Pörtschach marble
Pörtschacher marble was the name of a group of marble types that had been used as material for buildings, memorials, grave monuments, walls and paving stones for a long time and were a coveted marble in all of Central Carinthia. The natural stones used in the respective deposits are so similar that they can only be ascribed to a particular quarry in exceptional cases, unless written documents are available. The marble boulder extends over a length of 8 km and a width of 2 km over the villages of Töschling, Pavor, Sekull and Tibitsch, which belong to the municipality of Techelsberg , in the Austrian state of Carinthia . As a collective term, the term Pörtschach marble includes several occurrences, which in turn have their own variety names.
There are Roman mining sites in the region near Tentschach and Mögrach.
Geology and petrography
The marble deposits in the Pörtschach-Töschling area and that of Annenheim near Landskron were first described in geological and petrographic terms by Paul Egenter in 1906 and the technical usability and petrography by Alois Kieslinger in 1956. Egenter was wrong, because the sillimanite in the granite mica schist adjoining the Annenheimer marble corresponds to the Bucholzite ( sillimanite ) from Moosburg and the Pörtschach marble is not bordered by a graphite phyllite , but by a phyllonite mica schist .
The boundary to the mica schist is tectonically determined; the marble deposit was folded together with the mica schist , and as a result of different hardness anisotropy (differences) there was particularly strong movement at the border ( phyllonization ). The marble layers contain quartz, contain muscovite , the light mica, and are often bordered by pure quartzites (e.g. to the west immediately below the Eichelberg ruins ). In the east, the Pörtschach marble merges into a zone rich in green slate.
In 1931, P. Kahler separated the types of marble for deposits south of Lake Wörthersee and for the marble deposits in the Ossiacher Tauern :
- Well-preserved crystalline marbles
- Marbles with internal folds
- Triassic marbles
- Marbles of uncertain age (probably Triassic marbles)
Only the first two types are represented north of the Wörther Seetal .
Kahler assigned the Pörtschach marble, the deposits around Sternberg , Annenheim and the first quarry to the west of the town of Tauern and possibly marble strips in the insufficiently exposed northern slopes of the Ossiacher Tauern to the first-mentioned marble type. Furthermore, the marble types in the terrain can be distinguished by their different tectonic or lithostratigraphic positional relationships and thicknesses.
Quarries
The Pörtschach marble group includes a number of other quarries. The most important quarry, from which the main mass of this marble is the quarry at the hamlets Pavor and Sekull north of the north bank of the Wörthersee. Another important occurrence is St. Veiter marble , also called Seebichl marble , of the Pörtschacher type, which is located on the edge of the Gurktal Alps . Another break next to Seebichl near Frauenstein was in Kraig , called Kraiger Marmor .
The deposit south of the Kulmberg was called Mögracher Bruch . An inscription from AD 60 and an ancient setting hammer were found in this quarry . Other Pörtschach marble quarries were used south of the Tauernwald on the Rabenkogel near Köstenberg and a little west in Oberdorf (next to Köstenberg), as well as two small quarries in Laas and on the east bank of the Ossiacher Seetal in Steindorf-Tiffen and the Roman quarry of Tentschach, the in the municipality of St. Peter am Bichl between Glantal and Wörthersee .
In the municipality of Techelsberg am Wörther See there is another quarry in the district of Töschling, which can be clearly seen from the south motorway . He is exhausted for the natural stone extraction.
Another group of marble, which apparently resembles Pörtschach marble, occurs in the north and south of the Gurktal. Five different types of this type of marble alone were used at the Gurk Cathedral . Fractions were found near Struntzen , Pisweg, a district of Gurk, Sankt Philippen in the valley of the Wimitzbach and near Haidenbach in the Gnesau district .
Rock description and mineralogy
Pörtschacher marble is light greenish or fluctuates between pink and white and is structured by delicate pink and greenish bands. The white-red-green color is not sharply demarcated, but is very delicate. The Pörtschacher marble type is fine-grained and colored green by epidote and pink by hematite . There are layers in the quarry that are entirely pink, while only the white layers were used for the Roman stones. The Sankt Veit marble at Seebichl tends to turn yellow when it is installed on the outside. There are also weathering processes that can be observed on the tomb of FX Wulfen (1806) in Klagenfurt, an obelisk, because the red stripes are fading and the green ones have become gray.
