Greifenhain opencast mine

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Greifenhain opencast mine
General information about the mine
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R71210, Greifenhain pit, brown coal opencast mine.jpg
Greifenhain pit 1948
Mining technology Open pit on 31.1 km²
Overburden 1,415.6 million tons
Funding / total 298.5 million t
Information about the mining company
Operating company Anhaltinischen Coal Works AG,

Publicly owned company (VEB) Greifenhain opencast mine

Start of operation 1936
End of operation 1994
Successor use Partial filling to the Altdöberner See
Funded raw materials
Degradation of Brown coal
Mightiness up to 10m
Geographical location
Coordinates 51 ° 38 '52.5 "  N , 14 ° 5' 32.4"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 38 '52.5 "  N , 14 ° 5' 32.4"  E
Greifenhain opencast mine (Brandenburg)
Greifenhain opencast mine
Location Greifenhain opencast mine
Location Altdöberner basin
formerly: District of Calau, District of Cottbus ( NUTS3 ) today: OSL district, Brandenburg
country country Brandenburg
Country Germany
District Lusatian lignite mining area

The Greifenhain open-cast mine was an open-cast lignite mine in the Lusatian lignite mining district in what is now southern Brandenburg , which existed from 1936 to 1994. It was named after the Greifenhain district of the city of Drebkau .

In the Greifenhain opencast mine, the coal was extracted from the most important seam in Lusatia (2nd seam horizon). This pit is the first opencast mine north of the Lusatian border wall .

In 1936/1937 the excavation for the opencast mine Greifenhain took place. On June 28, 1994, the Greifenhain opencast mine was closed. On that day the last coal train left the mine.

Key data

The raw coal extracted from the open pit had a calorific value of 9,000 kJ / kg, an ash content of 3.3%, a sulfur content of 0.4% and a water content of 55.5%.

70% of the coal was in large power plants Vetschau and Lübbenau converted into electricity. The rest of the extracted fuel was refined in the briquette factories in the region.

The Greifenhain opencast mine had an area of ​​approx. 50 km². Only 22 km² of it was charred. Due to the early closure of the Greifenhain open-cast mine, approx. 30% (approx. 290 million t) of the lignite deposits in this deposit were not mined.

The Greifenhain opencast mine took up around 3,190 hectares of land. A total of 1,415.6 million m³ of overburden was moved in order to extract 298.5 million t of raw coal. This resulted in full use of the localities: Buchholz , Nebendorf , Neudorf , Groß Jauer and Klein Jauer . The redevelopment plan for the Greifenhain opencast mine, which was approved in June 1992 by the Lignite Committee, established in June 1994 and declared legally binding by the state government in September 1994 , created the legal prerequisites for the creation of the Altdöberner See. Pritzen was about to be over-dredged when the Greifenhain open-cast mine was shut down prematurely. Only four residents still lived in Pritzen in 1994. All others had already been relocated. The culturally and historically valuable church was saved and rebuilt in the immediate vicinity of the Spremberg forest cemetery. Places like Göritz, Reddern, Altdöbern and Laasow were not dredged over and only a few people moved away from here.

location

Natural classification

The main end of the moraine - the so-called Lausitzer Grenzwall - (from the time when the Saale was frozen ) rises to 180  m above sea level. NHN . The Luckau-Calauer basin lies north of the Lausitz border wall between Drebkau and Luckau . This basin corresponds to a mosaic of glacial plateaus and Weichselglacial clearing basins .

The Luckau-Calauer Basin drains north to the Spree . It is part of the Lausitz basin and heathland with an altitude between 60 and 100 meters above sea level.

The ground consists of glacial sands and gravels. Sandy tertiary penetrations occur locally and the sediments are crossed by Holocene stream and river floodplains. The natural forests are mainly characterized by brook alder , ash , pedunculate oak and beech forests . On locations remote from the water, there are mainly pine and oak forests.

The larger, northern area of ​​the Greifenhain opencast mine was in the Luckau-Calauer Basin. The southern open-cast mining area was part of the plateau of the Lusatian border wall. The structure of the landscape was created during the melting of the inland ice and the younger section of the Saale terminal moraine . Geologically, this landscape complex forms a reservoir, the so-called Altdöberner Basin. Sander areas adjoin the Lusatian border wall to the south. The Lausitzer Grenzwall is the watershed between the Spree in the north and the Black Elster in the south. There are 3 to 5 aquifers in the mountain structure of the border wall . A groundwater lowering funnel is connected to the Lausitz border wall. In the main part of the area the ground and surface water flows from south to north (corresponding to the original direction).

