Queen Elisabeth colliery

Queen Elisabeth colliery
	General information about the mine
	Emil shaft
Funding / year	up to approx. 1 million t
	Information about the mining company
Start of operation	1850
End of operation	1966
Successor use	Industrial and commercial space
	Funded raw materials
Degradation of	Hard coal
	Geographical location
Coordinates	51 ° 27 '47.7 " N , 7 ° 2' 9.2" E Coordinates: 51 ° 27 '47.7 " N , 7 ° 2' 9.2" E
	Location Queen Elisabeth colliery
Location	Frillendorf
local community	eat
Independent city ( NUTS3 )	eat
country	State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Country	Germany
District	Ruhr area

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The mine Queen Elizabeth was a coal - mine in Essen .

history

1844 to 1900

Under the direction of the Essen merchant Johann Wilhelm Butenberg mid-1840s was a major mining area owned by the east of the area in Essen Old Town all the way to Frillendorf and Schonnebeck muted . In 1844 the union of Queen Elisabeth under mining law was founded, based in Essen. The namesake was Queen Elisabeth, née Princess Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria , the wife of the then Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV .

In 1847, on the road from the old town after stopping Mountain (now Elise Street) with the sinking of the shaft Wilhelm started. It went into operation in 1850 and was equipped with a Malakow tower . Shortly afterwards, a coking plant with so-called beehive ovens was built next to the Wilhelm shaft .

The colliery developed economically up to the production of 100,000 tons of coal annually. During the period of economic expansion after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 , plans were made to expand the mine on a large scale. A second independent conveyor system was to be built at the east end of the mine field . In order to raise the necessary capital for this, the mining union was converted into a stock corporation. From 1872 to 1874 the new Friedrich Joachim mine shaft system was sunk in Schonnebeck . This was also equipped with a Malakow tower. From 1880 a coking plant was also operated here.

After the joint-stock company was reorganized into a mining union under new law, various cooperation agreements were made with surrounding companies. In particular, sales of the coking coals to Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG were secured. In 1897, the Hubert shaft was started in Frillendorf, a third production shaft that was halfway between the Friedrich Joachim shaft and Wilhelm shaft . In 1899 this shaft went into operation, it was equipped with a German strut frame.

1900 to 1945

In the years that followed, work began on modernizing and expanding the older shaft systems. First, from 1904 to 1907, a second shaft was sunk next to the Friedrich Joachim shaft, which was called Friedrich Joachim 2 . After its completion, the Friedrich Joachim 1 shaft was equipped with a new conveyor system. From 1910, Friedrich Joachim 1 again acted as the central extraction shaft for the eastern area. From 1907 to 1909, the Hubert 2 shaft was sunk next to the Hubert shaft . This was designed as a weather shaft from the start .

In 1910, the sinking of the new Emil mine shaft began on Elisenstrasse near the Wilhelm shaft . The shaft was located on its own cramped site, which was only separated from the Wilhelm shaft by a railway embankment . The spatially difficult situation required an unusual arrangement of the technical equipment. The processing plants were left at Schacht Wilhelm , the extracted raw coal was transported by cable car over the railway embankment to the modernized processing. Shaft Emil received a double strut frame, in which the two conveyors were offset at right angles to one another. The machine house for the main hoisting machine together with the converter was lengthened at the rear in order to also accommodate the shop and administration in a single, connected company building. The Essen architect Alfred Fischer was responsible for the progressive, relatively simple design at that time .

The Wilhelm / Emil and Friedrich Joachim 1/2 coking plants were renewed. The production reached 750,000 tons of fatty and edible coal . In 1916, the Queen Elisabeth trade union became the property of Mannesmannröhren -Werke AG. In the economically tense period after the First World War , the coking plant at Schacht Wilhelm was initially shut down.

In the course of the global economic crisis that followed , Mannesmann took drastic measures to consolidate the funding. In 1931 the production sites Hubert 1/2 and Friedrich Joachim 1/2 together with the Friedrich Joachim 1/2 coking plant were taken out of operation. The Hubert mining department was connected to the Wilhelm / Emil department . The extraction took place exclusively through the Emil shaft . The Friedrich Joachim department was kept open as a standstill area. In 1935 Friedrich Joachim 1/2 was restarted as a conveyor system. Shaft 1 received a new, full-walled headframe . A new coking plant with 70 coke ovens was built. The production rose to 950,000 tons annually.

Towards the end of the Second World War , the Wilhelm / Emil mine in particular was temporarily shut down due to bomb damage. The processing capacity of Schacht Wilhelm was completely lost at times.

1945 to 1966

After 1945 the mining assets of Mannesmann AG were split up into sub-companies as part of the unbundling. In 1953 it was decided to split up the Queen Elisabeth mine in turn. The Wilhelm / Emil mine was leased to the Essener Steinkohlenbergwerke AG . From 1955 there was a breakthrough with the neighboring Katharina colliery . After the merger of the Essener Steinkohlenbergwerke with Mannesmann AG in 1956, shaft Katharina 3 took over the complete mining of Wilhelm / Emil and kept the shafts open. The Friedrich Joachim 1/2 pit took over the Hubert 1/2 pit as a cable car and continued to operate the coking plant. The production reached 640,000 tons of fatty and edible coal.

Decommissioned in 1966

In the context of the coal crisis , the Rationalisierungsverband des Ruhrbergbau coordinated the shutdown and consolidation of unprofitable conveyor systems. This association also subsidized the decommissioning of production capacities.

Therefore it was decided to merge the Queen Elisabeth colliery with the Katharina colliery in the 1966 financial year . Queen Elisabeth's shafts and ropeway shafts were abandoned. Only the Friedrich Joachim 1 shaft and the Wilhelm shaft were retained as weather and water retention shafts until Katharina was shut down.

Current condition

Information board at the Emil shaft

After the final shutdown of all pits, the areas were assigned to other commercial uses. There are industrial areas on the Friedrich Joachim and Hubert shafts. Some former colliery buildings can still be seen. The Wilhelm shaft now houses the Bergbauforschung GmbH building.

Alfred Fischer's hoisting machine and administration building on Schacht Emil has been preserved through purchase and restoration by a private investor. Today it houses a painting school and art gallery. The building is part of the Route of Industrial Culture and has been a listed building since 1988 .

literature

Wilhelm Hermann, Gertrude 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 3-7845-6994-3

Web links

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