Humboldt opencast mine

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This article describes the Humboldt mine near Wallensen in the Weser Uplands. For other mines with this name, see Humboldt Pit .

Humboldt opencast mine
General information about the mine
Open pit around 1910
other names	Humboldt lignite mine Wallensen
Mining technology	Open pit mine on 4–5 km²
Funding / year	Max. 368,500 t
Funding / total	20 million t
Information about the mining company
Operating company	Humboldt union from 1960: Humboldt Bergbaugesellschaft mbH
Employees	300
Start of operation	1843 (phase 1) 1899 (phase 2)
End of operation	June 30, 1966
Successor use	Swimming lakes, local recreation
Funded raw materials
Degradation of	Brown coal
Mightiness	35-70 m
Greatest depth	approx. 75 m in the north field
Geographical location
Coordinates	52 ° 0 '20.1 "  N , 9 ° 38' 27"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 0 '20.1 "  N , 9 ° 38' 27"  E
Location of the Humboldt opencast mine
Location	in the Weenzerbruch at Haidkopf near Wallensen
local community	Salzhemmendorf , Duingen
District ( NUTS3 )	District Hameln-Pyrmont , Hildesheim
country	State of Lower Saxony
Country	Germany

The open pit Humboldt (formerly Mine Humboldt , alternatively lignite plant Wallensen-Thüste called) was a lignite - opencast with attached briquette at Wallensen in the Weser-Leine-Bergland in southern Lower Saxony .

The mine was in the Weenzerbruch on Haidkopf between the places Wallensen and Thüste in the west (to the Flecken Salzhemmendorf in the Hameln-Pyrmont district ) and the Duingen and its districts Weenzen and Fölziehausen in the east (in the Hildesheim district ).

From the 19th century onwards, lignite was extracted here - initially underground , later only in open-cast mining - for use in the briquette factory and in a mine power station in Thüste. Further coal was used as fuel for ceramic and stone-earth companies in the area.

In 1966, the plants stopped operating. The open-cast mine was then recultivated , creating a group of residual lakes that are known today as the Duinger Lake District .

geology

The lignite deposit is located in the middle of the northwestern part of the Hilsmulde (also Ith-Hils-Mulde ) in the Leinebergland . This hollow lies between two mountain ranges made of Jura limestone, the Ith in the west and the ridge of Thüster Berg and Duinger Berg in the east. The Hils Mountains, made of chalk- sandstone , are in the south .

The hollow was created when the mountain range of poorly weather-resistant limestone was unfolded due to a geological fault and eroded away, exposing the clay and sandy layers below.

At the same fault, mobilized Zechstein salt penetrated the Malm and formed the Weenzen salt dome . Above this salt dome, where the salt rose near the surface, a sub-erosion basin made of hat rock (especially gypsum) with overlying Tertiary ( Eocene to Pliocene ) up to 200 m thick deposits formed .

These deposits also include several lignite seams . These originated in the Pliocene, at the transition from the Young Tertiary ( Neogene ) to the Pleistocene , about 3 million years ago. The coal is therefore significantly younger than in other German lignite mining areas. The overburden (the hanging wall above the upper seam) is made of Quaternary sands , the one below the lower seam of Tertiary clay. The coal is heavily contaminated with intermediate agents made of clay, is consistently earthy, rich in water (> 60%) and contains a lot of xylitol (wood residues).

The buildable deposit was estimated at around 40 million tons of coal; about half of this was gained by the end of the mining.

There are also much older Wealden coal deposits in the vicinity , which were extracted in the late 19th century, for example in the collieries Papenkamp , Landeswohlfahrt and Hugo bei Duingen.

history

See also : Wallensen # mining , Thüsten # geography and geology and Thüste # industry, craft and economy

First operational phase (until 1890)

The flat lignite deposits in the Weenzer Bruch have been known since at least the 18th century. According to tradition, they were noticed by a forester in 1787, whose horse, while riding through the forest, exposed the dark earth with its hooves. Workers are also said to have come across coal when planting trees, and at some point it was noticed that it was flammable. However, since the fuel was inferior, the deposits remained unused.

