Water supply in the Saar area
The water supply in the Saar area took place in various ways before the comprehensive central drinking water supply, which was initiated around 1900.
history
Prehistoric and pre-Roman times
Stone Age settlements have been documented in the Saar area for the area around Saarbrücken , the region around St. Ingbert and the Schaumberg area , where natural water resources were found and could easily be used. In the Mesolithic, for example, there were small agricultural settlements on the Nied and at springs near today's Hemmersdorf .
In the Bronze , Copper and Iron Ages , water was no longer needed only as food, but also for various crafts. The water-rich southern part of the Saarpfalz district was particularly populated during this time. In addition to branches near fords and generally in river valleys, of which the princess grave of Reinheim in the valley of the Blies bears witness, fortified town-like settlements were also established on hills and mountains, for example on the Dollberg near Ottenhausen , the Limberg near Wallerfangen or the Großer Boots at St. Ingbert . Traces of special hydraulic engineering facilities from this time have not yet been found in the Saar area, although from other regions z. B. cisterns and water pits from the phase of the ceramic tape are known. Compared to Württemberg or the Rhineland , where such finds exist, the amount of precipitation in the Saar region is significantly higher, which, together with water-storing rock layers, explains the lack of such systems from pre-Roman times.
Roman times
Various Roman long-distance and connecting roads crossed in the Saar region; Vici and Villae rusticae as well as urbanae were created. Schwarzenacker should have had about 2000 inhabitants. The Romans brought their standard of living with them to the provinces: around 50 AD, Cologne was supplied with water from the Eifel via a 76 km long aqueduct , Trier, the largest Roman city north of the Alps , initially had two smaller water supply systems and was given a sewer system under Emperor Probus , which was fed with Ruwer water and lasted until the Middle Ages .
Although there were no such extensive Roman settlements in the Saar region, there were, among other things, numerous craft and factories that were dependent on a functioning water supply. In Blickweiler, for example, the garbage pit of a terra sigillata factory was found in 1913 , which was supplied with oak planks from a well.
Even in private residential buildings of relatively modest size, bathrooms were part of the normal equipment. For example, the Roman villa in Freisen initially only had seven rooms, but one of them was used as a bathroom. The Gothic abbey church in Tholey was built over a Roman bathhouse. This had a cold bath with two masonry tubs as well as several heatable rooms and was supplied with water via a ditch that led down from the Schaumberg. Benedictine monks who died later were buried in the tubs.
There were individual bathhouses like in Tholey in Erfweiler-Ehlingen and Nennig . The builders put the greatest effort into the villa in Nennig. The bathhouse of this complex could be reached through a roofed foyer from the residential wing and had a 65 m² swimming pool that could be heated. There were also seven other bathrooms, three of which were also heatable.
The villa in Borg also had an elaborately designed bathing facility and access to the villa was already on a footbridge over a water basin.
In the rural towns, however, no private Roman baths were set up, but public thermal baths and fountains. While a thermal bath has not yet been proven for Schwarzenacker, but its existence is assumed to be certain, a Roman bathing facility has been excavated in Bliesbrücken .
In addition to its functions as a food and means of personal hygiene, water also played an important role in cult activities in Roman times. When a water pipe was laid for Niedaltdorf in 1903 , a Gallo-Roman spring sanctuary was discovered near him . The temple complex consisted of three sacred buildings and a fountain with a hexagonal water basin. It was probably used as a place of pilgrimage. Another sanctuary was discovered in 1927 in the Bierbach monastery forest. There was a draw well next to the temple area with a forecourt .
This draw well, however, was an exception, since in Roman times in the Saar area mainly spring water was still used. The springs were placed in wells and the water was led to the place of its intended use with dicks . In addition to wooden dicks such as those in Saarbrücken , Wellesweiler and Dillingen , clay, lime, lead and quarry stone constructions were also used, as demonstrated by finds from Fremersdorf , Tholey and Hirzweiler . In Überherrn , a water pipe was also laid in wickerwork with vertical stakes. Frequently, grooves carved in sandstone with covers were also used; Sandstone basins also had the advantage that they provided natural clarification of the water. House pipes from the collecting basins were usually made of lead.
