Geographical allocation

All the main relics of the old mining industry are still preserved on the site of the former mine. From the location of the stele (red dot), you can see a pond behind the house. It is located in the remainder of the open-cast mining hollow, which filled with water at the end of the 1930s. This is also the entrance hole of the removal tunnel and the shaft (blue dot). It lies below the water level at the foot of an old oak tree.

There are two spoil heaps on the footpath towards Dürscheid/Steeg: the northern one is overgrown with a small wood (1 gray dot), the southern one is flatter and covered with shrubs (2 gray dots).

Mining activities ceased in 1911. The Röhrig family bought the mining site in the 1950s, partially leveled the mounds of the open-cast mine and built a residential house (Lenzholzer Str.39) and a small stable on a backfilled section. The old path between the slag heaps has been preserved as a hiking trail to Miebach and Steeg.

On the topographical map of 1927, the open-cast mine is marked as a semicircle. The oval circles are the spoil heaps. (The northernmost spoil tip was leveled in the 1970s)

History of the “Katharinaglück” mine

"There is no more precise information about the first mining activity. However, it can be assumed that mining began in 1770, when the iron smelter in Dürschtal (Dürscheider Hütte) started operations (with charcoal). Presumably, the ore deposit near the surface was first mined in open-cast mining and then the existing shaft was used to go deeper. When it was discovered that the deepest layers of ore were found at a depth that allowed them to be removed via a tunnel from the bottom of the valley (around 40 m), this tunnel was excavated. The mine could also be drained easily via this tunnel." (K. Förster)

Around 1860, rich, large iron ore deposits were found in the area between Spitze-Dürscheid-Blissenbach. After the forest floor and the underlying tertiary sands had been removed (3), the brown ironstone was also initially mined here in open-cast mining. Later, a 40m and a 60m level were sunk. The extracted iron ore was sent to the Dürscheid ironworks, just like the ore from the Miebach mine. After the ironworks was shut down in 1859, the raw ore had to be transported on horse-drawn carts to the Rhine, where it was transported by ship to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Hütte in Mühlheim/Ruhr, where the pig iron was melted in a modern blast furnace. After the Gladbach railroad was built at the end of the 1860s, the iron ore could be transported directly from the old railroad station in Bergisch Gladbach to Mülheim. "The horse owners did good business with these transports. A hundredweight of iron ore from Spitze to Gladbach cost 9 pfennigs and the carts could cover the distance several times a day". (4)

In 1849, Friedrich-Wilhelms-Hütte in Mühlheim an der Ruhr was the first blast furnace in the Ruhr area to be operated with hard coal (coke). In 1852, the smelter was transformed into "Bergwerks AG Friedrich Wilhelms-Hütte" and became the owner of the Luther mine, which supplied "good and cheap material" with an iron content of 40% and a manganese content of 1-2%. At times, the "Luther Mine" was the "main mine", which secured the large iron requirements of the new blast furnace plant. (The ironworks still exists today as part of the Thyssengruppe and produces iron for wind turbine rotors, among other things).

Although production volumes fluctuated, big plans were made around 1900. At the Katharinaglück operating point, a 12m shaft was sunk for experimental purposes and work began to reopen the old winding tunnel, initially over a distance of 197m, with great difficulty, and to replace the old wooden rails with iron rails. By 1908, this work had been completed over a total length of 530m to the colliery house in Steeg. The intention now was to extract the large quantities of contaminated ore found near the surface and clean it for smelting.

For this reason, plans were made to build a processing plant in Spitze in 1907. An approx. 2.5 km long narrow-gauge railroad with locomotive drive was to be built to transport the washed ores from Katharinaglück to Spitze. As the operation was not profitable despite all efforts, mining was discontinued in 1911.

After the First World War, renewed attempts were made to find new sources of income at the operating sites in Spitze and Miebach. In 1923 and 1924 there are reports of investigation and clean-up work. The autarky efforts during the Nazi era also led to renewed investigation work in 1937. Each time, however, it was found that mining was no longer worthwhile. (1)

The Katharinaglück mine house

Katharinaglück has been the name of a residential area since the end of the 19th century. It lies between the districts of Steeg and Miebach. The old mine house is located directly on Wipperfürther Straße No. 169. About 50 meters to the north is an elongated slag heap, near which is the mouth of the winding tunnel. The spoil tip was built on in the 1950s.

The 1980 topographical map shows that the new development area of the Gerhard Hauptmann housing estate in Miebach is located between the mine and the colliery house.

Peter Höller from Miebach recounts his "Youthful memories from the years before 1933":

"The little house Katharinaglück was on the country road from Miebach to Dürscheid. The foreman of the brown iron mine used to live here. The tunnel went eastwards to the "Miebachs Hüuschen" family, the northeasternmost house in Obermiebach. Iron ore was dug there and transported through the tunnel on the railroad to Katharinaglück to the country road.

The open-cast mine tunnel went from Katharinenglück eastwards under our (Höller's) fields to Miebachs Hüüschen. There are still piles of waste at the top of Miebachs Häuschen and the entrance shaft is still under water. The mine had already closed down when I was a child." (2)

Part of the Höller fields had to be given up for the new Gerhard Hauptmann housing estate in Miebach in 1950. In 2002, a tunnel collapsed under one of the houses on the estate.

Kunibert Förster reported on this in the Kürtener Schriften and described the history of the mine "whose air shafts (at least 5) were apparently not permanently sealed and repeatedly collapsed. The last collapse in 2002 resulted in damage to a residential house in the Miebach housing estate built after the Second World War. This led to the mining authority in Düren carrying out a week-long operation to fill the cavities in the area of the housing estate with a lightweight concrete compound in order to prevent future mining damage. "(5)

The older residents knew the tunnel and had used it in their own way.
"Prof. Helmut Lieth, who was born in Steeg and grew up on a farm there, reported that his father and other farmers later removed the iron rails from the tunnel and used them for other purposes (e.g. as transport rails for cattle feed in the stables or as beams for buildings)". (K. Förster)

What is brown ironstone?