Saxony mine

Saxony mine
General information about the mine
Machine hall of the Sachsen colliery, today Alfred-Fischer-Halle
Information about the mining company
Start of operation	1912
End of operation	1976
Successor use	ecologically oriented business park, event site
Funded raw materials
Degradation of	Hard coal
Geographical location
Coordinates	51 ° 42 '23.4 "  N , 7 ° 49' 28"  E Coordinates: 51 ° 42 '23.4 "  N , 7 ° 49' 28"  E
Location of the Saxony mine
Location	Heessen
local community	Hamm
Independent city ( NUTS3 )	Hamm
country	State of North Rhine-Westphalia
Country	Germany
District	Ruhr area

The Zeche Sachsen was a hard coal mine in Heessen . It was operated from 1912 to 1976 and, together with the Radbod , Heinrich-Robert and Maximilian collieries , was one of the most important employers in the region around the city of Hamm in the 20th century. The name Saxony , then chosen for the systems, refers to the region of origin of the union , which was based in Eisleben (now Saxony-Anhalt).

founding

As early as 1903, the Mansfeldsche Kupferschiefer-building trade union carried out test drilling in Heessen and came across coal . She earned 1903-1906 fourteen coal fields in order to supply their own smelters with the smelting of ores required coke to secure coal. In 1904, two farms and all of the land on the Hamm – Minden railway line and thus on the coal removal route to the east were acquired as business premises . This meant that 37 ha of land was available for the construction of the mine  . For the settlement of workers, additional areas were bought in the following years, so that the union was soon able to call approx. 250 hectares its own. In the summer of 1911, a works office was set up as administration for the upcoming colliery, which later retained this function after the start of operations.

On January 12, 1912, the plant management telegraphed to the company's upper mountain and hut management:

“The first stitch was done today. A loud Glückauf scolded heaven. Let the shafts grow! This reports Zeche Sachsen. "

The upper mountain and hut management responded with a telegram, the wording of which read as follows:

“I wish the civil servants and workers a warm happiness for the work they have started; may it be possible to successfully bring the shafts to the coal without an accident. "

The sinking work for shaft Sachsen I had started.

Shortly afterwards, work began on the Sachsen II shaft.

In 758.60 m was achieved in the shaft I carbon and put the first sole in 846 m and the second sole in 949 m to. At this point in time, shaft I reached a total depth of 1050 m and shaft II a depth of 985 m. The rural village of Heessen with its 3000 inhabitants changed its character more and more in the direction of an urban settlement with the establishment of three miners' settlements ("Old Colony", "New Colony" and "Vogelsang"). Two years after it started operations, the colliery already had 540 employees. Production also began in 1914 with 13,866 t of coal. Already in 1921 the output exceeded the limit of half a million tons (503,649 t). Also in 1921, the parent company changed its legal form to a stock corporation and called itself Mansfeld AG for mining and smelting operations . Half of the Kuxe of the Saxony union was sold in 1925 to the Continentale Handelsbank , which was related to the Otto Wolff group in Cologne. With this measure, new capital was to be obtained for the expansion of the colliery in order to survive in the economically difficult period after the First World War .

On April 1, 1926, the coking plant started producing coke . Nevertheless, the global economic situation and the situation in Germany forced the mine operators to lay off around half of the workforce. As a result, around 1,800 miners lost their jobs between 1923 and 1932. Even a shutdown of the mine was considered and prepared. The protests from the district and community administration, the factory management and the workforce prevented this. The miners "voluntarily" accepted a 10% cut in their wages, a condition that lasted until 1935. Nevertheless, the colliery ran the risk of being shut down again in 1935, as a mine fire severely damaged the main dewatering system of the first level and the colliery threatened to share the fate of the Maximilian colliery , which had already sunk in 1914 . It took the mine rescue teams of Saxony and other mine systems nine days to contain the water ingress and thus secure the mine, which was able to resume operations after the swamps .

In 1936 a third level was laid at 1022 m in shaft I and a year later, on September 25, 1937, a weather shaft was built west of shafts I and II on Münsterstrasse. On October 30, 1937, four miners died in a face break .

The colliery in World War II

In 1939, the operating company acquired the Maximilian field with shafts I and II of the Maximilian colliery in order to ensure future expansion. However, at the beginning of 1940, the mine was transferred to the Reichswerke AG for ore mining and ironworks Hermann Göring . It was merged within this group with the mines Viktoria, Julia and Recklinghausen to form the coal union of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring . In the same year, the excavation work that had begun on shaft III was postponed because such "unnecessary" work was prohibited during the war and a certain material shortage had already occurred. This material shortage worsened as the war progressed. Nevertheless, Saxony achieved a production volume of over one million tons of hard coal for the first time in 1943. The mining disaster of the following year interrupted this upward trend in production volumes.

