Wendener Hut

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From left to right: horse stable, casting hall and hammer mill

As an old iron and hammer mill, the Wendener Hütte is a technical cultural monument . It was created in 1723 in pre-industrial times and existed until the industrialization . The blast furnace was shut down in 1866. The system is located in the Sauerland community of Wenden in the district of Wendenerhütte and can be viewed as a museum. It is one of the oldest blast furnace plants in Germany.

backgrounds

Raw material magazine

Parts of today 's Olpe district have developed into the most important commercial center of the Duchy of Westphalia on the basis of mining, iron production and processing since early modern times . After slumps in the wake of the Thirty Years' War, the area experienced a new boom in the 18th century. The Olpe area was particularly specialized in the manufacture of sheet iron , which was mainly purchased by the finished goods producers in the county of Mark . The necessary semi-finished goods came partly from the neighboring Siegerland , but also from the surrounding area. These were based on iron mining and charcoal production in the region. In the Olpe district there were still 7 ironworks in 1855, 5 of which were in the area of ​​Wenden.

Company creation

Wilhelm Remy 1702-1761

Around 1534 there was a hammer mill near the later smelter site. In the following centuries, however, there was no news of any iron industry production. In 1728 Johannes Ermert and his father founded the iron and steel works. In the award certificate, reference was expressly made to the former hammer mill. The site previously belonged to the Drolshagen Monastery. One reason for the construction of the hut at this point was probably the acquisition of iron stone pits nearby. For example, Ermert had previously been awarded the Schmidtseifen mine near Möllmicke . However, the construction of the plant overburdened Ermert financially. A steelworks, a house, a coal shed and a hammer mill were built. Shares were therefore transferred to two foreign entrepreneurs in 1731, including Wilhelm Remy from Bendorf . The two donors invested 2,500 Reichstaler in the company and were to receive a share of the profit in return. As the company continued to lose money, more funds were needed. According to the balance sheet of 1736, Remy shot another 7,500 Reichstaler. This made Remy the main creditor and actual owner of the company. The manager and smelter remained Ermert. The iron and steel works remained in the possession of the Remy family until it was closed. At that time this was the most important family in the iron trade on the Middle Rhine. After Wilhelm Remy's death, his descendants (Johannes Remy, Johann Friedrich Remy and Johann Wilhelm Remy) restructured the family property. The metallurgical specialist Gerhard Beyer became a co-owner and the Wenden metallurgical and hammer union, Brothers Remy & Beyer, was founded as a new company. After the death of all previous trades in 1820, the hut became the property of Louis Remy.

Raw material base

The company benefited from the proximity of the iron mines in neighboring Siegerland. Partly against the protests of interested parties from Siegerland, not only was ore imported, but the smelter acquired its own mines or shares in pits as far as the Westerwald. Only a fraction of the ore came from the Duchy of Westphalia itself. The necessary charcoal came from mostly aristocratic forest owners and also had their own forest. Interestingly, the company was already using hard coal in 1774 and 1783 . The Goldene Haardt mine in Saynschen was particularly important.

Production and sales

The smelter mainly produced steel cake, which it could freshen up for relatively low costs because of the low carbon content. Pig iron ingots were also produced. The steel hammer, built in 1728, was converted into a refining hammer in 1774. This was used to produce high-quality iron for the manufacture of finished goods. In 1803 another such hammer was erected a few hundred meters away. Crude steel production was relocated to other hammers, for example in Langenei , Kickenbach , Maumke , Lenhausen , Borghausen or Herrntrop . Finally, in 1802, the Siepertinger hammer was added near Eslohe. The hammers were either leased from the ironworks or purchased in full. Between 1774 and 1783, the hut not only produced pulp, but also finished goods using plowshares. The production volume averaged 480 tons per year in the middle of the 18th century. This was significantly more than the Hoppecker Hütte (315 tons), the Olsberger Hütte (277 tons) or even the Wocklumer Hütte (159 tons) produced.

The products were known for their quality. In the beginning, the main sales area was, in addition to forges in the neighborhood, the Brandenburg and Bergisch commercial centers. The Netherlands were added later. Business relationships in the Duchy of Westphalia also expanded. There were business relationships with the Drolshagen Monastery or with entrepreneurs from Olpe , Attendorn and Drolshagen .

