Stonecutters
Stone cutter was the profession of extracting and pre-processing natural stone in construction, ashlar , paving stones and other stones in quarries . It is a historical occupation that can be regarded as extinct in Central Europe.
Historical usage
In addition to the term for a worker who was engaged in the quarry with the extraction and rough finishing of blocks, the stonemason and stone sculptor were also known as stone carvers well into the 19th century .
Work in the quarry
Up until the 1950s, work in the quarries was based on manual labor, which was paid in piece or hourly wages. In the quarry, there was a division of labor, unskilled workers did auxiliary work, stone cutters broke stones, preformed stone , made bricks and broke stone blocks from the quarry wall . The trained stonemasons performed fine work on workpieces that were profiled or specially shaped.
Usually day laborers and small farmers were recruited as unskilled workers, who supplemented their income in spring, summer and autumn. They had to move rubble, overburden and earth down to the stone and help with transporting the natural stones to the stonemasons. In winter it was not possible to work in the quarry due to ice, snow and the risk of slipping when transporting stones; furthermore stones froze to the ground and to one another.
There were also those who made paving stones . This was done either by hand or with stone splitting machines that were powered either by steam or electrical energy. Splitting machines came into the quarries around 1900. In earlier times, paving and gravel cutting was often done by children and women.
The work in the quarry was extremely strenuous physical work. The rough stones and ballast were transported in lorries that had to be loaded by hand; Heavy stones were moved with primitive lifting tools such as rollers or with so-called box winches. Up until the 1930s there were wooden derricks that made it possible to transport individual large blocks of stone. Trucks were used in the quarries from around 1930. The physical and health stresses caused by stone dust were great. Plastering by hand was monotonous and purely physical work. It was not until after 1900 that the patented invention of the stone splitting machine using a friction drop hammer by the Dane Ferdinand Weiller brought some relief, which was first used in 1901 for Lausitz granite in Germany and later in 1904 in the Bavarian Forest by Granit-AG Regensburg in the Vilshofen plant.
Women were also employed in the quarries. They had to help with the loading of the carts with rubble, with the clearing work and with sorting the paving stones. The tedious grinding and polishing of natural stones and also the chopping of gravel were mostly women's work. When it became possible to grind with electrically powered machines, almost exclusively women in all quarry areas in Germany operated the so-called stationary articulated arm grinding machines .
Stonecutters
The training to become a stone cutter usually took place in the respective company. There was also an additional school education for stone carvers, for example the stone carving school in the Bavarian Forest from 1889, in which lessons were held on four evenings in winter and on Sundays. This initiative ended with the beginning of the First World War . In 1922 a stone carving school was set up in Hauzenberg , which held classes on Sundays and public holidays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. throughout the year. Such stone carving schools presumably also existed in other mining areas in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
activities
Loosening the rough stones from the rock layers was the job of the stone carvers. Experience and “reading” the rock layer in terms of quality, correct splitting direction and errors were essential for successful stone extraction. The wedge holes had to be precisely aligned. This required in-depth knowledge of the existing stone material and solid skills in setting the wedge pockets, which first had to be hammered in by hand in a straight line in the direction of the split. This work requires precision for the split to be successful. This activity was also called grinding . Special stone splitting tools were used for splitting . The stone splitting technique with iron wedges is ancient and has been demonstrably used since the time of ancient Rome.
However, the splitting effect is not generated by the cutting edge of the wedge, but exclusively by the pressure on the flank of the wedge against the two triangular sides of the wedge pockets. It is therefore important that there is as seamless contact as possible between the flanks of the wedge and the side surfaces of the wedge pocket. This is one of the reasons why wedge pockets are usually chiseled out very carefully. If the wedges sit on the bottom of the wedge pockets, there is a risk that the wedge will come loose and fly like a projectile against the direction of propulsion. This was a considerable risk of injury for stone cutters and stone breakers. There were also so-called springs, which were sheets of iron that were inserted into the sides of the wedge pockets to optimize the direction of the split.
Boreholes for receiving explosives were made with hand drills and later with pneumatic drills and filled with explosive powder, mostly black powder . Explosives were mainly used to detach large layers of rock or to remove “dead” rock that was used as gravel.
Another method for splitting the stones was the use of patent wedges with two specially shaped springs that were inserted into the drill holes and optimized the wedge effect and splitting. The iron wedges were driven in with a sledgehammer .