Count north of the former open-cast mining area

to the most important receiving waters.

Administrative structural classification

During the GDR era, the opencast mine was located in the Calau district in the Cottbus district . Today the area of ​​the former Greifenhain opencast mine is located in the Oberspreewald-Lausitz district and borders the Spree-Neisse district in the northeast (nearby villages: Greifenhain and Casel). The localities Peitzendorf (municipality and office Altdöbern, district Oberspreewald-Lausitz), Altdöbern (municipality and office Altdöbern, district Oberspreewald-Lausitz), Göritz (municipality and office Altdöbern, district Oberspreewald-Lausitz), Woschkow (district of the city Großräschen, district Oberspreewald -Lausitz), Cunersdorf (municipality and office Altdöbern, district Oberspreewald-Lausitz) and Pritzen (municipality and office Altdöbern, district Oberspreewald-Lausitz) became open-cast mining due to their peripheral locations due to noise and dust emissions , due to the lowering of the groundwater and the use of partial areas severely impaired.

Immediately to the north was the Gräbendorf open-cast mine (now partially flooded residual hole : Gräbendorfer See ).

history

Formation of the seam

The low-relief shelf area of ​​the Northwest European Tertiary Depression developed into a huge moorland area during the Miocene period . This area extended from Poland to Denmark. Seam bodies 10 to 12 meters thick formed in the periphery of this depression.

Later, masses of water from the sea entered in various places and the seam space that had formed was split up into several seam banks. Both the remaining, unsplit seam and the newly created seam banks are built up from individual bog deposits. Over several intermediate stages, quarry forest bogs developed into dry high forest bogs (alluvial forest, swamp forest, bush bog, reed bog, pine forest bog, umbrella fir raised bog).

150-year history of the Lausitz district

Before the Greifenhain opencast mine was opened up, the region around Lake Altdöberner was mainly characterized by agriculture and cattle breeding . The people were mainly farmers or active in the typical flax cultivation and processing. Other people worked in fishing , forestry or brickworks .

Evidence of the excavations in the former Greifenhain opencast mine prove the way of life of Slavic and Germanic settlers. There is evidence of human settlement in the Mesolithic around 8,000 years ago. There were 130 sites in the former Greifenhain opencast mine, such as B. Barrows , the burial grounds of the Lausitz culture with their settlements, the sites of Germanic iron smelting , the field stone church Pritzen with its wooden predecessor and the Groß Jauer manor with its medieval manor house .

In 1789 the first brown coal discoveries were made near Lauchhammer . At that time, no great importance was attached to these deposits. In 1851 the Jenny mine opened near Kostebrau (near Senftenberg ) . Initially, the coal was extracted in civil engineering , for example in the Guerrini mine near Göritz (1886 to 1904). Initially, the coal extracted from it was transported by horse- drawn carriage and horse-drawn tram . Coal sales were rather low at that time. The Cottbus-Großenhain railway line was opened in 1870 . With the commissioning of the railway line, coal mining in the area experienced an upswing. The oldest mines are the Viktoria pits near Kleinräschen and the Felix pit near Klettwitz.

Development of the Greifenhain opencast mine

With industrialization in Germany, the generation of electrical energy and the production of solid materials also grew . As a result of this development, more and more open-cast mines were created to extract raw lignite.

In 1934 the Senftenberg city ​​parliament was looking for a replacement for the Senftenberg city pit (“Marie III” pit). On October 24, 1934 a meeting took place in Senftenberg town hall. The Anhaltische Kohlenwerke AG had filed an application for approval of a Neuaufschlusses for open pit Greifenhain. The operational plan for the exploration work was available in 1935.

In 1935, the drainage (over stretches, later over wells) of the outcrop area began. Exploration dredging began in 1936. With the lignite mining near Greifenhain, the first open pit was built in 1936. The mine is the first open-cast mine north of the Lusatian border wall.