In the first half of the 19th century, fuel demand in the region increased so much that it could no longer be covered by firewood from the forests alone . The Forestry Commission recalled the fuel out of the ground, leaving a prospecting perform and in 1842 find it . After notification by the administrative officer Quaet-Faslem of the Lauenstein office, the find was examined and confirmed in 1843 on behalf of the Royal Forestry Office by the mining officer Hartleben from the nearby Osterwald state coal mine . As a result, a field with an area of ​​a quarter of a hectare was designated in the state forest . Under the guidance of miners from Osterwald, the digging started about where the Humboldtsee Holiday Park is today .

Thanks to the low thickness of the overburden , mining could mainly be carried out in open-cast mining; only a few tunnels had to be dug. In 1846 31 miners were working in the mine. However, due to the high humidity and unfavorable burning behavior of the surrounding businesses (especially pottery and gypsum factories near Duingen and Weenze), the coal that was extracted found hardly any sale and was mostly sold to the rural population at a low price - sometimes free of charge - as domestic fuel. As a result, the company was shut down in 1861 due to unprofitability.

With the onset of industrialization, the demand for fuel in the region continued to rise, so that after a few years of deferral by the Prussian mine administration, new efforts were made to resume operations. After successful pressing tests in the briquette factory of the Von der Heydt mine near Halle in 1867, the first briquette press was also installed at Wallensen in 1871. However, sales of the briquettes were sluggish because of the difficult transport and because of the competition from higher quality lignite from the Solling and hard coal from Westphalia.

Second operating phase (1890–1947)

In the 1890s, the mining was started again. A private company, the Wallensen mining company , was founded specifically for this purpose . The company was in a 1901 mining law union converted and received in honor of Alexander von Humboldt , the company "Humboldt" .

The main problem with opening up the new pit was the dewatering , because since the fields were in the floodplain of the Saale, the pits threatened to drown after heavy rainfall. Initially, an unsuccessful attempt was made in 1897 with a civil engineering company . Two years later, they ventured into a new open-cast mine with powerful excavators and pumps.

To recycle the coal, the union built a briquette factory between Wallensen and Thüste in 1902, which provided a siding to Thüste station and thus to the Voldagsen-Duingen-Delligsen railway line that had opened a few years earlier . This enabled the briquettes produced to be sold nationwide, which significantly improved sales opportunities. A 1.25 kilometer long cable car was built to transport the raw coal from the mine to the briquette factory .

The first coal was mined from 1903. Sales of the briquettes, which turned out to be of high quality, got off to a good start, so that the coal output could also be continuously increased. For this purpose, the Humboldt union took over the neighboring fiscal mine fields after a short time . The briquettes, which because of their low sulfur and ash content were not only in demand as domestic fuel, but also as fuel in industry (e.g. glass production), were sold beyond the region, mainly to northern Germany. Due to the Coal Industry Act of 1919, the Humboldt trade union was assigned to the Central German Brown Coal Syndicate . The briquettes were sold together with the factories in the Helmstedt district through their sales organization in Hanover. After the name of the Humboldt union , the briquettes later bore the brand name "Sonne" .

The mining of coal, which had started with small steam-powered backhoe excavators, was soon continued with more powerful electric bucket-chain excavators . The electricity to drive these excavators was generated in an in-house power station next to the briquette factory from brown coal. Surpluses were fed into the grid. Around 300,000 t of raw lignite were mined annually and around 75,000 t of briquettes were produced from it. In 1925 the first mine field was charred and mining continued on neighboring fields. As part of the expansion, the Marienwald settlement (manor with brickworks) had to give way to open-cast mining.

Third operating phase (1947–1966)

As a result of the Second World War, the equipment and systems in the mine and the briquette factory were in such poor condition that the Humboldt trade union was faced with the decision in 1947 to close the company. Instead, it was possible in the post-war years of the reconstruction to repair and modernize the operating equipment and thus to increase production again and make it profitable.

Due to the growing expansion of the opencast mining area, two country roads between Weenzen and Fölziehausen soon had to be abandoned or relocated.

In 1955, tracks were laid between the pit and the briquette factory and the old cable car was supplemented by a more powerful narrow-gauge railway . Such a mine railway had already existed from 1927, but only for the transport of coal and overburden within the mine and for the operation of large rail-mounted excavators.

In the same year 1955 the mine reached its highest output with a production of 368,500 tons of coal and production of 96,310 tons of briquettes. At that time the company employed up to 300 workers and employees. In 1960, shortly before its 60th anniversary, the Humboldt trade union was renamed "Humboldt Bergbaugesellschaft mbH" .

