Surviving skip headframe and winding house from the former Berzdorf brown coal workings, now beside the Berzdorfer See leisure lake.
The Berzdorfer Werk Skip-Schacht, designated Schacht 3, is a surviving surface installation of the former Tagebau Berzdorf brown coal operation near Görlitz in Upper Lusatia, Saxony. Brown coal extraction in the Berzdorf area began around 1830 with shallow underground shaft workings. Open-cast operations commenced in 1919, and after a period of flooding and inactivity the pit was reactived in 1946 to meet post-war fuel demands.
The skip shaft itself was sunk in 1966 to serve the drainage and winding needs of the expanded open-cast operation. Production ceased in December 1997. From 2002 the open-cast void was flooded to form the Berzdorfer See, completed in February 2013.
The skip headframe, a steel strut structure with a two-post guide arrangement, and the adjacent winding house with its drum winding machine survive in situ and are recorded in the KuLaDig heritage register for Saxony.
The extraction of brown coal in the Berzdorf basin south of Görlitz can be traced back to the early nineteenth century. Around 1830 four shallow underground shafts — the Energieschacht, the Wilhelm Schacht, the August Schacht, and Englers Schacht — were opened in the Berzdorf-Schönau area, working a seam that reached up to 140 metres in thickness in places, among the deepest and most complex lignite deposits in the region. In 1872 the Görlitz cloth manufacturer Ernst Geisler consolidated these workings into a single field named Gute Hoffnung and continued production until 1901, mining at depths of up to 30 metres. Annual output in the second half of the nineteenth century ranged between 15,000 and 25,000 tonnes, though difficult working conditions reduced this to around 5,000 to 10,000 tonnes in the early twentieth century.
In 1915 the City of Dresden acquired the Grubenfeld Berzdorf with the intention of supplying electricity to Dresden and eastern Saxony. Conversion to open-cast working began in 1917, and in 1922 the city sold the field to the Deutsche Petroleum-Aktiengesellschaft of Berlin, which constructed a coal bunker complex, a screening and loading installation, and a chain conveyor to the stockpile. In 1924 or 1925 the field passed to the Aktiengesellschaft Sächsische Werke (ASW), which brought it into state ownership and achieved annual outputs of up to 74,000 tonnes. Economic circumstances forced the flooding and closure of the open-cast pit in 1927.
After the Second World War the pit was reopened. In March 1946 pumping began to drain the flooded workings, and by June 1946 hand extraction had resumed under the Arbeitsgemeinschaft des sächsischen Braunkohlenbergbaus, Grube Berzdorf. A skip hoist and a rail connection to the high bunker at Hagenwerder were brought into service, and from 1949 a cableway replaced the earlier chain conveyor to the bunker. In 1953 the first bucket-wheel excavator was deployed. The opening of the Kraftwerk Hagenwerder power station in 1958 transformed the pit into a major supplier of coal for on-site electricity generation. Two further generating units followed in 1963 and 1974–1975, requiring a progressive expansion of the open-cast operation into the Süd-, West-, and Nordfelder and driving peak annual output up to seven million tonnes. At the height of production in the 1980s some 7,000 people were employed in the complex, and daily output reached 50,000 tonnes.
The Berzdorfer Werk Skip-Schacht, also identified as Schacht 3, was sunk in 1966 as a single-compartment vertical shaft. Its function was to wind coal and spoil brought to the shaft bottom by underground rail, and to pump drainage water to surface. The shaft was sunk to approximately 80 metres depth, reaching the coal seam horizon. The skip headframe that survives is a steel strut structure notable for having only two vertical uprights rather than the conventional four; these uprights serve simultaneously as the lateral guides for the skip. The uprights are equipped with guide timbers and rails, and a stairway gives access to the tipping platform and a control platform. At the tipping level a mechanical deflector diverts the skip sideways to discharge the extracted material through a chute into waiting wagons. The winding house is a single-storey steel-framed building with a pitched roof situated to the south of the headframe; it contains a drum winding machine with a single rope running to the sheave in the headframe. A small weather-shelter control booth stands to the north, fitted with operating and signal equipment. The headframe type was almost certainly built by VEB Bohrungen und Schachtbau Welzow. Two essentially identical headframes are known from other East German brown coal operations.
Following reunification the Kraftwerk Hagenwerder was assessed as uneconomic to modernise and its three generating units were taken out of service between 1991 and 1997. With the market for Berzdorf coal collapsing, output was reduced progressively and coal winding from Schacht 3 came to an end. Final coal production at the Tagebau Berzdorf ceased in December 1997, with some 60 million tonnes of recoverable reserves remaining in the ground. The shaft tube of Schacht 3 has since been backfilled. Rehabilitation of the open-cast void was carried out by the Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbau-Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH (LMBV). Flooding of the pit began in 2002 and was completed in February 2013, forming the Berzdorfer See, one of the largest artificial lakes in Saxony at approximately 960 hectares and 72 metres maximum depth. The skip headframe, winding house, and control booth of Schacht 3 remain standing and are registered in the KuLaDig cultural heritage database.