The opencast mine started operating as a pear opening northeast of the Greifenhain field . The overburden of the open pit was 35 to 115 meters thick. The main exploration excavator at that time was the D 1400 bucket chain excavator. It had a 64.5 m bucket ladder and reached cutting depths of 38 m. The overburden was removed during train operation. 70 t electric locomotives moved coal wagons with a capacity of 25 m³ on 900 mm narrow-gauge tracks . The overburden was dumped north of the Drebkau- Casel road on the Ilmersdorf he Hochhalde.

The first coal was exposed in 1936. The spoil-to-coal ratio (3: 1) was best at this point. The seam was 10 m deep on average. On November 28, 1937, coal (in high cut) was mined for the first time. The coal was extracted with three backhoe excavators . The coal was transported 17 km from Greifenhain to the Marie II briquette factory on a standard-gauge railway. First, diesel locomotives pulled the 60 t Sattelboden and 55 t Talboden wagons. In 1938 the railway line was electrified and from now on the coal could be transported with 72-t or 36-tE locomotives. In the same year the first bucket wheel excavator (89 SchRs 315) was used. In 1939 coal was mined for the first time. Coal mining in high and low cut was made possible by using the crawler bucket chain excavator 221 R 150.

The construction of an overburden conveyor bridge planned during the Second World War failed due to material difficulties.

In April 1945 the Red Army occupied the Greifenhain open-cast mine. As a result of artillery bombardment, carbon-containing dredged material was ignited by flying sparks. There was a fire in which a bucket wheel excavator burned out completely. The water pumps also failed. In the open pit the water rose and important equipment for coal extraction was badly damaged. Due to the war was exposed to the open pit mining operation on 17 April 1945 and after Sümpfung resumed the mine on September 15 1945th When the thickness of the overburden increased, another excavator (5 R 200) was used in 1948.

After 1949, the Greifenhain opencast mine was the most modern opencast mine in the GDR . In the GDR, lignite was the primary energy source . At this time, the largest mining facilities in Europe with impressive conveyor technology were built. In the Greifenhain open-cast mine on August 15, 1956, due to the increasing thickness of the overburden, 2-cut operation in the overburden was introduced. Another large machine was used - the excavator 628 D 1120 . In 1961 the transition from the Greifenhain opencast mine to the Buchholz subfield took place. A new coal exit and the mine station were built. The fulcrum of coal production was relocated and a new coal exit was created in the drainage facility. In 1965 there was a breakthrough in the drainage system, which was associated with large flow losses. Against this background, the drainage was converted to filter wells between 1965 and 1967 . In 1968, the state reduced lignite production. The excavator 589 D 1400 was scrapped. The Greifenhain opencast mine stood still until 1970 and was only then started up again. When it was restarted, the excavators 628 E 1120 and 650 Es 1120 were used in the overburden . From 1976 to 1979, the conveyor technology in the Greifenhain open-cast mine was modernized, and the overburden and mining operations were converted to belt conveying (2.25 m wide belt system ) and better extraction technology ( excavator 1290 Es 3150 , spreader 1096 A2Rs-B 12500 ). As a result, the annual output increased fivefold. With the large equipment system used in 1979 for the first time in the GDR, consisting of the excavator 1510 SRs 6300, spreader 1102 A2Rs-B 15400 and a 2.5 m conveyor system, it was possible to remove overburden up to 40 m. In 1984 the highest annual output of 41 million m³ of overburden was achieved. Until 1986, the Greifenhain opencast mine worked in swivel and parallel operation . In 1986 the opencast mine switched to swivel mining around the Pritzen pivot point and the Lausitz border wall was dredged over. The terminal moraine there extended over large areas to the hanging wall of the 2nd Lusatian seam. In all overburden stretches there were soils made of silt , clay and boulder clay that were difficult to excavate . The output of the Greifenhain open-cast mine was considerably limited as a result. In order to control the thickness of the overburden and to increase the performance in overburden operations, the 1509 SRs 1300 pit excavator was used in the first cut. It had a conveyor belt 2 m wide. The overburden of the 1st and 2nd cut was dumped on the 1102 A2Rs-B 15400. A bucket wheel excavator (1557 SRs 2000) was used in the first cut from 1989. At the end of the 1980s, the coal trains were loaded using a four-track loading facility. A railway line was also expanded to the Sonne briquette factory .