At the beginning of the 1960s, the supplies east of the Saale were so exhausted that the pending deposits on the west side had to be developed for another operation. For this purpose, land was purchased and the river bed was relocated to a length of 1.2 kilometers in the charred southern field.

Shutdown (after 1966)

While the mine and briquette factory were still struggling with dwindling coal quality and had to make capital-intensive investments to develop further coal reserves, the Humboldt Bergbaugesellschaft , like many other coal mines in Germany, was hit by the coal crisis . The dismantling of subsidies and the growing competition from cheaper imported coal and other energy sources (oil, gas, nuclear energy) led to profound structural changes on the coal market. Sales revenues plummeted, short-time working was registered in 1965 and since there was no improvement in sight, the decision was made the following year to stop production at short notice at the end of June 1966.

In the months after the closure, all equipment such as machines and vehicles were dismantled and sold or scrapped. The buildings of the briquette factory were completely demolished in 1967, the property was sold to the prefabricated house manufacturer OKAL in Lauenstein, who set up a production facility for concrete parts there. A furniture factory was later established here. The open pit areas were recultivated at the end of the 1960s (see below).

Today there are only a few traces and references of the region's mining past:

• The remaining lakes of the Duingen Lake District and the surrounding forest recreation area (see below)
• The small park "Bergmannseck" in Wallensen (corner of Angerstrasse / Auf dem Graben ) with a cart , a miner's monument and information boards ( 52 ° 1 ′ 14.7 ″  N , 9 ° 37 ′ 7.1 ″  E )
• The houses of the miners ' settlement between Wallensen and the former pit ( 52 ° 0 ′ 47.6 ″  N , 9 ° 37 ′ 53 ″  E )
• The bridge over which the mine railway used to cross the Saale
• The name "Humboldt", which has been adopted in several places: Humboldt primary school in Wallensen, Humboldtstrasse at the former briquette factory in Thüste, Humboldtsee in the former open- cast mining area, Humboldthof and Waldhotel Humboldt at the former open-cast mine depot
• A pickaxe , as it was used by the tusks for coal mining, in the coat of arms of Thüsten

Plant and equipment

Open pit

The excavation in the pit was done in terraces with backhoe excavators (initially with steam engines , later with diesel engines ) and large bucket chain excavators . The heavy equipment was rail-bound.

The transport of overburden within the pit was carried out with the mine train (see below); In some cases, a new type of flushing method was also used for tilting.

The daytime facilities of the pit were on the western edge, where the forest hotel was built after the demolition ( 52 ° 0 ′ 40.7 ″  N , 9 ° 38 ′ 21.6 ″  E ). Here there was the central marshalling yard for the mine railway, an operating and building yard with storage halls and workshops for the maintenance of the opencast mining equipment and vehicles, offices for the management of the mine operations and social rooms for the miners.

Mine railways

Locomotive "8" in the Rittersgrün Museum

The railway systems and rolling stock of the Humboldt union are divided into three areas:

1. the mine connection railway ( works railway ) from the briquette factory to Thüste station in standard gauge
2. the mine railway ( field railway ) within the opencast mine (and from 1955 the connecting railway to the briquette factory) as a narrow gauge (gauge 750 mm)

The mine-owned works track was used to transport the briquettes from the factory to Thüste station, where there was a connection to the VDD line . The Humboldt union also had its own standard-gauge locomotives (including two Deutz Bbm steam locomotives) for maneuvering within the premises of the briquette factory; As a rule, however, the assembled train was picked up at the VDD locomotive factory and brought to Thüste and on to its destination via the Humboldt siding.

The field railway within the opencast mine was used to transport overburden and raw coal within the opencast mine area and from 1955 also between the opencast mine and the briquette factory. Before 1927 in particular, bucket chains and conveyor belt systems were used for this purpose . Most of the tracks in the open pit were laid "on the fly " on wooden sleepers without a substructure so that they could be quickly adapted to the progress of the mining . This was partly done by "backing" (moving sideways) during operation.

At the depot listed above there was a small marshalling yard in which the tracks from the various mine fields converged. Here, before 1955, the raw coal was reloaded onto the cable car to the factory, and after 1955 the carts were assembled into a train to the factory.

