Wachau marble
The Wachau marble (even Spitzer marble , Mühldorfer marble or Waldviertler marble called) is a mainly north of Spitz occurring and especially to Kottes and Els mined marble .
Origin and occurrence
From the Devonian onwards, marine limestone deposits were transformed into crystalline form in the Variscan mountain range and were already removed to the hull surface in the Permian , at least in the Mesozoic Era. Starting from Ybbs , Melk and the Dunkelsteinerwald , a zone in the middle of the gneiss area of the Moldanubic , known as Bunte Serie , with the occasional appearance of marbles in the form of marble lenses and bearings, extends into the northeastern Waldviertel, for example via Horn and Gföhl to Raabs and Drosendorf . While the large marble deposits north of Spitz on the Danube were used in a variety of ways, only a few other marble quarries achieved supraregional importance. Although these marbles can be equated geologically with Wachau marble, they were mostly known under other names, such as Häuslinger marble , Hiesberg marble and Thumeritz marble . The pink-red, silicate-rich variety Hinterhauser marble is mined on the left bank of the Danube southwest of Spitz and used in the course of the Danube regulation .
history
Use intensified in the valley of the Spitzer Baches, where numerous old, fallen or overgrown quarries still bear witness, but slowly shifted in the 19th century to the plateau north of Spitz an der Donau, where some quarries are still cultivated today. In the rest of the distribution area, the Wachau marble was mainly mined for local needs, as the numerous abandoned quarries prove.
properties
This marble is highly metamorphic , can be polished, partially enriched with silicates and colored through in a wavy or cloudy manner due to the inclusion of graphite . Because of its hardness and resilience, it is also misleadingly referred to as “granite marble”.
use
Around Spitz it was mined in around 20 quarries and used as decorative and utility stone. Numerous monuments, gravestones, cuboids, lane borders, door and window frames, steps, wheel deflectors and paving stones prove its use.
White, low-silicate marbles were also processed into quicklime by the rural population. The lime piles and lime pits required for this can still be seen in some places.
Harder and silicate-rich or dolomitic varieties were used in road construction as gravel and grit or as an additive to concrete.
Today it is mainly used as a decorative stone and tombstone for local needs. It has recently been rediscovered and used, for example, to build the Lower Austrian State Museum .
swell
Schmölzer, Annemarie: The Wachau or Spitzer marble. In: Treatises of the GBA 1937/4, pp. 115–126.