The water pipe of the Vicus Saravus on Halberg , which led around the Eschberg from the southern slope of the Schwarzenberg - today known as the Römerbrünnchen - was a technical masterpiece . The line fed a bathing facility in the Roman fort.
Only traces of the water pipes and the other facilities from Roman times have survived, but no functioning specimens, as they were either destroyed by the Teutons or by the ravages of time.
Castles, monasteries and palaces
A step backwards was set by the Germanic conquest, as the Roman facilities were either deliberately destroyed or no longer properly maintained. They now increasingly resorted to natural waters and settled primarily where they were easily accessible. Place names from the clearing period with the endings -bruch, -born or -bach indicate the abundance of water in the selected places. In the villages, water holes were often created right next to the houses. B. in Diefflen under the name "Burkeschen" were preserved until the 19th century. The water from such troughs could, however, mostly only be used as service water because it was exposed to numerous pollution.
High medieval castles, however, relied on more sophisticated systems for water supply, since they would have been easy to conquer without access to drinking water and, due to their location on mountain heights that were as inaccessible as possible, could hardly access any sources within the complex. Therefore, in some cases, cisterns were bricked or carved into the rock - for example at the Liebenburg near Hofeld , whose seven-meter-deep cistern was carved out of the rock with a hammer and chisel. A filter made of sand, gravel and stones should purify the water. Above ground, the cistern was protected by a half-timbered building. The problem with the cisterns, however, was the small amount of water that was available and could also be easily heated and polluted, which is why wells were built on other castles. Some of them were driven to a depth of 100 meters.
The Schwarzenburg near Lockweiler, for example, was equipped with a bailey to protect the fountain. The springs that supplied the Montclair Castle were also protected by Jacob of Montclair with a moat, walls and a tower. In 1351 the castle was initially unsuccessfully besieged, but finally the Archbishop Baldwin of Luxembourg managed to burn down this tower, dig up the spring and lay Montclair in ruins.
The water supply at Homburg Castle on the Schlossberg was even more complex than on Montclair . After having had no satisfactory experience with either storing water in cisterns or transporting it with donkeys, Count Johann IV , who took over Homburg in 1544, opted for a different concept. In 1571 he commissioned the Kempten fountain maker Hans Sommer to supply the castle with water from a fountain in the Erbachtal. Since a height difference of around 100 meters had to be overcome here, Sommer was dependent on constructing a water art that made this elevation possible. He was given the task of designing the technical equipment and transporting it to Strasbourg, from where the count would then take over the further transport. Only the lead lines themselves were to be cast in Homburg. The Homburger Wasserkunst must have been very similar to the Nuremberg Blausternwerk, which was set up in 1483. Hans Sommer completed the system, in which water was drawn into a suction pipe and then into a cylinder and then passed through a pressure pipe through two piston rods driven by a flowing water using a crankshaft , was only completed after the client's death and was completed in March Raised for this in 1575. His plant was in operation at least until the French Revolution , after which it was probably destroyed.
In monasteries such as For example, in the Wadgassen Abbey , which was established in 1135 , water was also used as a means of production at an early stage, including for brewing beer. In addition, as a copper engraving from 1736 attests, facilities such as a forge, fountain, wash house etc. were built in Wadgassen, all of which had to be supplied with water. Wadgassen was supplied with water from the Saar on the one hand, and water from the headwaters in the neighboring forest on the other hand via wooden pipes. Other monasteries, such as Fraulautern or Wörschweiler, were also equipped with facilities that required considerable water.
