Auguste Victoria colliery

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Georeferencing Map with all coordinates of the shafts: OSM
Auguste Victoria
General information about the mine
Auguste Victoria mine shafts, Marl.jpg
Headframes over shafts 1 and 2 in Marl-Hüls (2006)
other names Auguste Victoria / Blumenthal composite mine
Mining technology Longwall mining
Funding / year 3,100,000 t
Funding / total 5,500,000 t of lead-zinc ore
Information about the mining company
Operating company RAG Aktiengesellschaft
Start of operation 1899
End of operation 2015
Funded raw materials
Degradation of Bituminous coal / lead / zinc / silver
Hard coal

Seam name

Seam Zollverein 2/3, 5 u. a.
Mightiness 1.50
overall length 103,000 m
lead
Degradation of lead

Gang name

William Koehler Gang
Mightiness 15-18 m
Raw material content 2.5%
overall length 1000 m
zinc
Degradation of zinc

Gang name

F / E
Mightiness 2-3 m
Raw material content 7.4%
silver
Degradation of silver

Gang name

D / C
Mightiness 2-10 m
Geographical location
Coordinates 51 ° 41 '6.5 "  N , 7 ° 6' 38"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 41 '6.5 "  N , 7 ° 6' 38"  E
Auguste Victoria (Regional Association Ruhr)
Auguste Victoria
Location Auguste Victoria
local community Marl, Haltern am See
District ( NUTS3 ) Recklinghausen district
country State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Country Germany
District Ruhr area

The Auguste Victoria mine (short AV ) is a former coal mine of RAG Aktiengesellschaft in Marl and Haltern am See , which was closed on December 18, 2015. Until it was closed, the mine was the third last active coal mine in Germany and the second last in the Ruhr area.

history

1899 to 1913

During prospecting drillings , the Düsseldorf councilor August Stein (businessman, wine merchant and mining entrepreneur) and Julius Schäfer (engineer and manufacturer) came across coal . In 1899 they founded the Auguste Victoria trade union under mining law , which acquired the Hansi I and Hansi II mining fields , which were consolidated in 1898 . The union was named after the Queen of Prussia and the last German Empress Auguste Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg . The sinking work of shaft  1 for the new mine began on Victoriastraße in Hüls . In 1899 the mine was approved to connect a colliery railway to the Sinsen railway station. In 1900, a few meters further, the sinking of shaft 2 began using the sinkhole method . In 1901 the work was stopped because of hard marl layers and water inflows at a depth of 40 m . In 1902, work on shaft 2 with the freezing process was resumed, but shaft 1 was abandoned for the time being. The numbering of the shafts has been reversed for this reason: shaft 2 has been renamed to shaft 1. In 1903 the first shaft, now shaft 2, was sunk further. In 1904, shaft 1 reached the seam-bearing carbon at a depth of around 580 m , and shaft 2 a year later at around 591 m. The two shafts went into operation in 1905 and 1906. While the workforce at the colliery was still 73 miners in 1903, it increased to 234 miners in 1904 and to 878 miners by 1906.

On July 1, 1903, Paul Stein , August Stein's son, took over the business of the colliery as the general manager. After 36 years, he resigned on July 1, 1939, to move to the mine management team . In 1907, the chemical company BASF from Ludwigshafen acquired the Auguste Victoria mine. The annual production was 156,000 tons. At the end of the year, a coking plant and coal washing plant went into operation.

The increasing number of miners soon led to a housing shortage and in 1907 the colliery had to build accommodation for 100 unmarried miners. The situation only eased somewhat in 1908 when a passenger train connection to the mine was set up from Sinsen station. In this way, miners from the Münsterland could also be recruited who came to work by train. Nevertheless, further measures had to be taken and mining settlements began to be built. In the summer of 1908, the first houses on Römerweg were ready for occupancy. Between 1908 and 1910 80 houses with 318 apartments were built.

In the same year a benzene factory with a cleaning system was built on the mine site . This made it possible to convert the gases produced by the coking plant into salable benzene products. At the same time, the coking plant was expanded to include 60 heat recovery ovens, and in 1911 another 60 regenerative ovens from the Collin system.

In March 1912, the trade unions and professional associations were unable to agree with the mine management on the miners' wage demands, and the first major strike ensued. Almost half of the workforce did not show up for work. The miners of the Brassert colliery showed their solidarity and also went on strike. However, there were no major disputes. Nevertheless, the state sent police and military from Frankfurt, Hanover and Magdeburg to Marl. This then quickly led to the strike being broken off.

1912 was a year with stagnating coal sales for the mines in Marl. The reason was the lack of allocation of railway wagons for coal transport by the Prussian State Railways .

In order to further improve the transport of foreign miners, the colliery took part in the construction of a tram line from Recklinghausen via the Sinsen station to Marl-Hüls. Miners could use this line at a reduced price because the mine subsidized the tickets.