In 1990/91 a special swivel was built to the south with the mining direction. This was to ensure that new daytime facilities and a coal loading facility can be set up at Woschkow . From 1994 the Dörrwalde subfield was to be developed.

On October 8, 1992, the decision was made to shut down the Greifenhain open-cast mine due to the decline in coal sales. By the end of March 1993, the 1st and 2nd stripping sections and by the end of September 1993 the 3rd and 4th stripping sections were taken out of service. In the 1st and 2nd quarters of 1994 the residual coal was removed from the Greifenhain opencast mine.

Until the early 1990s, coal mining was the region's most important employer . He guaranteed many miners and their families a good and solid livelihood. The smell of coal , the noise and the noise of the excavators and belts of the opencast mine were part of everyday life. The local people are closely connected to the 150 year old tradition of lignite. Lignite decisively determined the lives of people in the GDR.

On June 28, 1994, the Greifenhain opencast mine was closed. On this day, the last coal train left the Greifenhain open-cast mine.

The remaining hole near Casel in the northeast of the former open-cast mining area, which was created between 1956 and 1961, was renatured by 1991 and is now mainly used for biotope and species protection . The Altdöberner See emerged from the remaining hole in the open-cast mine . In addition, two dump areas remained - a high dump north-east of Altdöbern (partly used for agriculture, mostly used for forestry) and a high dump between Göritz and Greifenhain (also "Buchholzer Höhe", re-cultivated for forestry).

Location claims

See also

literature

  • Greifenhain opencast mine (1936–1994). 2nd Edition. LMBV , Brieske May 2000, OCLC 918489250 . (PDF; 776.2 KB)
  • Carsten Drebenstedt among others: lignite and redevelopment planning in the state of Brandenburg. Basics, connections, key data. Cottbus 1998, OCLC 918226430 , p. 41 (Chapter 6.1 Redevelopment areas in the north) and p. 61f on Chapter 6.1.4 (Redevelopment plan Greifenhain)
  • Lignite mining and rehabilitation in the Greifenhain / Gräbendorf area, changing landscape . LMBV, June 2005 (PDF; 1,534 KB)
  • Lusatian lignite district, changes and perspectives, Greifenhain / Gräbendorf . LMBV, Senftenberg August 2015 ( lmbv.de [PDF; 10.4 MB ]).
  • Uwe Steinhuber among others: Industrial railways in the Lausitz lignite mining. LMBV, August 2014, ( PDF; 6.2 MB)
  • Maintenance in opencast lignite mining - workshops and daytime facilities. LMBV, February 2014 (PDF; 8.1 MB)
  • Lost homeland - mining and its effects on churches and parishes in Upper and Lower Lusatia. Semmler, Cottbus 2007, ISBN 978-3-935826-88-4 .

Web links

Commons : Greifenhain open-cast mine  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Buchholz. In: Archives of Disappeared Places. archiv-verschwundene-orte.de, accessed on January 17, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b Nebendorf. In: Archives of Disappeared Places. archiv-verschwundene-orte.de, accessed on January 17, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b Neudorf. In: Archives of Disappeared Places. archiv-verschwundene-orte.de, accessed on January 17, 2016 .
  4. ↑ a b Groß Jauer. In: Archives of Disappeared Places. archiv-verschwundene-orte.de, accessed on January 17, 2016 .
  5. ↑ a b Klein Jauer. In: Archives of Disappeared Places. archiv-verschwundene-orte.de, accessed on January 17, 2016 .
  6. ^ Lignite mining and rehabilitation in the Greifenhain / Gräbendorf area, changing landscape . June 2005.
  7. ↑ Carsten Drebenstedt among others: Brown coal and redevelopment planning in the state of Brandenburg. Basics, connections, key data . October 1998.
  8. ↑ Uwe Steinhuber (Ed.): Lausitzer Braunkohlerevier, changes and perspectives, Greifenhain / Gräbendorf . Senftenberg August 2015 ( lmbv.de [PDF; 10.4 MB ]).
  9. ↑ Uwe Steinhube, among others: Lausitzer brown coal area, changes and perspectives, Greifenhain / Gräbendorf . Ed .: Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbau-Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH. Senftenberg August 2015.