RWWA

Finally found good sources on companies that struggled to get access to lime deposits. The Rheinisch Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv in Cologne holds the records of Gutehoffnungshütte, a major steel-company in the Ruhr, and the lesser known company Matthes und Weber that specialized in the production of basic chemicals. To my surprise they also had a high demand for lime and even operated their own quarry in the 1920s.

ThyssenKrupp Konzenrarchiv

Compkete my research at the ThyssenKrupp Konzernarchiv today. Found lots of great an diverse material, especially on the Rheinische Kalksteinwerke from their founding year 1903 well into the 1920s. But there were also lots of smaller bits and pieces that were important to get a fuller picture of how steel companies operated in the regional lime market in the 19th century. I was especially happy to find out about an early operation by the Friedrich Wilhelms Hütte which shed some light on the 1850s. I also spent a day finding out about the actual consumption of lime by various steelworks and will be able to contrast this information with data about the extraction in several quarries.

Landesarchiv NRW

Another week at the Landesarchiv NRW. Found some material on Landscape conservation in the 1920s that relates to the greening of top soil dumps. Besides these discoveries work has been somewhat tedious - a lot of reports on local economic development which might be useful in the end but is rather boring to collect.

Turn of the Century Journals on Quarrying

I was surprised how many journals are available especially from the 1900s and 1910s that focus entirely on the quarrying business. I spent much of last Thursday and Friday browsing through “Der Steinbruch” and “Steinbruch und Sandgrube”. Complementary, journals such as the “Mitteilungen des Rheinischen Vereins für Denkmalpflege und Heimatschutz” document the perspectives and worldview of a very different set of actors, namely of those with an interest in nature preservation. All this is really exciting and readily available source material which I wish I had more time to analyze systematically.

Geologischer Dienst NRW

The state Geological authority of North Rhine-Westfalia (Geologischer Dienst NRW) has a great collection of original material from geological surveys dating back to the early 20th century. Especially interesting are the reports commissioned by mining companies to counter claims that they were endangering the environment but also expertise about the expected exploitability of deposits. The archives of the Geological authority unfortunately are not well known among historians, but they are definitively worth exploring.

Strategic Presentation at TU Darmstadt

Presented first bits and pieces of my research results at our history department’s colloquium. I have tried to present an outline of what remains to be written over the next couple of years and read some short exemplary passages of what I have written during the last week. The prospects were grand - to say the least - but it felt good. Criticism was extremely productive and motivating!

Zeitschrift für praktische Geologie

Went through the first decades of the Zeitschrift für praktische Geologie starting in 1893 at the Bergbau Bibliothek in Bochum today. Even though I found disappointingly little on lime or lignite mining, I found that this journal is an interesting source. I was especially struck by the many contributions that are apparently part of a colonialist agenda. Many notes about resources being discovered in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It would probably be worth going through the journal more systematically - if i only had the time to do so…

Landesarchiv NRW

Spent the latter part of the week in the Landesarchiv NRW working on some files of the county authorities that supervised quarries. A lot of repetitions: neighbors complaining about rock blasting and negotiations about proper workers’ safety. Finally I took a look at a record on the cleansing of local creeks, but interestingly found no reference to mining related pollution that I had expected.

Fritz Thyssen Stiftung Grant

I have been awarded a one-year research grant by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. The title of the project I applied with is: “Ressourcenverbrauch und Rearrangement des Raums: Praktiken und Materialität des Tagebaus um 1900”

The funding will begin in September and I hope to be able to collect archival material and write a first journal article. Later, the research from this project can be easily feed into a more comprehensive analysis of how to grasp practices and materiality in history. For the moment, this is certainly a great point of depature!

A Week in the Archives

Completed another week in the archives. Things are going ahead: It’s fascinating to see, how lime companies went about in acquiring land for their quarries. I am starting to see different patterns and strategies.