Castles and parks, on the other hand, were also supplied with water for representative reasons. Probably the oldest aqueduct near a castle in the Saar area is attested for Saarbrücken Castle. It was created in 1545 under Count Philip II. The line led from a well room on Homburg through the Sulzbachtal and then to a first fountain at the customs house. From there it led into the castle moat and into the castle, where it supplied a second fountain. From the Schlossplatz, one line also led to Talstrasse and a second to Herrgottsbrunnen. Furthermore, the kitchen and water room in the castle were supplied with water.
In 1575 the water supply for the Renaissance castle in Neunkirchen was created. Sources on the Spieserhöhe were used, namely the Altseitersquelle and the Rippelborn and the Katzenborn. They supplied the moat and the cat pond of the castle, which also had a draw well. Remains of the lines were found during construction work in 1996.
Duke Gustav Samuel from Zweibrücken chose the monastery mountain near Wörschweiler as the building site for a pleasure palace of his mistress and later wife Luise Hoffmann, because water was easy to get there. His successor Christian IV built the largest hunting lodge in southwest Germany in Jägersburg , which was decorated with a huge fountain. A clay pipeline laid in 1762 led the necessary water from the source area of the Glan to the castle.
Smaller hunting castles such as those in Ottweiler or Karlsbrunn were also supplied with water pipes. Prince Wilhelm Heinrich also set up large fish boxes in several places that had to be supplied with fresh water, and brewing became increasingly popular in the courts , as in Neunkirchen , for example . In St. Johann in 1711, Jean Louis built a water pipe made of gray stone tubes for the castle, in 1786 the Ludwigsberg castle was supplied with an oak water pipe, and the well room and other facilities on the Homberg were renewed. In the end, a total of seven pipelines ran to St. Johann and Saarbrücken. In 1913 they still fed five wells.
In Blieskastel, a line was used from 1701 that exploited the natural gradient to the castle grounds. When their capacity was no longer sufficient, among other things because Count Franz Karl von der Leyen had a fountain pyramid built in the castle courtyard in 1761, a second line was run from the Schellental to the castle, but it was also insufficient. Finally, between 1782 and 1784 , Countess Marianne had the Lüderitz spring, which was about five kilometers away, tapped - but this was still not enough, especially since the line was tapped by local residents. After Countess Marianne had covered this with draconian threats of punishment, these crimes apparently stopped, but the construction of a new well on the occasion of the wedding of the Hereditary Prince Philip exceeded the capacity limit again. Countess Marianne finally had another line built from Biesingen for 20,000 guilders .
Both the Homburg and the Blieskastel water pipes were destroyed by the French military, as they were luxury goods in the eyes of the revolutionaries. The aqueduct that supplied Monplaisir Castle on the Halberg with water was to be excavated and shipped to Saarlouis ; It is not known whether this plan was actually implemented.
Villages
In the countryside, the residents could partly benefit from the stately facilities such as in Saarbrücken, Ottweiler or Blieskastel, but for the most part they had to supply themselves with water. The service water was often taken from rivers, otherwise communal wells were used to supply water in the villages. These were mostly scoop or draw wells, the use and keeping of which were regulated by village regulations. In 1894 it was decided in Losheim that well users had to help with ice hitting if necessary, in the neighboring village of Bergen the costs for a water pipe should be reduced through compulsory labor and in 1925 the Derlen municipal council obliged all residents between the ages of 16 and 60 to help with digging a water pipe. This requirement was only lifted after several protests and meetings.
From the 16th or 17th century, in addition to the scoop and draw wells, there were also running wells that were fed with spring water. Traces of a very early wooden supply line were found in St. Wendel , as well as in Bliesransbach , Stennweiler , Kutzhof , Illingen , Hirzweiler and Dudweiler . The construction of such plants was often triggered by manufacturers and commercial enterprises that had a high demand for water, such as the paper industry . The Dillinger paper factory used the water of the Prims until it was so polluted by the Dillinger Hütte that it was unusable for paper production.
In addition to the paper industry, metallurgy began to take off from the 17th century , which was accompanied by increased water consumption. Here, too, problems quickly arose with the water quality. In St. Ingbert, for example, the ironworks' use of the local moat spoiled all the surrounding wells.
