St. Anna's gallery
The St. Anna tunnel is a show mine near Nothweiler in Rhineland-Palatinate .
history
About 45 million years ago, during the formation of the Upper Rhine Graben, iron-rich hydrothermal fluids rose from the crystalline base along fault zones and were precipitated in the 250 million old red sandstone in the pore space, in fault zones and on fissures.
It is not known how long the iron ore was mined on the Kolbenberg. Existing pings also testify to opencast mining . An ironworks , probably supplied from the Nothweiler mine, was built in 1493 by the Weyl brothers from Haguenau in Schönau (Palatinate) ; The use of the ore deposits near Nothweiler is certain from 1582. Historical data are missing until the 18th century, but the mine remained closely connected to the ironworks in Schönau. After the smelter was destroyed in the Thirty Years' War , the mine was also abandoned around 1635. After overexploitation for a short period of time in the 1760s, mining operations were resumed and continued until 1810, when the known ore reserves were exhausted. Therefore, in 1829, the mountain was re-opened through the St. Anna tunnel; the mouth of today's show mine was completed in 1838. In 1835 Ludwig von Gienanth bought the Schönau iron and steel works including the ore mine near Nothweiler. In 1883 the smelter and the ore mine were closed. The reason was that the charcoal needed to smelt the ore was displaced by coke and so the interest shifted to other mining areas .
From 1976 the tunnel was converted into a show mine, which was inaugurated on July 22, 1978. In 2008 an information center with a mineral exhibition was opened.
description
Of around 10,000 m of hand-cut tunnels, 420 m are accessible to visitors. Among other things, the lintel shaft , weather shaft and cistern of the tunnel as well as historical tools and equipment can be viewed. The fall shaft was used to crush the ore . The ore was thrown into the 40 m deep shaft. When falling, the ore chunks hit the walls and shattered. At the bottom of the shaft a tunnel through which the crushed ore brought to light and led stamp mill was ground to the desired size. At loamy, impermeable places, water was collected in cisterns, passed on and used to drive the stamping mill.
Only iron ore was mined in the mine . The ore had a high manganese content , which resulted in high strength of the steel produced. The temperature in the tunnel is a constant 8 ° C, the humidity is 80%.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ GH Eisbacher, W. Fielitz: Karlsruhe and its region - Northern Black Forest, Kraichgau, Neckar Valley, Upper Rhine-Graben, Palatinate Forest and Swabian Alb . In: P. Rothe (Ed.): Sammlung geologischer Führer , Vol. 103, 342 S. Borntraeger, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-443-15089-1 .
- ^ A b Hans Walling: The ore mining in the Palatinate: from its beginnings to its end Verlag Landesamt für Geologie und Bergbau Rheinland-Pfalz , 2005, ISBN 978-3-00-017820-7 , pp. 143–144
- ↑ a b Klara van Eyll (ed.), Renate Schwärzel (ed.): Deutsche Wirtschaftsarchive , Franz Steiner Verlag , 1994, ISBN 978-3-515-06211-4 , pp. 98-99 [1]
- ↑ a b Eisenerzgrube Nothweiler , accessed on August 10, 2010.
Coordinates: 49 ° 4 ′ 0.8 ″ N , 7 ° 48 ′ 40.4 ″ E