In order to bring the split stone to the required size, so-called setting hammers were used in granite quarries to knock off larger protruding stones. The stone masons split and straightened the raw block to the required size, which is now called splitting or pushing. Bossing, the rough preparation of the stone shape, was done by the stone masons for the stone masons. The stone carvers prepared the workpieces so that there was only an overhang of three centimeters (called fractional inches ) on the sides to be machined . But the stone carvers also formed bricks that were used in buildings. In doing so, they had to watch out for flaws in the stone and manufacture the stones to size. The visible sides of the bricks were mostly worked more finely, depending on the stone, with a mallet or chisel iron.
Social
The daily working hours of the stone cutters in the quarry area of the Bavarian Forest began at 6 a.m. and lasted 10 hours. The weekly working time was 50 hours. There was a break from 8:00 am to 8:30 am, the "snack" and from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm the lunch break. After work they moved into the pub together. On average, stone cutters in the Bavarian Forest are said to have only lived to be 35 years old in 1910.
Safety shoes with steel caps, appropriate functional work clothing, the use of protective goggles to protect against stone fragments or the use of protective gloves and protective measures against harmful rock dust that causes silicosis , a lung disease, were not found in quarries until the 1950s. Many stone cutters who worked on rocks containing quartz (especially granite, gneiss and sandstones) fell ill early and died of silicosis after a long period of illness. There were often serious and fatal accidents due to collapsing rock walls after rain, explosions or in the spring after the ice melted. The loss of limbs through slipping stone blocks or workpieces and bruises on the hands or legs were more common.
The hourly earnings of a stone cutter in the 1920s were 38 to 40 pfennigs in the Bavarian Forest. In comparison, a ½ liter of beer cost 50 pfennig, a roll ( roll ) 5 pfennig and a thin slice of meat loaf 10 pfennig. There were canteens in the quarries, where the stone cutters could write if they couldn't pay. Wages were paid fortnightly or weekly on Saturdays. The bill had to be paid in the canteen after the wages were received, so many workers went home without wages.
Politics and culture
The stone carvers in the Bavarian Forest in particular recognized that they were dependent on one another due to their social situation and founded a support association, the so-called Zwickverein . All stone carvers paid a certain amount into this association, which supported members who had an accident and their families from the contributions. From this self-governing association, unionized groups related to the SPD emerged. The granites of the Bavarian Forest were considered communists after the First World War . “The Steinhauer was almost never concerned with party-political calculations, but with a fundamental social attitude and grassroots democratic say. […] To many workers, the communists simply seemed more consistent than the SPD. ” In the last free election before the seizure of power in Bavaria, the KPD received 43 percent each in the“ stone carving stronghold ”of Wotzdorf near Hauzenberg , the NSDAP and the SPD only 7 percent each.
There was also a stone carving culture. Everyone came together for the parish fair, from day laborers to trained stonemasons and company bosses. There were also stone carving balls. The entire workforce took part in weddings. After work, the stone carvers in the Bavarian Forest went to the tavern together. If a work colleague died, everyone went to his funeral and then to the pub. There was “singing and laughing because the“ outside at the cemetery ”also partied. Perhaps the dead person would resent it if he was mourned. "
Dead profession
While the quarry is common in German as a job title, in the English-speaking Quarryman (English Quarry = stone quarry) and in the Spanish-speaking countries Cantero (Spanish Cantera = stone quarry) is used. There the relation to the quarry, to the job of the stone crusher, the one who breaks stones and does not cut / form them , becomes clear.
German-speaking area
Today this profession of stone cutter has died out; there is neither in Austria nor in Germany a corresponding training occupation profile . In German-speaking countries, this profession became superfluous due to the mechanization of stone mining in the 1950s. In today's quarries, high-tech machinery is used, and old techniques are only used in quarries, where quarries are occasionally used.
Since 2010, after the last educational revision of the stone professions, the stone cutter no longer exists as a training profession in Switzerland.
Italy
In Italy there was a comparable profession, the riquadratori , also known as "quadratori" for short, the stone carvers of Carrara marble , who detached the blocks from the wall and then shaped them into square blocks with a hammer and pointed iron on the forecourt of the quarries. The workers' names came from these blocks. The later fine work on the marble stone blocks by stonemasons and stone sculptors followed after they were transported to the valley.
Probably the most labor-sharing process prevailed in the quarries of Carrara. The capo cava was responsible for the organization in the quarry and the selection of the stone blocks. The techniaiolo was the specialist who removed the parts from the quarry walls that would endanger the lives of the quarry workers if they fell . The galleot was the laborer who cleared the stone waste on handcarts. On the forecourt of the quarries there were shelters that protected from the sun and the reflection of the bright quarry walls. The filista operated the wire saws.