Meaning and ending

Louis Remy tried unsuccessfully to introduce the puddling process , which he had got to know while abroad in England, in Wenden. In his time, the technology of the blast furnace and blower was modernized several times. Among other things, a round blast furnace shaft was built instead of the rectangular one. Between 1827 and 1830 he had a new representative trading post and residential building built. The fact that he was elected President of the Chamber of Commerce for the districts of Olpe, Arnsberg, Meschede and Brilon (now the Hellweg-Sauerland Chamber of Commerce and Industry ) in 1851 speaks for his importance , even if he had hardly exercised the office for health reasons. Shortly before his death, he initiated the participation of the works and numerous companies in the chamber district in the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855.

The Wendener Hütte was in direct competition with the iron industrial company in neighboring Siegerland. In a contemporary report from the 18th century, it was said that the hut: "The Siegerland and its steel commercium with raw steel iron and coal are doing a great deal of damage". Constant expansions and retrofits kept them up to date with the latest technology. The machine equipment in the ironworks was then considered to be of particularly high quality. Despite the early attempts to use hard coal, the hut held on to charcoal because of the lack of a railway connection. Like the other smelters in the area, it ultimately succumbed to the overwhelming competition of the coal-based emerging industry in the Ruhr area and finally ceased operations in 1866.

The hut as an industrial monument

Exhibition and entrance building "old factories"

The facility consists of seven buildings: residential building, former horse stable, coach house, casting hall with Möllerboden and blast furnace, steam boiler house, material store and hammer mill. The blast furnace is a special feature of the history of technology. It no longer has an “open chest”, as was still widespread in the time and still preserved in the Luisenhütte Wocklum , but a so-called “shock stove”. From this transitional form to the “closed breast”, which was only used for a short time, the one in the Wendener Hütte has been preserved.

The Wendener Hütte museum association is the sponsor of this unique technical cultural monument. Since 2007 there is a new visitor house and a small museum about the history of iron making. Changing events and exhibitions also take place in the visitor house.

Hut archive

A considerable part of the written tradition of the hut has been preserved and is now in the Westphalian Economic Archives in Dortmund (inventory WWA F 40). In the WWA S 8/121 collection there is still a typescript on the history of the hut.

literature

Pond behind the hammer mill
  • Boris Brosowski: Basics of industrialization in the southern Sauerland in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Olpe 1994.
  • KH Kaufmann: Chronicle of the Wendener Hütte 1728–1978. Turn 1978.
  • Ottfried Dascher, Bernd D. Plaum, Horst Wermuth ( arrangement ): The archive of the Wendener Hütte 1731–1932. Inventory of the F 40 inventory. Dortmund 1994, ISBN 3-921467-18-7 .
  • Monika Loecken: The Wendener Hütte - technical cultural monument with a great deal of written tradition. In: Archive maintenance in Westphalia and Lippe 51/1999 pp. 35–39 ( PDF version ).

Web links

Commons : Wendener Hütte  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Wilfried Reininghaus, Reinhard Köhne: Mining, smelting and hammer works in the Duchy of Westphalia in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. Münster 2008 p. 411.
  2. ^ Wilfried Reininghaus, Reinhard Köhne: Mining, smelting and hammer works in the Duchy of Westphalia in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. Münster 2008 p. 411 f.
  3. ↑ a b Stefan Gorißen: A forgotten area. Iron ore mining and metallurgy in the Duchy of Westphalia in the 18th century. In: Karl Peter Ellerbrock, Tanja Bessler-Worbs (Hrsg.): Economy and society in south-eastern Westphalia. Society for Westphalian Economic History, Dortmund 2001 p. 34.
  4. ^ Wilfried Reininghaus, Reinhard Köhne: Mining, smelting and hammer works in the Duchy of Westphalia in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. Münster 2008 p. 412 f.
  5. ↑ Stefan Gorißen: A forgotten area. Iron ore mining and metallurgy in the Duchy of Westphalia in the 18th century. In: Karl Peter Ellerbrock, Tanja Bessler-Worbs (Hrsg.): Economy and society in south-eastern Westphalia. Society for Westphalian Economic History, Dortmund 2001 p. 39.
  6. ^ Wilfried Reininghaus, Reinhard Köhne: Mining, smelting and hammer works in the Duchy of Westphalia in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. Münster 2008 p. 413.
  7. ↑ Pioneers of the German iron industry. suedwestfalen-manager.de, accessed on May 18, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Inventory overview
  9. ↑ Stock WWA S 8/121

Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 14.9 ″  N , 7 ° 49 ′ 40.8 ″  E