Melt valley

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Melt valley
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Image wanted BW
location Germany
Waters Ohbach
Mountains Westerwald / Siebengebirge
Geographical location 50 ° 39 '14 "  N , 7 ° 15' 45"  E Coordinates: 50 ° 39 '14 "  N , 7 ° 15' 45"  E
Schmelztal (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Melt valley
height 100 to  220  m above sea level NHN
length 4 km

The Schmelztal is a valley in the area of ​​the city of Bad Honnef , which marks the border between the Siebengebirge and the Rheinwesterwälder volcanic ridge. It connects the valley area of ​​Bad Honnef with the uphill district of Aegidienberg and is accompanied by Landesstraße 144 (Schmelztalstraße).

geography

The Schmelztal runs from the Beuel district in a north-easterly direction through the Honnef city forest . In terms of natural space, the valley itself can be assigned to the upper northern edge of the Rheinwesterwälder volcanic ridge extending to the south (more spaciously the Niederwesterwald ), but is viewed as a geographical border to the Siebengebirge in the north. The valley is accompanied along its entire length by the Ohbach or the Stenzbach at the upper entrance to the valley . A right side valley is that at 174  m above sea level. The Einsiedlertal valley that flows into the NHN and leads up to the Löwenburg . The mountains and hills rising on the left (southern) side of the valley include the Kitzenhardt , Wingstberg and Schultheisenleiberg , while the right (northern) mountains include the Augusthöhe , Jungfernhardt , Schellkopf , Ziegenhardt and Reisberg .

Mining

Pits in the Schmelz- / Einsiedlertal
pit Mined
ores
Eagle Lead , zinc , copper
Old Fritz / Eva Lead, zinc, pluckers
Bergen city Lead, copper
Ludwig Lead, zinc, copper
Mariannaglück (I / II) zinc
Theresia /
Happy Elise 		Lead, zinc, copper
Theodore copper
Veronica Copper, iron

The Schmelztal (formerly also Schmelzertal ) is named after the smelters that were connected to some ore mines in and on the Schmelz- and in the neighboring Einsiedlertal. There is located in the so-called mountain Stadter lode the most significant zone of lead - and zinc veins ( galena / sphalerite ) of Siebengebirgsmuseum space. The mining in the area of Honnef can be the first time for the year 1753 show as the Cologne banker Wilhelm Hack a general investiture for the parishes Aegidienberg, Dolldorf and Honnef was granted. Theresia , Glücklicher Johannes and St. Marcus Glück are believed to be the oldest mines in the Schmelztal . Between 1810 and 1816 some mines were temporarily closed, and the mining industry in the Schmelztal experienced a new boom due to advances in smelting and extraction technology in the middle of the 19th century.

A decline began in the 1870s, as some ore veins were exhausted and world market prices for lead, zinc and copper collapsed. In World War I occasionally resumed due to the loss of raw material imports, the mining in Schmelztal came then finally to a halt. It left behind extensive dump areas , tunnel mouth holes , pings and ravines .

The most important mines were (from west to east) Alter Fritz , Johannisberg ( consolidated in 1876 from the Happy Elise , Ludwig and Bergenstadt mines , among others ) and Adler .

Grube Theresia / Happy Elise

The first under the name "St. Theresia “well-known mine in Einsiedlertal was already put into operation in 1753, probably by the banker Wilhelm Hack. The name was later changed to Happy Elise . Mainly lead, but also zinc and copper ores were mined here. At the beginning of the 19th century there were several changes of operator and owner, as a result of which a separate mining union "Theresia" was founded with owners primarily from Neuwied . The mine was closed in 1815 and resumed in 1847. In the new phase of activity, a smelter for lead production in connection with a clarification pond , a furnace and a stamping mill were built from 1853 onwards . From 1857 a steam engine was used to extract the ores . At that time the pit covered an area of ​​179 hectares and its workforce up to 60 miners (grouped together in their own miners' team ), the shaft depth was 38 m. In 1868 the mining operations were stopped. Remains of a washing plant and a tunnel mouth hole have been preserved above ground, as well as mine dumps. The mine is a ground monument under monument protection .

Old Fritz pit

The pit extending from the south side of Schmelztals to southern slope of Wingstbergs to which a west-northwest trending is Bleizinkerzgang. The neighboring Eva mine also belonged to the latter . Zinc, lead and copper ores were extracted there from 1804 to 1811, but mining only started to a large extent after operations were resumed in 1852. The ores were further processed in a newly created processing plant from 1854 . Their transport was now carried out by means of a rail track between the end of the tunnel and the heap, which also attached this new system. At this time the Rheinische Bergwerksgesellschaft in Cologne had taken over the mine.

In 1857 the mine director at the time took public disputes about the pollution of the Ohbach stream by mining minerals, which had been countered years earlier by setting up sewage ponds, as an opportunity to temporarily cease operations. This year the mine had already exceeded its maximum extraction rate of 2,667 quintals of ore with a workforce of 68 employees and a tunnel length of 300 meters. After the output had been reduced to a tenth by 1875, the Alter Fritz mine was finally shut down in 1881. Subsequent owners occasionally tried to resume operations, which did not succeed due to a lack of profitability. The remains of the tunnel system, pingen and some heaps that extend to the Honnef local area belong to the legacy .

Ludwig pit

This pit just north of the Schmelz Valley and west of the Einsiedlertal in the so-called "Johannisberg", in which lead, zinc and copper ores were extracted, can also be traced back to 1753. Between 1816 and 1846 she was decommissioned, the second operating phase ended in 1870. It formed with the adjacent vein Richard an operational unit with a total area of 20.8 ha., Operated by a steam engine shaft was at a depth of 90 m drilled , the total of four tunnels reached a length of 380 m. The output of the Ludwig pit was given as 5,287 quintals of lead ore for one year .