1914 to 1932

The beginning of the First World War in August 1914 led to a production failure of 35% and parts of the coking plant had to be shut down. The war also resulted in the workforce being reduced. 1630 miners had been drafted and 113 had already fallen. An attempt was made to compensate for the shortage of workers with 678 prisoners of war and workers from the occupied territories, but this was difficult because they were unskilled.

In 1917 there was another strike. This time the background was not wage demands, but the food shortage. The war had made staple foods much more expensive or even no longer available. In the years after the First World War, the trade unions came more and more to the fore and made demands on the bill. In addition to higher wages, more and more working hours were now being reduced from eight to six hours. The negotiations culminated in a further strike call in March 1919, which this time the entire workforce of Auguste Victoria followed. The mine management threatened in public announcements that the mine would have to close if the necessary maintenance work was not done. It was finally agreed on an emergency operation. Although the demands of the unions in the negotiations were only marginally followed, some unions gave in and the strike was reluctantly ended by the others in late April 1919.

In 1921 the workforce at the colliery reached a temporary peak with 3953 miners.

In 1923, the sinking work for shaft 3 began about 2.5 km north of shaft 1/2 . A double shaft system was planned . Due to the occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923, work had to be stopped until 1925. The occupation by French and Belgian troops also led to a decline in coal production. The operation of the colliery became increasingly unprofitable due to the taxes paid to the occupying powers. Only after the end of the occupation did the company return to normal somewhat, although coal sales initially stagnated because the coal customers were also underemployed. The sinking work on shaft 3 was resumed in 1925. A year later the shaft reached the Carboniferous at around 680 m.

In 1925, in the course of local reorganization, some municipality boundaries were to be changed and smaller towns incorporated. The colliery exerted a strong influence on this reorganization by lobbying the district president to ensure that towns in which Auguste Victoria's pits were located should be incorporated into Marl. They only wanted to deal with one municipality when paying taxes.

Shortly before the AV 3 shaft was put into operation on July 24, 1927, floating sands fell in and buried five miners . Work on shaft 3 was therefore stopped for the time being and could not be resumed until 1937.

In 1928, the sinking work for shaft 4, which went into operation a year later, began in the Drewer district, about two kilometers south-west of pit 1/2. Not far from shaft 4, shaft 5 was sunk from 1930 to 1931.

In 1931 the mine management threatened the miners with dismissal if they did not agree to a 12% wage cut. This led to another strike call, which was rejected by a majority.

1933 to 1945

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, the union members in the German Labor Front were “brought into line”. Anyone who did not agree should get in touch. At the Auguste Victoria colliery, three miners reported who were immediately arrested and sentenced to six months in prison.

In 1934 work began on clearing shaft 3, which went into operation in 1937. The Hüls chemical works were built to the west of shaft 3 . In 1937 IG Farbenindustrie AG took over the mine, but it was allowed to keep its name. In 1938 the annual production of Auguste Victoria reached 1.5 million tons, in the coking plant 521,000 tons of coke were produced. In the same year, mining of the lead-zinc ore deposits discovered by chance in 1930 in the “William-Koehler-Gang” began on shaft 4/5. In 1939 three boilers of a new high pressure boiler power plant were put into operation.

In 1945 pit 1/2 was badly damaged in an air raid, the annual coal output was only 502,000 tons.

post war period

In 1950, shaft 6 was sunk on the western edge of the Die Haard forest area , about two kilometers east of shaft 3. In 1951 it reached coal at a depth of 714 m and went into operation the following year. In the 1950s, around 20% of German ore production was mined on Auguste Victoria. In 1956 alone, the 1,478 employees of the ore mining company extracted 349,000 tons of ore . However, ore mining became uneconomical, so that it was abandoned in 1962. By then, a total of 5.5 million tons of lead-zinc ore and about 400 tons of silver had been mined. From then on, shaft 4/5 served as a weather shaft .

Shaft 7 was sunk in the immediate vicinity of shaft 3 from 1957 and went into operation in 1960. Shaft 7 was equipped with a ski lift as the mine shaft . The resulting new double pit in 1966 took over the promotion of the mine 02/01, the latter was together with the coking plant shut down. Shaft 5 was backfilled in 1968 and the headframe demolished.

A headframe above shaft 8 in Haltern-Lippramsdorf (2006)

In 1963, shaft 8 in the Lippramsdorf field, about three kilometers north of the 3/7 shaft on the northern bank of the Lippe, was sunk as a weather shaft for the northeastern mine field. In 1972 pit fields 3/7 and 8 were connected. As part of the enlargement and expansion of the mine field, the system was expanded in 1978 as a cable car and material transport shaft and sunk further to around 1330 m by 1980. In 1982 the new mine was officially opened by the then North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister, Johannes Rau .

In 1987, four kilometers north of Shaft 8, the sinking work for a cable car and material conveyor shaft began. This shaft 9 reached a depth of 1200 m a year later and went into operation in 1990. Shaft 9 will be filled in June / July 2016.