"On April 3, 1944, there was a firedamp explosion in the President seam in the Ostfeld on the third level , which resulted in 169 deaths, including 113 Russian prisoners of war."

By building a sham facility in the Schafsbusch east of Heessen, the Wehrmacht tried to divert air attacks from the actual target, which only succeeded at times. Three barracks for the prisoners were set up around the colliery.

Air raids by the Royal Air Force on February 16 and March 27, 1945 severely damaged the surface facilities and resulted in two deaths during daytime operations. In one of these attacks, a prison barrack was also hit by a bomb; this direct hit killed 90 Soviet prisoners of war. The community of Heessen and with it the mine were occupied by Allied troops four days after the last heavy attack on March 27, 1945.

After the war

The Allied command allowed work on the mine to continue on April 5th - 120 members of the workforce began the clean-up work on April 6th. The workforce grew daily so that funding could be resumed on May 15th. The Allies also converted the operating company. So the mine came from the disbanded coal union of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring into the administration of the newly formed Märkische coal union with seat in Heessen. The fields Prinz Schönaich and Bavaria, including the flooded shaft Bavaria, were taken over by the Maximilian mine, which was once again and this time finally closed. The coking plant was only able to resume operations in 1947, and it was not until the end of 1950 that the clearing and repair work on the surface facilities was completed.

Shaft I on Saxony has now been sunk deeper. Another - the fourth - level was created at 1196 m. This made it possible to exceed the one million tonne production limit as early as 1951.

In 1954, a further weather shaft (IV) was required for the southeast field. It was in the area of ​​the parade ground at the Hamm Kurpark and reached a final depth of 1182 meters. Fields size of the mine reached its greatest extent with about 100 square kilometers in 1954, but most of the fields was not mineable . In 1956 the ownership changed again. The new owner was now the Aktiengesellschaft für Berg- und Hüttenbetrieb Berlin, Salzgitter . Also in 1956, dismantling began in the construction site of the new shaft IV. Two years later, the sinking work for shaft V Konrad Ende began on the factory premises next to shafts I and II. In 1960 it reached the Carboniferous at 763 m and was set up as the system's central shaft. The coal crisis in German mining began at about the same time ; there were first layoffs and a hiring freeze. Investments were restricted or omitted. The preservation of the shaft system became the new operational goal, which until now had been aimed at increasing the output.

In 1962 there were two major accidents that created additional problems for the mine. On March 9, a firedamp explosion killed 31 miners; a mountain blow killed another six men. In spite of this, Saxony also achieved the highest production volume since its inception this year: 1,217,015 tons of hard coal were produced by the 3,205-strong workforce. However, there were further setbacks. In 1964 the alignment work in the south-east and south-west field had to be stopped due to geological disturbances. On March 27, 1965 ten buddy died in the crack of a rope during a man-riding .

On January 1, 1970, the colliery became the property of Ruhrkohle AG , which initially provided for an increase in daily production to 12,000 tons. However, the target could not be achieved, so that ultimately the daily production target had to be reduced to 6,000 t. Geological investigations revealed worse mining conditions in the fields than had been expected. The numerous geological faults and the depth at which the coal reserves were located did not allow any profitable mining . An increase in the output would only have been possible through the development of the "Prinz Schönaich" mining field under the Mark district , for which purpose the construction of another weather shaft (shaft VI) in Westtünnen was planned. However, this did not happen again.

On July 17, 1972, RAG closed the coking plant at the Sachsen colliery. Mountain blows on August 8, 1973 and June 28, 1974 again claimed human lives; a total of 13 buddies were killed. This overall situation in Saxony and the already bad conditions for the German hard coal mining finally led to the planning for the closure of the operation. The workforce was informed of this on January 31, 1976 at a works meeting. The closure was finally decided by the board on March 15 of that year after two reports had supported this.

The last wagon of coal was mined on June 4th and the mine closed on June 30th, 1976. The shafts of Saxony were backfilled  - and the plant took its toll one last time from the miners. Backfilling shaft III resulted in a firedamp explosion that killed three men. These were the last dead to die in the area of ​​the Sachsen colliery. A total of 535 deaths were recorded at the colliery. In 1979, work began on filling the shafts of the Maximilian colliery, the fields of which had last belonged to Saxony. The work dragged on until 1981; this year the Bavaria shaft was filled.

architecture

The daytime facilities , designed uniformly by Alfred Fischer , clearly marked the departure from historicism . The colliery's early buildings, including the machine shop built in 1914, followed a monumental classicism , later buildings such as the coal washing plant and coking plant (1922–1926) followed a strict expressionism . The machine hall is the only major structure that has been preserved, with the slogan "Coal is bread" on the portal.

