This article briefly describes the history of Dutch coal mining, which mainly took place in South Limburg in the last century. At that time, the extraction of coal was carried out by five mining companies:Oranje-Nassau Mijnen, De Nederlandse Staatsmijnen (DSM), Laura and Vereeniging, Willem-Sophia and the Domaniale Mijnmaatschappij. However, the extraction of coal in Limburg has its origins in the Middle Ages.
Origin of the Domanial Mine
Coal has been found in South Limburg for a very long time. The first coal in Limburg was extracted in the region of the Rolduc abbey, founded around 1100. The history of Rolduc, recorded in the Annales Rodenses, shows that coal was probably extracted in opencast mining in the valley of the river as early as around the 11th century. the Worm, a tributary of the Roer.
From the 14th century, the coal seams that came to the surface became more or less exhausted, and one had to continue underground. This was done in so-called stollen construction, in which horizontal mine galleries are constructed in the wall of a hill or river valley. From about 1500 onwards, the layers close to the surface that could be reached by means of solid rock construction also became exhausted, and the coal putters had to go even further into the depths. To this end, they dug shafts, sometimes up to 40 meters deep. At the end of the 16th century there were hundreds of such mines in the Wormdal (fig. 1).
From the beginning of the 17th century, the abbey of Kloosterrade became involved in the mining industry. The abbey had the mines exploited by private coal diggers:Koelgrevere or Köhler. These coal miners were often united in small groups:Köhlergesellschaften. In 1741, the abbey of Rolduc (as Kloosterrade was then called) started mining the coal seams itself. This is how the Abbey Mines arose. By 1780, the mines already employed about 400 miners. Coal has already been extracted to a depth of 300 metres.
In 1794 the Duchy of Limburg was occupied by the French and incorporated into the republic. The republic confiscated all the mines of the abbey. The mines were placed under the domains service by the government, and were called Mines Domaniales. The French also decided to shift the focus of mining to the Kerkrade plateau. The smaller unprofitable mines in the Worm Valley were all closed. After the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1814, the Mines Domaniales passed to the new Dutch Kingdom. This is how the State owned Domanial Mine was created.
In 1845 the Akens-Maastrichtsche Spoorwegmaatschappij received the concession for the construction of the Aachen–Maastricht railway. As compensation for the risk that the exploitation in the sparsely populated province of Limburg entailed, the company also received the usufruct of the Domaniale Mine in 1846 for a period of 99 years. The mine came under the directorship of Egon van der Elst (1828–1897), who was educated in Delft. In 1889 the railway activities passed into the hands of the Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van de Staatsspoorwegen and the Königliche Eisenbahn Direktion Köln, and the mine of the Aachen-Maastricht Railway Company was renamed Domaniale Steenkolenmijnen (fig. 2).
Orange-Nassau Mines
In the years 1875-1900 it had gradually become clear that in order to set up a flourishing mining industry, good transport options had to be available. South Limburg was still a fairly isolated area. Henri Sarolea (1844–1900), a railway builder from the Dutch East Indies, made detailed plans for a railway. He was in close contact with the Düren entrepreneurs Carl Honigmann (1842–1903) and Friedrich Honigmann (1841–1913). In 1886 Sarolea submitted an application to the government in The Hague for the construction of a railway between Herzogenrath, Heerlen and Sittard. Together with the Honigmann brothers, Sarolea also founded a mining company and tried to obtain concessions for the extraction of coal.
The railway was completed in 1896. In 1893, the Minister of Transport, C. Lely, granted a concession to the mining company of Sarolea and the Honigmann brothers for the exploitation of the Oranje-Nassau coal field (3,378 hectares). The mining company was officially called 'Society for Exploitation of Limburg Stone Coal Mines'. Publicly, the company was soon called Oranje-Nassau Mines, after the large concession Oranje-Nassau. Shortly after obtaining the Orange-Nassau concession, the concession was acquired for the Carl field, measuring 444 hectares. The company, led by mining engineer Friedrich Honigmann, started in 1894 with the construction of a mine near Heerlen, which later became known as 'Oranje-Nassau Mine I', later simply referred to as the ON-I. The Oranje-Nassau Mine I went into production in 1899 (fig. 3 and 4).
In 1899, when the first coal was mined in the Oranje-Nassau Mine I, (ON-I), Oranje-Nassau Mines started a second mine near the village of Schaesberg in the Carl field. The mine, tentatively named 'Carl', was named the 'Orange-Nassau Mine II' (ON-II) upon completion. The mine entered production with its first shaft in 1904.
In 1908 the Honigmann family sold its shareholding in the Oranje-Nassau Mines to the French De Wendel family, who owned steelworks in Lorraine. The Wendel family was interested in coal for coke, and believed that it could be found in Limburg. With the construction of a third mine in the north of the Oranje-Nassau concession (the 'Oranje-Nassau Mine III', or ON-III, construction started in 1910), it tried to tap into gas-rich coal seams. Two shafts were constructed, which were placed two kilometers apart. The shafts were mined in Heerlerheide in the lands on the Ganzeweide, and close to the so-called Heksenberg on the edge of the Brunssummerheide (fig. 5, 6).
The ON-III in Heerlerheide came into production in 1917. In 1923, the young Delft mining engineer Cornelis Raedts joined the Oranje-Nassau Mines. Raedts managed to turn the second shaft of the ON-III on the edge of the Brunssummerheide into a separate mining seat (ON-IV) in a relatively short time. Later, as chief engineer of the ON-III, he succeeded in making the ON-III the most productive and largest of the Oranje-Nassau Mines. Raedts ended his career as president of the Oranje-Nassau Mines.