Another factor was the glassworks , to which Friedrichsthal , for example, owed its first aqueduct. Glassworks did not need a lot of water for glass production, but they did need a lot of water to supply the employees, and they were often built in areas that were rich in raw materials but remote from human settlements, where an infrastructure first had to be created. In 1793, Philipp Wagner, Ludwig Wentzel and Ludwig Adolph Reppert laid a water pipe in the courtyard of their glassworks in Friedrichsthal and restored the dilapidated old fountain equipment. The residents of Friedrichsthal were only allowed to benefit from this after the death of the widow Wentzel.
The communal wells in the country were supplemented by numerous private wells, so-called sneaks or pusses, as the population increased and industrialization spread. Well and water cooperatives also banded together to share the cost, as there was no state aid until the late 19th century. Only Gronig was an exception here; there the government of the upper office of Schaumburg approved a loan of 1000 thalers in 1791 to build a water pipe.
Numerous disputes about the financing, usage rights and ownership claims were the result; The Homburg fountain dispute became particularly well known. Epidemics such as the Lebach typhus epidemic often spread through insufficiently purified drinking water.
Cities and municipalities
The population increase in the cities made the water supply a priority problem, which led to the fact that in addition to the mayor and the city treasurer, the manager or director of a municipal waterworks was one of the few full-time employees in a city very early on.
Saarlouis
The fortress town of Saarlouis was founded in 1680 and initially supplied with water via draw wells. However, because of its iron and sulfur content, the surface water in Saarlouis was considered bad-tasting and at most suitable for times of need, so that it was soon decided to use the Picard springs . In 1685, the carpenter Claude Besson laid the first line from the Picard duke pond to the city center of Saarlouis. It fed numerous fountains in Saarlouis for about 50 years before it showed defects that were too large to be used.
From 1732 to 1735 a new line was run through the territory of Duke Francis of Lorraine, using a different source. The maintenance of this line was very complex, which is why it had to be carried equally by the city and the military. In 1763 four fountains were set up on Paradeplatz (today's Großer Markt ), which were made of wood until 1832 and from which drinking water still flows today. In 1779 there was a dispute with the owner of the Picarder mills, who claimed that the water pipe would impair the functionality of his facility, and after the takeover by Prussia there was a dispute about further maintenance, which was finally settled by using the old regulation stayed. From 1827 the old wooden tubes were gradually replaced by cast ones; from 1834/35 attempts were also made to dig artesian wells in the urban area in order to be independent in the event of a siege. In 1898 Saarlouis received its first waterworks, which was located in the Picarder headwaters.
Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken was dependent on the Homburg water pipes from 1545 until well into the 19th century, and there were also pumping and drawing wells. A well master was responsible for the functionality of the systems. From 1834 onwards, at least damaged wooden dikes were excavated and replaced, but the entire system remained very susceptible to malfunctions. From 1830 onwards, the possibility of getting water from the Wallerbrunnen in St. Arnual was examined ; but St. Arnual defended himself against this. Saarbrücken offered a sum of 50 thalers, St. Arnual demanded 200 and only went back to 80, when Saarbrücken had already decided otherwise and started drilling artesian wells. However, this was not a satisfactory solution. In 1872, an expert opinion was therefore obtained from Alfred Rothenbach, the director of the gas and water works in Bern, which ultimately led to the first municipal water works on the Saar going into operation in 1873. It was built on the Deutschmühlenweiher and was soon equipped with a steam engine. In 1885 an additional collecting container followed for new residential areas. From 1881 the Saarbrücken-Malstatt waterworks and from 1900 the Spiesermühltal waterworks brought security to the water supply.
