Collieries of the Ruhrrevier

Mining in the Ruhr Area started in the middle ages but really took off from 1700 when the use of explosives made it possible to create deeper pits accessing deeper coal seams. These earliest collieries were often small in scale with only a few dozen to a hundred miners working a single pit. Most of these older collieries were located south of the river Ruhr. As technical advanced made it possible to exploit more difficult reserves of coal, salt, ores and sand (for glass) the mining industry quickly grew and many new mining concessions were granted within the Ruhrrevier. In 1828 the first horse-drawn railways are built, followed in 1846 by the first railway proper. By this time hundreds of mines were in operation, and some had already been closed due to lack of reserves or technical difficulties (gas, water, gallery collapse and sinking).

The mining activities around Mülheim a/d Ruhr and Essen lead to infrastructure projects to connect these mines with the Harbour on the Ruhr. So in 1839 the Aktienstrasse (Shares Street) was opened connecting the two cities funded by industrialists buying a stake in the road company. At the same time several horse-drawn railways were in operation between the scattered mines and the harbour or to the Aktienstrasse.

Coal mines and related heavy industries such as blast furnaces, steel works and glass factories were spread throughout the Ruhrrevier, with a concentration between the rivers Ruhr and Emscher. Most mines were located in Bochum, Essen, Witten, Dortmund and Hattingen. Outlying places along the river Lippe or on the left bank of the Rhine had fewer mines in operation. In Kamp-Lintfort, for instance, only three mines were exploited, whilst Moers had 4 mines, Eneppe had 3, Neukirchen-Vluyn had 1 and Hamm had 6. Most mines had more than one pit. A number of 3 or 4 pits was most common with some mines having up to 7 pits per concession. These pits could be around the same town or village, but also be spread across several Ortschaften.

Tiefbau (mining coal below groundwater layers) quickly developed from about 1840 onwards as the possibilities to secure pits deeper than 50 metres became available with concrete tubing and freeze sinking. Franz Haniel had already experimented with Tiefbau in 1808 with the 46 metres vertical pit "Victoria" at Zeche Vollmond in Werne (now part of Bochum). In mining breaking groundwater layers caused major problems as the pit or the galleries would flood  with groundwater. For this a special system was used with a parallel pit where the water collected to be pumped out. In 1883  engineer Friedrich Hermann Poetsch is the first to sink a pit by freezing the subsoil, a method pioneered in Wales in the 1860s. In combination with concrete tubing securing the pit walls, this method made pits at depths of 70 and even over 100 metres possible.  In total almost 1300 mines were once in operation within the Ruhrrevier.

A total number of 1297 mines spread over 21 cities and rural districts made up the Ruhrrevier. Not all of these mines were in operation simultaneously. Some were closed before the mining boom of the second half of the 19th century. Most were shut down and dismantled between 1955 and 1985.

These mines were named after their concession or were given a fanciful name. The concession took the name of a local area, for instance a small hamlet, village or town. Names of farms or fieldnames were also used. Thus these concessions could me easily located on the maps made by the Bergbeamte (governmental Mining Official). Examples are Bruchstrasse, Cleverbank, Hasenwinkel, Herzkamp, Osterfeld and Westerholt. Other mines were given an aspirational name e.g. Bergmannsglück, Glück Auf, Gute Hoffnung, Freiheit, Geduld, Wohlgemut and Vereinigte Brüderschaft. Most mines, however, were named for people. These could be the original noble landowner or a member of the ruling elite (Prosper, Prinz Regent, Friedrich, Deutscher Kaiser, Maximillian, Graf Wittekind, Wilhelm II), saints and gods (Donar, Wodan, Sanct Peter, Sanct Paul, Bonifacius, Venus, Victoria, Fortuna), animals (Schwarzte Rabe, Haase), places (Java, Hibernia, Westphalia, Deutschland, Schleswig, Tremonia, Borussia), plants (Feigenbaum, Pfingstblume, Kirschbaum), politicians (Minister Stein, Fürst Hardenberg, Präsident), industrialists and bankers (Adolph von Hansemann, Franz Haniel, Carl Funke) and wives and children of company directors (Sophia, Margarethe, Helena, Eleonore, Charlotte and many, many more).