For the operation of the mine railway, Humboldt had its own steam and later diesel locomotives (19 in total) as well as a large number of tipping lorries. Most of the steam locomotives were bought second-hand, in 1930 seven locomotives from the Nachterstedt mine alone . From 1948 diesel locomotives were also used. With the exception of one locomotive that was used on the connection to the briquette factory, the pit locomotives were all light vehicles (weight <15 t) due to the necessary suitability for the flying tracks, which therefore could only pull 10 to a maximum of 15 filled wagons.

The whereabouts of the locomotives after the mine was closed in 1966 is largely unclear; most of them were probably scrapped, only a few sold. One of the steam locomotives (No. "8", manufacturer O&K , built in 1903) is preserved in the Rittersgrün Museum.

Briquette factory and power plant

The briquette factory ( 52 ° 1 ′ 13.1 ″  N , 9 ° 37 ′ 51.8 ″  E ) located between Wallensen and Thüste had eight presses.

The steam required to operate the factory and the electricity for the electrical systems and equipment in the factory and the opencast mine (especially the large electric excavators) were generated in an attached power station / boiler house.

Recultivation and residual lakes (Duinger Lake District)

After the end of the dismantling, the opencast mining site was recultivated from 1967 by the Duingerwald state forest administration. With the excavators and bulldozer Humboldt society, a natural landscape was designed from the jagged, dead wasteland and these with red alder particularly active root pioneer tree species and other native deciduous and coniferous tree species planted .

When modeling the landscape, several remaining holes were left which were filled with groundwater in the following months or were flooded by introducing water from the Saale:

lake	Size ( ha )	Pit field	location	Use / comment / sources
Humboldtsee	6.0 ha	West field	52 ° 0 '21.1 "  N , 9 ° 38' 24.6"  E	Swimming lake with a campsite
Weinbergersee	5.9 ha	North field	52 ° 0 ′ 34 "  N , 9 ° 39 ′ 1.9"  E	named after the Dr. J. Weinberger, Director of the Humboldt Society
Bruchsee	9.6 ha	Südfeld	52 ° 0 ′ 4.5 "  N , 9 ° 39 ′ 39.7"  E	Bathing lake with pedal boat rental
Duck pond	2.9 ha	Ostfeld	52 ° 0 ′ 22.1 "  N , 9 ° 39 ′ 24.4"  E
Paradise ponds	0.9	North field	52 ° 0 '37.9 "  N , 9 ° 38' 46.1"  E

Together with some further east, these lakes (partly residual lakes from clay and gypsum extraction) are known today as the "Duinger Lake District" . The forest area with the water bodies is a popular recreational area for walkers, hikers and cyclists. A geological nature trail runs through the area , which among other things also leads past a steep face in which brown coal seams are clearly visible.