Neunkirchen
Up until the 19th century, Neunkirchen mainly used the fish box in the upper town; the suburb was undersupplied with water. In 1852, Neunkirchen was connected to the railway, and in the following years it experienced a population explosion. Nevertheless, initially nothing was done to expand the water supply, until in 1861 the royal district administrator in Ottweiler, who was also responsible for hygiene problems, intervened and Anton Krechel, who also built the Neunkirchen gasworks, was commissioned to improve the water supply. He created three fountains in the suburb, which were already considered obsolete when they opened. They tried their luck with the Kasbruch springs ; the water rights could be bought in 1874. The Neunkircher Eisenwerk finally provided a loan with the help of which the costs for a waterworks that went into operation in 1877 could be covered.
Malstatt-Burbach
In the area around Malstatt-Burbach there were initially numerous smaller individual settlements and businesses that slowly grew together. From 1869 the water supply was systematically improved and in 1871, well-builder Follmann was commissioned to work out appropriate proposals. It provided for four separate lines from different source areas, but this solution could not keep up with the needs of the growing population. Malstatt-Burbach became a township in 1875 and had more water pipes laid, but these were also insufficient. Out of concern about epidemics, a new expert, Edmund Kölwel from Zweibrücken, was commissioned with a new concept in 1881. But it wasn't until 1900 that Malstatt-Burbach received its first waterworks, which Hermann Ehlert from Düsseldorf had advised to build.
St. Johann
Like Saarbrücken and Neunkirchen, St. Johann relied on the aqueduct, which had existed since the Middle Ages, for a long time. After numerous businesses had settled, this was no longer sufficient - around 1800, for example, there were 20 breweries in St. Johann. 1803 seized two brewers the initiative and requested, at the expense of traders a line from Gelsbrunnen on Kaninchenberg to St. Johann to place. For an annual flat fee, the brewers were allowed to install a drainage pipe on the well troughs, which, however, was actually only allowed to be changed by the well master. Equipped with duplicate keys, however, numerous users tampered with the well boxes, which almost led to a city scandal involving the respected Eichacker family. Up to around 1870 the number of private drains on the well boxes increased steadily, dispute over manipulation was just as stressful as the insufficient amount of water. Therefore, the Meisenwies-Rabbitberger line and the line from the Krämershäuschen in Sulzbachtal were newly laid out and further renovation measures were taken, which were not sufficient. From 1872, drilling attempts were also made, but they did not produce any potable water. Finally, water-bearing areas outside the city were bought up and, after an interim phase in which one had benefited from the high-pressure pipeline from Malstatt-Burbach, the first waterworks was built in Rentrisch . It was in operation from 1893 to 1914 and was replaced by the waterworks for the city of Saarbrücken.
Ottweiler
The importance of Ottweiler declined with the beginning of industrialization, but after a teachers' seminar was set up in the village in 1874, the problems with the water supply became clear here too. Initially, a pipe was built that brought water from the Stennweiler forest, but the quality of this was repeatedly criticized. Beer brewer Carl Simon initially supplied some residents who had signed a private contract with him, 250 liters of water a day from the Ammweiher in exchange for payment. In 1891 the city bought its aqueduct. In addition, further lines were laid from sources to Ottweiler; Apparently they wanted to save themselves the financing of a pumping station. In 1891 a typhus epidemic occurred in Ottweiler, which was due to contaminated water. Hermann Ehlert now proposed the construction of an elevated tank, which was built from 1908. A year later a waterworks followed, the pipes of which were characterized by numerous leaks in the beginning.
St. Wendel
An extreme water shortage in the summer of 1882 led to the decision to hand over the water supply of the financially weak place to a private company. A long dispute arose over the order between the companies Joos Sons & Cie. from Landau in the Palatinate and the local building contractor Jakob Thome. In 1883 Joos was awarded the contract. As early as 1887, the water pipes that Joos had built were no longer sufficient, and there had been numerous disputes in the meantime. It was not until 1891 that further lines and a reservoir were put into operation; In 1904/05 a pumping station and an elevated reservoir were required and in 1905 the city bought the private waterworks. In 1909, the new waterworks above the Wurzelbacher Mühle with a new high reservoir went into operation.