Zangtal
| Zangtal Pit | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
| other names | Mining Zangtal; Zangtaler coal mines; Schindergraben | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Operating company | different societies | ||
| Start of operation | circa 1789 | ||
| End of operation | 1989 | ||
| Successor use | Terrain for a shooting range as well as possible construction of a car test center | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | Brown coal | ||
| Mightiness | 16 to 18 meters | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 47 ° 3 '53 " N , 15 ° 8' 57" E | ||
|
|||
| Location | Tregist | ||
| local community | Voitsberg | ||
| District ( NUTS3 ) | Voitsberg | ||
| state | Styria | ||
| Country | Austria | ||
Zangtal is a former coal mining company in the Tregist cadastral municipality of Voitsberg in the Voitsberg district , Styria . It was in operation for around 190 years and around 27.7 million tons of lignite were mined.
Place name and geography
Coal mining was originally called Schindergraben . After the trade August Zang bought the mining, it was renamed Zangtal around 1880 .
Zangtal is located in the Voitsberg cadastral community of Tregist and was previously connected to Voitsberg station via its own connection .
history
The beginning of mining in the area around Voitsberg is likely to be in 1762, when Anton Weidinger opened Schurfbaue in the Voitsberger Revier. Since the coal business was bad at that time, Weidinger handed the pits over to the coal rectification society in 1768 . This company could not last long and the mines came to private individuals who used the coal for their own needs. From 1840 there were efforts to unite the many mines in the area under one management. In 1857 there were still 37 independent mine owners in the entire Voitsberger coalfield. In the same year, the Voitsberger Bergrevier was formed by the Tregister Kohlenbergbau-Gesellschaft and I. Voitsberger Kohlenwerke AG .
In 1870, August Zang and Franz Koch acquired three mines in the Schindergraben mining area in Tregist . In 1872 Zang brought his shares in these mines into the newly founded Tregister coal mining company in Vienna . In 1875 Zang became the sole owner of the company, in which he bought all the shares in a public sale. Around 1880 the mining area Schindergraben was renamed Zangtal. Zang had the pits modernized and put the main focus on the open-cast mining of coal. Up until 1878, 850 meters of track were laid above day and 1160 meters below ground, of which 930 meters were suitable for horse transport. Furthermore, three braking mountains were created and a steam engine was purchased. In order to increase the quality of the coal, Zang also had drying and charring tests carried out, which, however, proved to be unsuccessful. Attempts to blast mines were also made to improve extraction. At that time the coal was mainly delivered by rail to Graz , Marburg and the Wiener Neustadt area. When the open-cast mines in the Zang Valley were exhausted around 1880, Zang forced the mine operation, the main installation of which was the Zang tunnel , which was built in 1860 . This tunnel was in operation until 1950 and at the end had a length of 1,100 meters.
After August Zang died in 1888, the mining industry passed into the ownership of his wife Ludovica. This was advised by experts and visited the mining industry several times personally. On July 6 or 13, 1889, the miners of the Zangtal mine went on strike, which the other miners of the Voitsberg coalfield also joined in the following days. Higher wages and the guarantee of the right to a minimum wage were demanded. However, the miners at the Zangtal mine did not strike for long because Ludovica Zang gave in to their demands. In January 1892 there was another strike. On November 1, 1897, Ludovica Zang sold the Zangtal mine to the Graz-Köflacher Eisenbahn- und Bergbaugesellschaft (GKB), which she had already put under pressure.
In the years 1917/18, the Zangtal mine recorded a sharp decline in coal production. In the inter-war period, the production was partially stopped completely. From 1927 the focus was again on opencast mining. The coal seam was between 16 and 18 meters thick and was mined in two floors. A backhoe worked on the upper floor , while the lower floor was dismantled with a bucket chain excavator . While the coal on the upper floor was clean, the contaminated coal on the lower floor first had to be loaded by hand and thereby pre-sorted at the same time. During the Pfrimer Putsch , the Zangtal coal mine served as a command center for the Styrian Homeland Security on September 13, 1931 . On the night of February 11-12, 1935, on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Austrian civil war , communist leaflets were distributed in Zangtal. On March 1, 1945, the factory facilities were shelled by three British fighters. A stoker was seriously injured and two locomotives were damaged.