Laura and Vereeniging
In 1873 miller Anton Wackers from Herzogenrath and his brother-in-law, Gustav Schümmer, found coal at a depth of 154 m near the village of Eygelshoven. They applied for a concession under the name Laura, after the first name of Wackers' wife. On September 9, 1876, they obtained exploitation rights for a concession of 457 hectares. Others had tried the same in another part of Eygelshoven and had also had success. This German 'Vereinigungsgesellschaft für Steinkohlenbergbau im Wurmrevier' obtained its Vereeniging concession (454 hectares) on February 18, 1877.
In 1887 the Laura concession was bought by the Eschweiler Bergwerksverein (EBV) and the owners of the Vereeniging concession. Now joined in one hand, the name 'Laura en Vereeniging' was born. In 1899 a company was established in Brussels under Belgian law, with headquarters in Brussels, and named Société des Charbonnages Réunis Laura et Vereeniging S.A. The head of the firm was banker Albert Thijs. Thijs' Banque d'Outremer was the largest shareholder. Construction of the first shaft of the Laura mine began in 1901.
During construction, the strong aquifer Feldbiss fault, one of the largest faults in South Limburg, was severely hindered. Rich coal seams also exist on the northern side of the Feldbiss fault, albeit 225 m deeper, but they could not be reached from the Laura, because one had to cross the fault. Laura and Vereeniging bought the Eendracht concession (290 hectares) from the Staatsmijnen, because the Vereeniging concession was not large enough for profitable exploitation. Finally, construction of the shafts was started in 1921. The second mine was named Julia, after the wife of Albert Thijs, the Belgian director of the company. This mine was operational in 1926 (Fig. 7).
The Willem-Sophia Mine
The Willem and Sophia concessions were awarded in 1860 and 1861 by the government of Prime Minister Thorbecke to the Nederlandse Bergwerkvereniging in The Hague. The Bergwerkvereniging went bankrupt in 1881, because it failed to build a shaft in the wet soil of the concessions. In the year 1898 the concession was sold to a Belgian firm called Société Anonymes des Charbonnages Nérlandais Willem et Sophia. Using the freezing method for excavating shafts in wet soil, this company succeeded in constructing two shafts in the village of Spekholzerheide near Kerkrade in a relatively short time. The mine, called Willem-Sophia, came into production in 1902 (fig. 8, 9). An overview of the concessions granted in the 19th century is shown in Fig. 10.
The State Mines
In 1899 the Dutch government set up a committee to find out whether state exploitation of coal was desirable. The established committee decided favorably on state exploitation. Minister Lely presented the committee's findings to the House, which agreed. Thus, on May 1, 1902, 'State Mines in Limburg' was established. The first mine, called Wilhelmina, was started in the Ernst concession, in the village of Terwinselen, near Kerkrade (Fig. 11).
Construction of a second state mine, called Emma, started in 1908 near the town of Hoensbroek. Construction work started in 1911 for the shafts of the third state mine, called Hendrik, near the village of Rumpen, now part of the municipality of Brunssum. In 1915 the construction of the shafts for a fourth mine, called Maurits, started in Lutterade near Geleen. The Emma State Mine started production in 1911, the Hendrik State Mine in 1918 and the Maurits State Mine in 1923.
These last three mines produced gas-rich coal, unlike most private mines, which produced domestic fuel coal. The gas-rich coal was suitable for industrial applications (coke and gas production), and in 1914 a coking plant was built at the Emma State Mine. A second coke factory was built at the Maurits State Mine. The coke production was partly the start of the chemical activities of Staatsmijnen in Limburg, later called De Nederlandse Staatsmijnen, or DSM.
The Twentieth Century and the Mine Closure
By the end of the 1920s, all mining companies were operational, and South Limburg had 12 coal mines. In the 1930s, coal became increasingly important and the mines grew steadily. After WWII, the importance of Limburg coal only increased in the reconstruction. Mechanization was introduced on a large scale and production was continuously ramped up. This was the heyday of the Limburg coal mines. In the late 1950s, the construction of the fifth state mine, called Beatrix, was started near Herkenbosch. Two shafts were deepened, but in the early 1960s the situation of the Limburg coal mines, just like that of the German and Belgian mines, became increasingly worse. Competition from cheaper American coal and the discovery of the Slochteren natural gas field undermined the position of Limburg coal as an energy carrier. The mines were all at a loss in the 1960s. The construction of the Beatrix State Mine was discontinued in 1962. In 1965, the Dutch government, led by the Minister of Economic Affairs, Drs. J.M. den Uyl to close the Limburg mines. The Maurits State Mine was the first to be closed in 1967. The other mines followed, and the very last Limburg coal was produced by the ON-I on December 31, 1974.
This article was previously published in Natural Resource, 10 (2008), no 4, the magazine of the study association “De Mijnbouwkundige Vereniging”. This article is taken from Gea 42 (4):112-115.
Sources:
Geilenkirchen, P., 2003–2008. The Domanial Mine in ImageGeilenkirchen, P., 2006–2008. De Laura and Vereeniging in BeeldVoncken &De Jong, 2002-2008. Coal mining in the Netherlands
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- Information about the author:Dr. Jack Voncken