literature

• S. Gebhardt: Brown coal from Wallensen . In: home country . tape 1/1998 . Heimatbund Lower Saxony, Hanover 1998, p. 8 .
• P. Rohde: The recreation and raw material area Duingen - Weenzen - Wallensen am Hils. Natural spatial guide through a charming landscape with a varied geological history . In: Natural History Society Hanover (Hrsg.): Report of the Natural History Society Hanover . tape 129 . Hanover 1987, p. 7-56 .
• PA Altehenger: Climatic fluctuations in the Pliocene of Wallensen (Hils) . In: Ice Age & Present - Quaternary Science Journal . Vol. 9, No. 1 . DEUQUA - German Quaternary Association, Hanover 1958, p. 104-109 ( full text online ).
• Paul W. Thomson: The interglacial from Wallensen in the Hils . In: Ice Age & Present - Quaternary Science Journal . DEUQUA - German Quaternary Association, 1947, p. 96-102 ( full text online [PDF]).
• Hans Menzel: About a diluvial freshwater and peat deposit near Wallensen in southern Hanover . In: Journal of the German Geological Society . tape 54 , 1902, pp. 195-196 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Edith Drössler: The brown coal near Wallensen and Thüsten. (No longer available online.) Flecken Salzhemmendorf, January 12, 2012, archived from the original on February 8, 2016 ; Retrieved February 3, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Alteheger 1958 (see literature)
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} brown coal Wallensen. KGS Salzhemmendorf, 2003, accessed on September 5, 2012 .  
4. ↑ ^{a b} Preuss. Landesaufnahme (Ed.): Mes table sheet No. 3923 " Salzhemmendorf " . Prussian new admission . Berlin ( Online at GeoGREIF Online at BYU ).
5. ↑ Thüstes industrial history. Flecken Salzhemmendorf, accessed on February 8, 2016 .  
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} Gero Beddig, Herbert Durant: Hiking in Weenzer Bruch. (PDF; 871 kB) (No longer available online.) July 2011, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved September 5, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   
7. ↑ ^{a b} Tanja & Marcus Flügel: Humboldt. Kleiner Thüster Laden, accessed on September 3, 2012 .  
8. ↑ ^{a b} Humboldt Bergbau Thüste Part 1. Video. (No longer available online.) Wesio - The Weser region ( DeWeZet portal ), archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved September 5, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   
9. ↑ ^{a b} Ingeborg Müller: Bathing pleasure in a paradise near Duingen . In: Schaumburg-Lippische Landes-Zeitung . July 11, 2009 ( full text in the LZ online archive ).
10. ↑ Thomson 1947 (see literature)
11. ↑ Bernhard Ropertz: Paths of primary migration: An investigation into pore networks, crevices and kerogen networks as conduits for hydrocarbon transport . Ed .: Institute for Chemistry and Dynamics of the Geosphere 4: Petroleum and Organic Geochemistry, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (=  reports of the Research Center Jülich . Edition 2875). Forschungszentrum Jülich, Central Library, 1994, Chapter 1.4.1: NW German Basin / Hilsmulde , p. 11–17 ( full text as PDF ).
12. ^ ^{A b} Hans Menzel: The interglacial layers of Wallensen in the Hilsmulde . (= Contributions to the knowledge of the Quaternary formations in southern Hanover , Part 1). In: Königlich Preussische Geologische Landesanstalt und Bergakademie (Hrsg.): Geological yearbook for the year 1903 . Berlin 1907, p. 254–289 ( full text in the Internet archive ).
13. ↑ ^{a b} Dr. Koehler & Dr. Pommerening: Weenzer Bruch - a recreation area with an eventful geological history . Information leaflet. ( Download as PDF ).
14. ↑ Geology in depth. Continuation - Geology of the Weser-Leine-Bergland. German Alpine Club , accessed on February 8, 2016 .  
15. ^ Jörg Elbracht, Renate Meyer, Evelin Reutter: Hydrogeological spaces and sub-spaces in Lower Saxony . Ed .: State Office for Mining, Energy and Geology of Lower Saxony (=  GeoBerichte . Volume 3 ). 2007, ISSN  1864-7529 , p. 73-75 .
16. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Samtgemeinde Duingen (ed.): Pöttjerfibel. Booklet accompanying the Pottland hiking map . ( Full text online ( MS Word ; 659 kB)).
17. ^ Heinrich Pfeiffer, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (ed.): Alexander von Humboldt. Work and world renown . R. Piper, 1969, p. 338 .
18. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Meinhard Döpner: Quarry and mine railways between Osterwald and Ith (=  Bahn-Express - magazine for Werkbahnfreunde . Special issue). Bahn-Express, Kiel 1996, chapter The railways of the Humboldt union ( full text in the archive of bahn-express.de ).
19. ↑ Not to be confused with the briquettes from the "Sonne" factory from the Lausitz area near Senftenberg from 1954!
20. ↑ History from Salzhemmendorf: Submerged settlements (desolations). (No longer available online.) Flecken Salzhemmendorf, January 13, 2012, archived from the original on February 8, 2016 ; accessed on February 8, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   
21. ^ Humboldt and the opencast mine. (No longer available online.) Salzhemmendorf, OT Wallensen, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved September 3, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   
22. ↑ Helmut Adam: Big Bimmelbahn-Rundtour. Project Pottland, accessed September 7, 2012 .  
23. ↑ Humboldt Primary School Wallensen ( Memento of the original from November 28, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Website of the school
24. ↑ ^{a b c d} Nixdorf, Brigitte et al .: Brown coal opencast lakes in Germany. (PDF; 14.0 MB) (No longer available online.) Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, Chair of Water Protection, May 2000, archived from the original on September 2, 2011 ; Retrieved December 8, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.   
25. ↑ ^{a b c d} Natural History Society of Hanover (ed.): Report of the Natural History Society of Hanover . Issues 128-130. Hanover 1985.
26. ↑ The Wallenser / Duinger Lakes. (No longer available online.) Www.wallensen.de, archived from the original on February 8, 2016 ; accessed on February 8, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.