The factory site today

It took decades before an ecologically oriented business park - the Eco-Center NRW  - with new jobs could be created on the former colliery site . Between 2005 and 2011 it was the seat of the SRH University for Logistics and Economics . The former machine hall is now one of the city's larger event halls as the Alfred Fischer Hall and has been a listed building since 1989 . The remaining facilities of the Zeche Sachsen and the Öko-Zentrum NRW belong to the route of industrial culture . The Sachsen Halde with its three very different peaks was redesigned into a park. As part of the Local Hero Week of the city of Hamm in April 2010, an eight-meter-high steel cross with motif plates was attached to a summit.

literature

• Bergbau Aktiengesellschaft Westfalen, Bergwerksdirektion Sachsen (Hrsg.): That was our mine in Saxony . Central printing company of Bergbau Aktiengesellschaft Dortmund and Westphalia, 1976.
• Peter Voss: The mines in Hamm. Pictorial chronicle of the mines Heinrich Robert, Maximilian, Radbod, Saxony, Westphalia . Regio-Verlag, Werne 1994, ISBN 3-929158-03-5 .
• Hammer History Association V. (Ed.): The history of the Sachsen colliery from 1912 to 1944 . Hamm 1996.
• Stefan Klönne: Radbod, Maximilian, Heinrich-Robert, Saxony. Hammer mines through the ages . Diploma thesis, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Self-published , Hamm 2000.
• Jutta Thamer: Buildings of work between yesterday and today. Industrial architecture in Hamm (=  notes on the city's history . Volume 6 ). Westfälischer Anzeiger Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamm 2000, ISBN 3-924966-28-1 .
• Gisela Wallgärtner: Heessen and the colliery Saxony 1912–1976 . Klartext, Essen 2002, ISBN 3-89861-158-2 .
• Jörn Funke: 100 years of the Saxony mine. Architectural gem and pit of misfortune . In: Westfälischer Anzeiger . Hamm January 7th 2012.

Web links

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

• Achim Trommen: Saxony. In: Headframes in Ruhr mining. 17th March 2019 . 
• Hamm “Business Park Saxony”. In: National Urban Development Policy - Werkstatt-Stadt . October 11, 2017. 
• Business park. (No longer available online.) Öko-Zentrum NRW formerly in the original 
• Description of this sight on the route of industrial culturehttp: //vorlage.rik.test/~16~11626
• Newspaper article about the Zeche Sachsen in the press kit of the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Stefan Klönne: Radbod Maximilian Heinrich Robert Sachsen. The hammer mines through the ages . P. 41.
2. ^ Stefan Klönne: Radbod Maximilian Heinrich Robert Sachsen. The hammer mines through the ages . P. 42.
3. ↑ Inventory 54 - Saxony mine, Hamm-Heessen. Duration: 1910–1977. In: Mining Archive Bochum. Retrieved March 31, 2012 . 
4. ^ Quote from Stefan Klönne: Radbod Maximilian Heinrich Robert Sachsen. The hammer mines through the ages . P. 45.
5. ↑ Gisela Wall Gardener: Heessen and the bill Saxony 1912-1976. Klartext Verlag.
6. ↑ so Jörn Funke: 100 years of the Saxony mine. Westfälischer Anzeiger from January 7, 2012.
7. ^ Stefan Klönne: Radbod Maximilian Heinrich Robert Sachsen. The hammer mines through the ages . P. 45.
8. ↑ 18th cabinet meeting on March 9, 1962> G. Mine accident at the “Sachsen” colliery. In: Cabinet minutes of the federal government. Federal Archives, accessed on April 6, 2019 . Rosemary Callmann: Misfortune at the “Sachsen” colliery: Sad luck. In: The time . No. 34/1973, August 24, 1973, accessed April 6, 2019 . Achim Trommen: Historical development of mining. In: Headframes in Ruhr mining. March 7, 2019, accessed April 5, 2019 . 
    
    
9. ↑ Stefan Klönne: Hammer Zechen in the course of time Radbod Maximilian Heinrich-Robert Sachsen . Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, p. 47. Year and number of dead
10. ↑ Wall Gardener: Heessen and the bill Saxony. Essen 2002.
11. ^ Ruhr 2010 The Saxon Cross. City of Hamm, archived from the original on April 15, 2010 ; accessed on April 6, 2019 .