Naming
This marble, which was relatively easy to split, was quarried in small rough stone blocks. In the past, horse-drawn carts were used, on each of which 1,000 to 1,200 kg of marble (around half a cubic meter) were loaded and brought to the train station in Pörtschach . Hence the name Pörtschacher Marmor , " so named after the most important loading point of the quarries in Töschling, Pavor and Sekull etc. " [from]; " The old breaks in Pörtschach itself are quite insignificant ".
Applications and structures
At the time when the city of Klagenfurt was being built, 60 to 70 stonemasons were employed in Töschling alone. Six to seven blacksmiths also found work to sharpen the tools. This marble was often used in Klagenfurt, especially in the Lendhafen . The Italian architect and builder Domenico Venchiarutti used the marble not only for the Elisabeth-Steg, but also for various other structures that he designed. House plinths, window and door frames, railway stations, culverts on the Klagenfurt-Velden railway line, monuments , paving stones and gravestones in all Carinthian cemeteries were made from Pörtschach marble . Kraiger marble was probably used for the church complex in Kraig. Since its deposits have been exhausted, objects made from Pörtschach marble in Klagenfurt, for reasons of rarity, achieve collector's prices . Mineralogists from all over the world are also interested in this deposit. The dismantling of these marbles was completed between 1965 and 1970. In the following, two main types can be distinguished.
Pörtschach marble
Some buildings from the group of Pörtschach marbles, without claiming to be exhaustive, can be named:
- Ebenthal in Carinthia : All gate walls of the parish church
- Eisenkappel-Vellach : pavement of the parish church
- Friesach : courthouse and post office, base of the city fountain (mid-16th century)
- Kappel an der Drau : war memorial
- Klagenfurt : Part of the pavement pavement and curbs, numerous door and window frames, monuments
- Krumpendorf : door frames
- Maria Wörth : Door frames on numerous houses in the town
- Ossiach : Archway and plinth at the collegiate church (probably from the Seebichl quarry)
- Pörtschach : Train station and part of the stone masonry of the Leonstain castle ruins
- Sankt Martin am Silberberg : Gravestone at the parish church of Ludwig Rollstein zu Leonstein (1482), war memorial
- Velden : train station
- Viktring : West portal at the collegiate church , Marienbrunnen in the monastery
- Vienna : Art History Museum
Saint Vitus marble
Some examples of the Saint Vitus marble that are known:
- Klagenfurt: Hotel Carintha, Kärntner Sparkasse, Rainerhof, tobacco factory, regional court, museum, agriculture school, grammar school, teacher training institute, elementary school on Völkermarkter Ring, train station, hospital, villas
- Krumpendorf: Stone work on several villas
- Pörtschach: Stone work on several villas
- Sankt Veit an der Glan : Plague column (1755), Bartele fountain with a Roman fountain bowl with a diameter of 2.80 meters, which probably comes from the forum in Virunum .
- Velden: Stone work on several villas
- Villach : National Bank, Federal Railway Directorate, curbs on pavement stones, old train station and at the Völkermarkt stone work on several buildings.
literature
- Alois Kieslinger : The usable rocks of Carinthia. In: Carinthia II. Sonderheft 17, Verlag des Naturwissenschaftlicher Verein für Kärnten, Klagenfurt 1956, ISSN 0375-6068 , pp. 1–348 ( limited preview in the Google book search, PDF (368.3 MB) on ZOBODAT ).
Individual evidence
- ^ Kieslinger: The usable rocks of Carinthia. 1956, pp. 247, 248.
- ^ Paul Egenter: The marble deposits of Carinthia. In: Journal of Practical Geology. Vol. 17, 1909, ISSN 1012-6287 , pp. 419-439.
- ^ Oskar Homann: The geological-petrographic conditions in the Ossiachersee – Wörthersee area (south of Feldkirchen between Klagenfurt and Villach). In: Yearbook of the Federal Geological Institute. Volume 105, Klagenfurt 1962, ISSN 0016-7800 , pp. 243-272, here p. 256 ( PDF (3.1 MB) on ZOBODAT ).
- ^ Kieslinger: The usable rocks of Carinthia. 1956, p. 242.
- ↑ Information from Gabriel Knaus, the landowner of the former marble quarries in Sekull, Techelsberg am Wörther See.
- ^ Kieslinger: The usable rocks of Carinthia. 1956, p. 245.
- ^ Kieslinger: The usable rocks of Carinthia. 1956, p. 248.