Bergenstadt mine

The pit, initially known as the “Stadtberg”, gave the Bergenstadt gangway its name and was located near the mouth of the Einsiedlertal valley. The lead and copper ore deposits there were only made usable for mining after their discovery in 1851. An area of ​​32.6 hectares was exploited in several tunnels; in 1852 ten miners were employed here. In 1866 the mine was sold. Remnants of local operations are ravines , depressions in the ground and dump areas.

Johannisberg mine / consolidation field

With the progressive expansion of the mine fields in the upper Schmelz and lower Einsiedlertal valleys, the respective tunnels overlapped into one another at the beginning of the 1870s, the medullary sheaths had moved closer together. Therefore in 1876 the pits Happy Elise , Ludwig , Bergenstadt and Mariannaglück (I / II) were consolidated into a mine called Johannesberg with the aim of joint ore smelting and joint sale . In the year of the merger, the mine, which from 1878 was owned by the newly founded Johannisberg union, was sold. At that time, it included a machine house , two forges , three rolling mills , a crusher - as part of a central processing plant and an office building.

In the meantime, the Johannisberg mine was put back into operation by a Düsseldorf company during the First World War . In 1918 a new administration building was built for this purpose in the upper Schmelztal. By the end of the war at the latest, the economic basis for further mining ceased, so that the mine was liquidated , sold and finally abandoned in 1920. The arched ore vein of the Johannesberg consolidation field is the most extensive in the Bergenstadter vein and is known at around 500 m. The average thickness of the lead ores is 80 cm.

traffic

An undeveloped path led through the Schmelztal as part of the Rheinstraße between Honnef and Flammersfeld , which was expanded to the Prussian district road (today's Landesstraße 144) around 1855. In 1894/95 the Honnef basalt union built a horse-drawn tram through the Schmelztal ("Schmelztalbahn"), which was used to transport the basalt mined on the Himberg and Dachsberg . It was a total of 4.9 km long, changed the side of the then district road several times and ended shortly before Bad Honnef at a valley station at about 123  m above sea level. NHN . At the end of 1905 the line was closed.

Buildings and structures

Laundry Mesenholl (2019)
Mesenholl laundry from a bird's eye view (2019)
Mesenholl laundry, Schmelztalstrasse 39
At the lower exit of the Schmelztal, the Mesenholl laundry facility had been located since around 1900 , which belonged to the Hohenhonnef Lung Clinic 100 m above and was connected to it via a Bremsberg . The factory buildings have been vacant since the laundry was closed in the 1980s and were left to decay until the end. Since 2018 there have been concrete plans by the owner for residential use on the area, whereby the existing main building is to be retained.
Schmelztal hunting lodge
Jagdhaus Schmelztal, Schmelztalstrasse 50
In August 1903, in the middle of the Schmelztal, the hunting lodge in the Schmelztal was opened, which initially served as a guesthouse with an excursion café, from 1929 as a so-called "Waldschenke" and later as a hotel (status: 1950). In 1988 it was converted into an event location, today it is operated as a swingers club .
House Einsiedel
House Einsiedel, Schmelztalstrasse 51
In the administration building erected in 1918 on the occasion of the temporary resumption of mining, a café and hotel was set up under the name Haus Einsiedel after the Second World War , in which a swingers club also opened from 1980. The building burned down at the end of 2004.
sports ground
At the lower exit of the Schmelztal or at the upper entrance of Honnef is the sports field of FV Bad Honnef , which was converted into an artificial turf field in 2008 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Institute for Regional Studies (ed.); Heinrich Müller-Miny (arrangement): Geographical and regional explanations for the topographical map 1: 50000 . 1. Delivery, self-published by the Federal Institute for Regional Studies and Spatial Research, Bad Godesberg 1963, p. 27.
  2. ^ Directory of the mines in the Brühl-Unkel mining area according to Heusler, for the communities of Honnef, Aegidienberg, Ittenbach, Bennerscheid and Berghausen. 1897, pp. 235-238.
  3. ↑ a b c Geological State Office North Rhine-Westphalia (Ed.); Gangolf Knapp, Klaus Vieten: Geological map of North Rhine-Westphalia 1: 25,000. Explanations for sheet 5309 Königswinter . 3rd, revised edition, Krefeld 1995, p. 50.
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Wegener: From the happy Elise to the help of God. In: Archäologie im Rheinland 1992. Rheinland Verlag, Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-7927-1384-5 , pp. 161/162.
  5. ↑ Carsten Gussmann, Wolfgang Clössner: The Heisterbacher Valley Railway and industrial railways in the Seven Mountains. History, vehicles, track plans and maps. EK-Verlag, Freiburg (Breisgau) 2006, ISBN 3-88255-456-8 ( Regional Transport History 39), p. 41.
  6. ↑ The Bad Honnef indoor swimming pool has been sold. In: General-Anzeiger Bonn . September 15, 2004, accessed January 24, 2018 .
  7. ↑ The old laundry in Bad Honnef is falling into disrepair , General-Anzeiger , December 18, 2018
  8. ^ Greven's address book of the Sieg-Kreis 1950 , Greven's Adressbuch-Verlag, Cologne 1950. ( online )
  9. ↑ Karl Garbe (Ed.): Bad Honnefer picture book. Junge Verlag, Bonn 1989, pp. 77/78.
  10. ↑ Holger Handt: The “dreamland” goes up in flames. In: General-Anzeiger Bonn . December 28, 2004, accessed January 24, 2018 .
  11. ↑ S. Göckeler: artificial turf. FV Bad Honnef, 23 August 2010, archived from the original on 11 February 2013 ; accessed on January 24, 2018 .