormitories “clearly show that the mountain treasury had a clear , paramilitary barracking and disciplining the miners. ”For the historians Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Horst Steffens, the construction of the dormitories was not only motivated by the company's interest in avoiding long and performance-reducing commutes. Since the miners continued to have the opportunity to subsist through animal husbandry and agriculture, they were not solely dependent on the market, which gave the Prussian mining authorities more leeway for a low-wage policy. Restricted in their mobility, the disciplining effect of the penal regulations increased for the " worker farmers", which provided for a work ban for the entire area as the toughest sanction, according to Mallmann and Steffens.

literature

  • Hans-Jürgen Serwe: "These people go to their homes on Saturday ..." Miners' life in Von der Heydt. In: Klaus-Michael Mallmann (Ed.): We were never really at home. Voyages of discovery in the Saar region 1815–1955. 2nd edition, JHWDietz successor, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-8012-0124-4 , pp. 50-55.
  • Ministry for trade, industry and public works (ed.): The facilities for the benefit of the workers in the mines of Prussia. Ernst & Korn, Berlin 1876/77 ( digitized version, PDF file, 1.4 MB, pp. 58–61 ).

Web links

Commons : Schlafhaus  - More pictures

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.alte-schmelz.de/Ansicht/Rundgang/Stationen/Station2.htm accessed on April 1, 2012
  2. ^ Letter from Sellos dated February 11, 1842, quoted in Serwe, Menschen , p. 52.
  3. ↑ Delf Slotta: Mine and settlement Von der Heydt. Insights into the life of miners in the 19th century  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.delfslotta.de  (Accessed October 6, 2012)
  4. ↑ Report of January 19, 1854, quoted in Serwe, Menschen , p. 51.
  5. ↑ Sello on January 13, 1855, quoted in Serwe, Menschen , p. 51.
  6. ↑ On architecture see Serwe, Menschen , p. 53; Delf Slotta: Von der Heydt mine and settlement. Insights into the life of miners in the 19th century  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.delfslotta.de  (Accessed October 6, 2012).
  7. ↑ Delf Slotta: Miners Housing Construction in Saarland - Two Centuries of Settlements - A Time Travel! In: 60 years. 1949-2009. Foundation for the housing of the miners. Pp. 10–32, here p. 13.
  8. ↑ Figures from Rainer Slotta: winding tower and miner's house. From mining on the Saar. (= Publications from the German Mining Museum Bochum , 17), Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken 1979, ISBN 3-921646-18-9 , p. 98.
  9. ↑ Parapraph 1 of the house rules for the sleeping quarters of the royal coal mines in the mining district of Saarbrücken from April 7, 1858, quoted by Delf Slotta: Miners' housing in Saarland. Two centuries of settlements - a journey through time. from the Miner's Housing Foundation (accessed July 10, 2010).
  10. ↑ Slotta, winding tower, p. 99f.
  11. ↑ quoted in Slotta, Förderturm, p. 100.
  12. ↑ Slotta, winding tower , p. 99.
  13. ↑ Slotta, winding tower , p. 100.
  14. ↑ Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Horst Steffens: reward of effort. History of the miners on the Saar. CH Beck, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-406-33988-3 , p. 35.