Bonifacius colliery

Bonifacius colliery
	General information about the mine
	; Headframe
Funding / year	up to 1 million t
	Information about the mining company
Employees	until 2600
Start of operation	1861
End of operation	Early 1980s
Successor use	Culture / gastronomy
	Funded raw materials
Degradation of	Hard coal
	Geographical location
Coordinates	51 ° 28 '25 " N , 7 ° 5' 4" E Coordinates: 51 ° 28 '25 " N , 7 ° 5' 4" E
	Location Bonifacius colliery
Location	Kray
local community	eat
Independent city ( NUTS3 )	eat
country	State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Country	Germany
District	Ruhr area

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The Zeche Bonifacius was a coal - mine in what is now the Essen District Kray .

history

1851-1899

In 1851 , several unions consolidated their mine field holdings in the localities of Kray and Rotthausen under the name of the Ver. Bonifacius . 1857 is the Bartlingshof with the sinking of the first shaft started. This was equipped with a Malakow tower and began mining in 1861 . After the mine to be taken in 1866 because of flooding in part of the funding needed, the shaft was stable expanded . A railway connection improved the initially difficult sales situation. In 1870 around 600 employees mined 188,000 tons of coal a year in this coal mine.

1872 was mining law union Bonifacius in the mining company United Bonifacius (as joint-stock company , converted) in order to make a larger amount of capital, further extensions. Between 1872 and 1878, shaft 2 was sunk next to shaft 1. This was also equipped with a Malakow tower and this took over the main funding of the colliery. In 1887 a coking plant was put into operation on the company's premises . Between 1897 and 1899, several accidents put the mine temporarily out of service. First shaft 2 broke and had to be re- sunk . Then the Malakow tower burned down over shaft 1. The mining company Ver., Which was financially badly affected by these events. Bonifacius was bought by Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG in 1899 , which was able to round off its mine holdings.

In addition , a Bonifacius 3 weather shaft was sunk about one kilometer south of the main shaft site at Volksgarten Kray , Dortmunder Strasse, from 1898 to 1899 , and it was backfilled in 1968. A flushing shaft sunk in 1892 in the northern part of the mine field to the Gelsenkirchen-Rotthausen border, Halterner Straße, was henceforth designated as shaft 4, filled in 1956.

1899-1945

The change in ownership of the Bonifacius colliery led to the reconstruction and expansion of the entire colliery building in a modern form. Shaft 1 now received a headframe and was expanded as the main shaft with electric hoisting machines . In 1908, in addition to the coking plant , a briquette factory for edible coal briquettes was set up on pit 1/2. The old coking plant was then replaced by a new building with 240 coke ovens .

After the First World War , the tense economic situation led to rationalization and adjustment measures, which also affected the Bonifacius mine. The briquette factory had to be shut down in 1925. After the Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG merged with other mining companies to form Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG , the coke strategy was also changed. Therefore, the Bonifacius coking plant was shut down in 1931. The upcoming shutdown of the entire colliery was not carried out because the mine field still had economically usable supplies. In 1935 the main shaft system 1/2 was gradually expanded to become a central conveyor system. After a complete renovation of the processing plants , shaft 2 now received a two-storey solid wall strut frame and was equipped with an open-plan conveyor. Shaft 2 took over the main production.

The production rose to 1.3 million tons of fatty and edible coal annually with 2,800 employees. The colliery was also at the top of the list for the productivity of the individual employee. Around 1940 the Essen architect Fritz Schupp took over the planning and responsibility for the modernization and new construction of the colliery in Essen-Kray. He commissioned the well-known photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch to photograph his renovations and new buildings. The photographer did not take most of the photos until after 1945. The negative plates and a series of his photos have been preserved and are in the Albert Renger-Patzsch archive of the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation.

In 1945 the colliery had to temporarily stop production, even if the destruction of the daily facilities was not of great extent.

1945-1967

After the mine was put back into operation , the new central Bonifacius 5 weather shaft was sunk from 1947 to 1952 on the border to Wattenscheid , Lange Straße. When completed, the shaft 4 is on the border after Rotthausen 1956 filled . During the construction of shaft 5, the material was fed from the main shaft system 1/2, and at times via a narrow-gauge railway line laid openly in the urban area from Rotthauser Straße via Korthoverweg, Ottostraße, Krayer Volkspark to the Lange Straße construction site, which with Steam trains were operated.

The mine had a tram siding at the main shaft system 1/2, Rotthauser Straße, which was used by the Bergische Kleinbahn to transport coal over the Kray - Steele - Kupferdreh - Kidneyhof - Langenberg - Neviges line to Wuppertal in the post-war period . The production soon again amounted to one million tons annually with 2,600 employees.

The coal crisis now meant that Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG began to gradually consolidate its mine field holdings. It was decided to combine capacities for the Kray / Wattenscheid area. In 1967 the mining network of Zeche Holland and Zeche Bonifacius took place, whereby the Holland 3/4/6 conveyor system was maintained as the sole production location. Shaft 3, which is no longer required, was discarded .

Decommissioning and current state

Old wages hall, architectural monument

When the Zeche Holland was connected to the Zeche Zollverein , shafts 1 and 5 were also taken over. The no longer needed shaft 2 with the processing plants was thrown off and broken off. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Holland and Bonifacius mining fields were finally given up.

A number of company buildings as well as the headframe above shaft 1 have been preserved and are now used in the context of a business park concept for gastronomic, cultural and commercial purposes. The culture and conference hotel "Alte Lohnhalle" has been located in the former wages hall, which is characterized by its neo-Gothic facade design and cathedral-like interior architecture. In the inner courtyard of the shaft complex opposite the wages hall there is a beer garden , the restaurant of which is located in the detached house of the colliery's former electrical workshop. The surrounding company buildings house cultural institutions and companies that have settled on the mine site. In 1997, for example, a wine trade called "Weinzeche" was established in the former turbine hall of the shaft .

literature

Walter Buschmann , Mathias Kitschenberg: Landabsatz Bonifacius. In: Preservation of monuments in the Rhineland. No. 3, 1992, ISSN 0177-2619 , pp. 123-125.
Gertrude Hermann, Wilhelm Hermann: The old mines on the Ruhr. 6th expanded and updated edition, Verlag Karl Robert Langewiesche, successor Hans Köster KG, Königstein i. Taunus, 2006, ISBN 3784569943 .
Joachim Huske : The coal mines in the Ruhr area. Data and facts from the beginning to 2005 (= publications from the German Mining Museum Bochum 144). 3rd revised and expanded edition. Self-published by the German Mining Museum, Bochum 2006, ISBN 3-937203-24-9 .
Albert Renger-Patzsch, photographs 1925–1960, catalog for the exhibition in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn. January 14th to February 13th 1977 in cooperation with the Albert Renger-Patzsch Archive-Ann and Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich. 3 photo images of the Bonifacius colliery.

Web links

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