Stone judge

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Stone judge in the Rhön producing curb stones

Steinrichter was a job in quarries for the production of natural stone paving mainly from basalt , but also from granite , gneiss , greywacke and porphyry .

It wasn't an apprenticeship . The workers were trained and carried out the work after an unspecified point in time if, in the opinion of the employer, they were appropriately qualified. For the stone judge, it was important to assess the stone and use the tools correctly. Through experience he had to recognize which stones could be split well.

Corresponding stones were pre- split to appropriate widths with a large splitting hammer , and then the stones were brought into the desired shape and size with a straightening hammer on an "anvil", for which a barrel filled with sand was used. Common sizes were 8/10, 12/14 and 14/16 cm. The dimension 8/10 meant that the stone could be between 8 × 8 and 10 × 10 cm in size, whereby it was conical at the bottom. Stone judges made about 500 stones of this format in one shift . As a rule, they were paid with piecework wages .

In 1936 stone judges produced around 3,690,000 tons of paving, which corresponded to 10 percent of the total tonnage of the German hard stone industry . The profession was practiced until the 1950s, most recently mainly in smaller quarries.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Thomas: The German basalt industry: with special consideration of the Westerwald, Hessian and Silesian basalt industries , Nolte, 1932, p. 21.
  2. ↑ a b c Hans Dietzer Nüdling: Rhönbasalt: Development - Mining - Geotope , Parzeller, Fulda 2006, p. 117.
  3. ↑ Heinrich Hacker: Tender stones, tough guys. Economic and social-historical aspects of basalt extraction in the Hohe Rhön in Birgit Angerer, Maximilian Böhm, Jan Borgmann, Sabine Fechter, Heinrich Hacker, Ralf Heimrath, Otto Klettemann, Herbert May, Martin Ortmeier, Bertram Popp. Ariane Weidlich: real, strong! - Natural stone in rural Bavaria , Zweckverband Niederbayrische Freilichtmuseen, Finsterau 2006, ISBN 3-9805663-8-2 (also Volume 3 of the publications of South German open air museums ), p. 62.