On May 24, 1945 there was a strike due to the poor supply of food, in which 372 miners took part. In July of the same year the nationalization of mining was called for. In 1948 Zangtal was described as the most efficient mining industry in Austria. On July 24, 1948, a flood flooded the plant as well as the surrounding residential buildings and agricultural areas. After 1950, underground mining began again. In order to be able to extract the coal better, a cut was made in the overlying overburden and the capacity of the sorting plant was increased from 600 to 1400 tons per day. Due to an increase in the price of electricity, the miners went on a strike on August 21, 1951. In 1953 a reinforced concrete bunker with a capacity of 500 tons was built. In 1954, Zangtal and the newly established central sorting facility in Bärnbach- Mitterdorf were connected by a 2.2-kilometer high cable car. From this time on, the excavation work was carried out by Bau AG Negrelli . In the same year, the Zangtal Plant Volunteer Fire Brigade was founded. From 1955, the previously used pier construction was replaced by longwall construction with timber construction. For this year 631 people are employed in the Zangtal mining industry and the annual coal production was 360,000 tons, of which 210,000 tons came from underground mining. In 1957, 690 miners worked in Zangtal and extracted 404,000 tons of coal from the upper seam. In order to be able to mine the coal stored under the Tregistbach , it was diverted to a new bed over a length of 650 meters and the municipal road between Voitsberg and Tregist also had to be relocated.
Opencast mining was stopped on August 14, 1962 and coal was only mined during the day. To make the work easier, the pit was equipped with coal planes , face loaders and shearers . However, full mechanization proved difficult due to the inflows of floating sand, gravel and water. In 1966 a new deposit was opened in the eastern part of the mine. In order to increase the profitability of the mine, so-called residual pillar opencast mines were set up again and again. The Voitsberg-Zangtal shooting range was opened on April 21, 1968 on the site of the former open-cast mine. In a mine accident caused by a blast on March 18, 1970, five people were trapped and two others were killed. In 1974 the development of the lower seam began and the upper seam was considered to have been charred from 1975. Previously, 69 deep wells had been drilled and it was estimated that around six million tons of coal, of which about 4.5 million tons were recoverable. In 1981 the mine reached its greatest productivity with 255 miners and a quantity of 677,000 tons of coal extracted. On March 31, 1982 there was another mine accident in which two workers were buried.
When the Bergdirektion of the Graz-Köflacher Railway and Mining Company (GKB) announced the closure of the mine, protests broke out among the workforce, the population and politicians. The miners went on an unauthorized strike from January 29 to February 8, 1988. On February 3, 1988, the workforce also organized a protest march from the factory premises to the city of Voitsberg. On March 23, 1989, the Zangtal mine was closed. The mining area was recultivated by the GKB and made available to the population as a leisure and recreational area. The Zangtal shooting sports arena built by GKB was opened in 1993 on the former site of opencast mine VI . After the set goals failed due to a suitable operating site permit and neighbors protests, the GKB sold the system to the Styrian state hunters' association in 2003/04.
In 2004/05 the municipality of Voitsberg acquired a large part of the former mining site with an area of around 130 hectares. Various usage concepts were developed, including usage for commercial and residential construction, as a location for various leisure facilities and for a brown coal mining adventure world . Plans for use as a motor vehicle sports and training center failed due to a protest initiated by residents. On April 14, 2004, GKB brought the VA-B 700 Leopold bucket wheel excavator from the Oberdorf opencast mine to the former Zangtal site and handed it over to the municipality of Voitsberg together with other mining equipment. However, the implementation of the adventure world failed due to lack of funds. A concept for a car test center presented by the investor group Porr , Mandlbauer, Lugitsch in 2008 received a negative decision from the environmental senate. An appeal by the investor group to the Supreme Court led to a renewed assessment by the Environmental Senate, which ended with a positive decision in June 2012. The former management building was converted into a club house in 2011 .
literature
- Ernst Lasnik : Voitsberg - portrait of a city and its surroundings . tape 1 . Municipality of Voitsberg, Voitsberg 2012.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ernst Lasnik: Voitsberg - portrait of a city and its surroundings . tape 1 . Municipality of Voitsberg, Voitsberg 2012, p. 271-274 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g Ernst Lasnik : Voitsberg - portrait of a city and its surroundings . tape 1 . Municipality of Voitsberg, Voitsberg 2012, p. 193 .
- ↑ a b Ernst Lasnik: Voitsberg - portrait of a city and its surroundings . tape 1 . Municipality of Voitsberg, Voitsberg 2012, p. 279-282 .
- ↑ a b c d e Ernst Lasnik: Voitsberg - portrait of a city and its surroundings . tape 1 . Municipality of Voitsberg, Voitsberg 2012, p. 282-289 .
