Zeche Osterfeld — Paul-Reusch-Schacht Oberhausen · Nordrhein-Westfalen · Germany

The Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH), which had identified coal seams in the Osterfeld area through field purchase from the local finder Hagedorn and through its own boring campaigns in the 1850s and 1860s, submitted an operating plan to the Bergamt Gelsenkirchen on 15 August 1873 for the Zeche Osterfeld. Sinking preparations began the following day and the shaft proper was started on 1 September 1873 at the Vestische Straße site. In April 1874 a quicksand inrush at 34 metres depth destroyed the first shaft entirely.

A new shaft 56 metres to the west, with a diameter of six metres, was begun three months later. This second attempt was successful; the Carboniferous was reached at 238 metres in 1876. By September 1878 the shaft had reached a provisional depth of 397 metres.

The first level was set at 276 metres and the second 100 metres deeper. The shaft was equipped with a steel pyramidal headframe — modelled on the first steel headframe in the Ruhr of 1869 — over a two-storey brick shaft house, with a balancing-beam steam engine for water management. The mine had rail connections to the Westfälische Bahn, Rheinische Bahn, and Emschertalbahn.

On 3 October 1879 a 400-horsepower steam winding engine drew the first laden coal wagons to surface; the new mine employed around 200 men, with output of approximately 4,500 tonnes by the end of the year. A regulatory requirement of 1881 for a second means of egress was met in 1885 when an underground connection to the neighbouring Zeche Oberhausen was completed. By 1890 the mine employed over 1,000 workers and raised 300,000 tonnes annually.

In 1895 a coking plant was added, producing not only coke and gas but also benzene, ammonia, and tar. Due to continuing ventilation inadequacy the Bergamt Dortmund ordered the sinking of a second shaft in 1898; Schacht 2 went into service with a ventilation fan in July 1900, making Schacht 1 fully available as an intake shaft. After the turn of the century infrastructure was improved further.

In 1903–1904 Schacht 3 was sunk as a ventilation shaft with a diameter of 6.1 metres. On 4 December 1903 a firedamp explosion killed twelve miners; this disaster led to fundamental improvements in ventilation. In 1913 construction of an outlying shaft in Klosterhardt, about two kilometres north of the main site, was begun; Schacht 4 reached the second level in 1914 and the fourth level in 1916.

A 43-metre clinker-clad tower, designed by the Oberhausen architect Toni Schwingen with GHH building bureau in 1923–24, housed the electric winding engine. Schacht 4 buildings also included a Kaue and administrative building of 1921–22. The Osterfeld mine had by the early twentieth century developed into one of the largest and most productive collieries in the Ruhr.

With 3,460 employees in 1915 it ranked among the major operations. In 1928–32 the coking plant was fundamentally renewed. Due to the world economic crisis the Gutehoffnungshütte closed its Zeche Hugo and Zeche Oberhausen in 1931, and in 1933 Zeche Sterkrade was also closed.

The coalfields and shaft installations of Sterkrade and Hugo came to Osterfeld; from 1933 the available infrastructure comprised Schächte Osterfeld 1, 2, and 3 as winding shafts, and Schächte Osterfeld 4, Sterkrade 1, Sterkrade 2, and Hugo for ventilation, hoisting, and materials transport. During the 1930s the underground haulage was progressively modernised; from 1922 pit ponies had been replaced by compressed-air and diesel locomotives. In September 1939 end-of-year output reached 2.5 million tonnes.

During the Second World War the mine sustained heavy bomb damage. On 26 March 1944 Schacht 3 received a direct hit that severed the hoist ropes and destroyed the shaft fittings; a further attack in November 1944 destroyed the headframe and winding engine. On 24 March 1945 damage to the Sterkrade power station halted the mine entirely; American forces occupied the site on 30 March 1945.

Schacht 2 was declared redundant in 1968, backfilled, and its headframe demolished. Post-war reconstruction of Schacht 3 was completed between 1948 and 1950, and the shaft was brought back into service on 8 May 1950 under the name Paul-Reusch-Schacht, after the long-serving GHH director Paul Reusch. In 1952 the Zeche Osterfeld, along with Franz Haniel and Jacobi, was separated from the GHH by Allied decree and transferred to the Bergbau AG Neue Hoffnung.

From the mid-1950s the Schacht 4 site assumed additional hoisting functions as the main shaft plant modernised. In 1957–58 a new closed Förderturm 72 metres high, clad in anodised aluminium panels, was erected over Schacht 1 with a four-rope skip hoisting system and a 4.4-megawatt electric headframe machine; this was the most modern hoisting installation in the Ruhr at the time. In 1967 the northern Nordschacht was completed at Schmachtendorf, and from the late 1960s the entire production was concentrated in the geologically more favourable northern field.

The southern field was abandoned and formally registered for partial closure by mid-1973. The GHHs mining interests passed into the Ruhrkohle AG in 1968 as the Bergbau AG Oberhausen. In 1975 the maximum annual output of the mine was first exceeded 2 million tonnes; the peak of approximately 2.8 million tonnes with 4,836 workers was reached in 1981.

In 1988 output was still 2,190,901 tonnes with 3,720 employees. In 1989 Zeche Lohberg was connected to Osterfeld, and the two were merged into Bergwerk Lohberg-Osterfeld; while Osterfeld was abandoned as a production site, Zeche Lohberg continued extraction in the joint coalfield. The coking plant was closed on 13 March 1988.

In October–November 1993 the remaining open shafts — Osterfeld 4, Hugo Haniel, Osterfeld 1, and Osterfeld 3 — were backfilled under partial-fill permits. On 10 November 1993 the processing plant was demolished by controlled explosion, followed on 12 January 1994 by the Förderturm over Schacht 1. By the end of the first quarter of 1995 all remaining surface installations at the Osterfeld 1/3 site had been cleared except the headframe of the Paul-Reusch-Schacht and several entrance buildings.

The Pförtnerhaus, the Mischhalle, the 1910 Bürogebäude, and the Paul-Reusch headframe were listed as monuments. The Schacht 4 Förderturm in Klosterhardt was placed under monument protection in 1992 following its backfilling. The main Osterfeld 1/3 site formed the venue of the Oberhausener Landesgartenschau 1999 (OLGA), which ran from 1 May 1999 across the former mine and coking plant grounds; surviving pithead structures from the 1911–13 expansion phase — the Kaue, administration building, Steigerhaus, and Torgebäude — were retained and integrated into the park design.

After the OLGA the site was permanently established as a public urban park, now known as the Olga-Park and forming part of the Emscher Landschaftspark.