The transport of the raw blocks from the Apuan Alps on a rope using the so-called lizzatura (Italian: Lizza = sledge) to a railway line or directly into the valley was a dangerous undertaking. As specialists, the Lizzatori handled the transport of individual stone blocks up to a weight of around 25 tons. In 1907 a cable car was built, which replaced a particularly dangerous Lizzatura route and transported the marble blocks. Inclined elevators were also built. The profession of lizzatori no longer exists either; In Carrara, in addition to the mechanization of the quarries, the infrastructure was also improved in the 1960s. The quarries were opened up by a road network that replaced the railway line, which was relatively far from the quarries.
Spain
In Spain those who work in the quarry (Spanish: Cantera) are called "Cantero" (quarry workers). There, in a marble school in Fines, the Escuela del Marmol de Andalucia , there is an approximately 6-week training course to become a quarry worker, which in particular includes loosening the blocks using large-scale drilling machines and explosives, gravel production, stone transport with wheel loaders, excavators and work safety. Here, too, it is no longer the stone cutter in the original sense.
Today's quarries for natural stone
For example, there were more than 10,000 stone cutters in the Bavarian Forest up until the 1940s. Today this profession has become superfluous, because the mechanization in the quarries poses other tasks than manual work. Rough blocks in formats of around 3.60 × 1.50 to 2.00 × 1.50 meters are broken, which are either loosened with explosives or with large equipment such as scrapers or wire saws . In some cases, self-propelled carriages are used to produce drill holes for splitting or blasting with several drilling machines mounted in series. The stone is transported with wheel loaders that lift the large raw blocks. In addition, the rock waste is processed into gravel or stone flour in large-scale plants. The idea that there are still stone cutters in the quarries who break and format stone by hand is a thing of the past thanks to advanced mechanization. In individual cases, hand drills powered by compressed air are still used. Today the people who work in the quarry are mostly excavator drivers, crane drivers, machine operators or people who have been specially trained or semi-skilled for the respective machines.
- Modern quarry operation
Stone transport with a wheel loader that lifts raw blocks weighing tons
Schräme (chainsaw) with an approximately 5 meter long sword for sawing out the raw blocks
Wire saw, which formats the raw blocks weighing up to 30 tons to the required dimensions
Stone carving museums
literature
- Winfried Helm (Ed.): Granit . Tute Druck, Salzweg 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-023087-5 .
- Hans Schüller: Basalt lava operation between the Rhine and Eifel . Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-86680-196-7 .
Web links
- The last of his class. The stone cutter from the Bergisches Land.
- Descriptions, photos and videos of the stone carving trade in the Mark Brandenburg
Individual evidence
- ^ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: German Dictionary. Leipzig 1854–1961, Volume 18, Column 2091 (keyword Steinhauer ). - In northern Germany, the latter word usage was even more important. In Bremen there was a guild of stone carvers (= stone sculptors) from the 16th century. until 1826, cf. Johann Focke: The Bremen foremen from older times. Bremen 1890, pp. XXI-XXIII.
- ↑ Paul Praxl : A main source of food in this area. The history of the granite rock in Eastern Bavaria. In: Helm: Granite. P. 159.
- ↑ Steinhauerschule Büchlberg ( 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. , accessed August 8, 2009.
- ↑ a b Das Leben der Steinhauer ( 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. , accessed August 9, 2009.
- ↑ Christine Lorenz-Lossin: “... they were a disreputable people! About the life and work of stone carvers. ” In: Helm: Granit. P. 234.
- ^ A b Lorenz-Lossin: Steinhauer. Pp. 245-247.
- ↑ Layered slabs are only loosened manually from the composite stone in the Solnhofen slab limestone quarries with a kind of hoe by so-called chopping masters , because machines cannot be used. This activity is limited to this rock deposit and cannot be compared to that of a stone cutter.
- ↑ Luciana and Tiziano Mannoni: Marble, Material and Culture. P. 85. Callwey, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-766-70505-9 .
- ^ Mannoni: Marble. P. 82 ff.
- ^ Mannoni: Marble. P. 106.
- ↑ http://www.marmol.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=2 ( 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. Training as a stone cutter at the Spanish marble school in Fines.
- ↑ An example of how work was done in Spain earlier (tellingly, the following literature speaks of "Cantero jubilado / Retired Quarryman"): " Meanwhile they [Cantero] tell us how they detached marble block in former times: first they drove holes through the horizontal part with a big mallet and a point, and when there was sufficent space they put old pieces of saw, made of steel, and in between an iron wedge, and they whacked away to open the gate and, afterwards, with an iron bar , about three yards long, resting an another perpendicular one, they leverded it an the block got detached. “Quoted from Nicole Pawlowski: Las Caras de la Piedra / The Faces of Stone. Ed. Cosentino. oA, 2007, p. 112.