On January 1, 1991, the BASF group sold the Auguste Victoria mine to Ruhrkohle AG (today RAG Aktiengesellschaft ), but the integration into the group lasted until 1997. In 2000, the mine with 4003 employees produced 3.54 million tons of coal .

In 2001, the Auguste Victoria mine was merged with the Blumenthal / Haard mine , a composite mine consisting of the General Blumenthal colliery (Recklinghausen) and the Haard mine , the former Ewald colliery continuation (Oer-Erkenschwick), to form the new Auguste Victoria / Blumenthal composite mine . Part of the Haltern field and the Haltern 1/2 mine were connected to the Auguste Victoria mine, the other General Blumenthal / Haard systems were discarded .

At the sites shaft 3/7, shaft 8 and 9, hard coal was finally mined. A total of around 3800 people were employed there. After the Haltern field was dammed and the two shafts Haltern 1 and 2 filled , the mine was again called the Auguste Victoria mine on January 1, 2007 . After around 116 years of mining history, hard coal production in Marl ended on December 18, 2015 when the colliery closed. The Prosper-Haniel mine in Bottrop remained the last mine in the Ruhr area until its closure on December 21, 2018.

Subsequent use

Statue of the Empress in Hülsstrasse with a view of the AV shafts

Auguste Victoria's training is located on the site of shaft 1/2. The shafts were backfilled in 2007 and the hauling ropes laid down. Shaft 6 was backfilled in November 2012.

The headframe above shaft 4 was retained and added to the Marl monument list in 1995. In 2005 a local mining museum was opened in the machine house of shaft 4 .

Establishment of companies

After the closure of AV in 2015 and all related measures, the city of Marl, together with RAG and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, is trying to achieve rapid successor use for the former colliery grounds under the name Die neue Victoria . For the approximately 90 hectare area, advertised by the planners as "gate.ruhr", with its favorable transport connections (water, road and rail), attempts are being made to locate commercial and logistics companies and thus create around 1000 new jobs in the best case. The areas on the "gate.ruhr" site should be usable from 2020.

Culture

  • 2016: Ruhrtriennale : Musikschauspiel The Strangers , based on the novel The Meursault Case - A reply by Kamel Daoud . World premiere on September 3, 2016 in the Kohlenmischhalle in Marl.

location

Trivia

  • In the episode "Abducted" of the RTL series Alarm für Cobra 11 , a young girl is held captive in shaft 7 of the Auguste Victoria colliery.
  • For the 49th episode of the Sat.1 series The Last Bull , scenes were also filmed on AV.
  • On the day of the last shift, the football club FC Schalke 04 invited the miners from the colliery to a Bundesliga home game against TSG 1899 Hoffenheim on December 18, 2015.
  • At the end of 2016, the statue of the Empress was moved from its long-term location on the AV site in front of the office building to Hülsstrasse, where it now looks towards “her” former mine. In the middle of the pedestrian zone, it should be a visible sign of the city's ongoing ties to the mine / mining industry.

gallery

  • Shaft AV 1

  • Shaft AV 1/2

  • Shaft AV 1/2

  • Shaft AV 2

  • Shaft AV 3/7

  • Shaft AV 4/5

  • Shaft IV / V

  • Shaft IV / V

  • Shaft AV 6

  • Shaft AV 8

  • Shaft AV 9

literature

  • Rolf Sonderkamp (editor): Auguste Victoria trade union. History, reports and stories. AV book, published by the Auguste Victoria trade union, Marl (North Rhine-Westphalia), Winkelmann, Recklinghausen 1997, ISBN 3-921052-59-9 .
  • Wilhelm Hermann, Gertrude Hermann: The old mines on the Ruhr. Past and future of a key technology. With a catalog of the "life stories" of 477 mines (=  The Blue Books ). 6th, expanded and updated edition. Langewiesche , Königstein im Taunus 2008, ISBN 978-3-7845-6994-9 .

Web links

Commons : Zeche Auguste Victoria  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Penultimate colliery town in the Ruhr area - Marl wants 1000 new jobs ( Memento from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Frankfurter Allgemeine, November 1, 2015
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Busch, Diana Walter, Furui Xi, Xiaoxuan Yin: Auguste Victoria mine of RAG AG: Analysis of subsidence phenomena outside the predicted area of ​​impact. (PDF) In: bezreg-arnsberg.nrw.de. Institute for Geotechnical Engineering and Mine Surveying, Clausthal University of Technology, October 15, 2015, pp. 29–31 , accessed on February 14, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Zeit Online from December 21, 2018: That's it, buddy
  4. ↑ Auguste Victoria becomes gate.ruhr - development starts in the north . In: coal. The employee magazine of RAG Aktiengesellschaft , 2017, issue 4, p. 14.
  5. ↑ Martina Möller: Machines in a deep sleep . In: Recklinghäuser Zeitung, May 19, 2017.
  6. ^ Headscarf conflicts, softened in the Pott in FAZ from September 5, 2016, p. 14.
  7. ↑ S04 invites buddy to the last shift. In: schalke04.de. December 16, 2015, accessed December 18, 2015 .