Former hard coal colliery shaft at Marl-Hüls, one of the two founding shafts of Zeche Auguste Victoria, with its headframe surviving at the Victoriastraße shaft precinct.
Schacht 1 of Zeche Auguste Victoria is one of the two founding shafts of the original AV 1/2 twin-shaft installation at Victoriastraße in Marl-Hüls. The Gewerkschaft Auguste Victoria was founded in 1899 by August Stein and Julius Schäfer after exploratory drilling proved coal in the Hansi I and Hansi II fields. Development of the twin shaft site began in 1900, but severe marl layers and water inflows caused major sinking difficulties, and the shaft numbers were later exchanged.
The shaft now known as Schacht 1 entered coal hoisting in 1905, one year before Schacht 2 joined production. Schacht 1 and Schacht 2 functioned together as the original Doppelschachtanlage AV 1/2 until the installation closed in 1966, when production moved to the newer Schacht 3/7 site. Both shafts were backfilled in 2007, and both headframes survive at the Victoriastraße site alongside former training, workshop and administrative buildings.
The founding of the Zeche Auguste Victoria was triggered by exploratory boreholes sunk in 1897 by the Düsseldorf businessman and Kommerzienrat August Stein, working together with the engineer and manufacturer Julius Schäfer, which proved coal in the area of Hüls on the western edge of the Recklinghausen Aufstieg. In 1898 the two 100-part Gewerkschaften Hansi I and Hansi II were consolidated into the Grubenfeld Auguste Victoria. The Grubenvorstand resolved to develop a Zwillingsschachtanlage — a twin double-shaft installation — at the Victoriastraße in Hüls. Teufarbeiten began in 1900. The two shafts ran into hard marl layers and strong water inflows from the outset; at 40 metres in 1901 work on the initial Schacht 2 had to be halted entirely. In 1902 the Gefrierverfahren was applied to that shaft; work on the original Schacht 1 was temporarily abandoned. At some point the designations were exchanged because of the technical problems, so that the shaft now called Schacht AV 1 was in fact the later of the two to be completed.
Schacht AV 1 took up coal hoisting in 1905, producing only 1,221 tonnes in its first year. In 1906 Schacht 2 was connected and together both shafts raised 46,772 tonnes with 900 employees. By 1907 output had grown to 155,730 tonnes. In 1908 the Dreibund — the Interessengemeinschaft of BASF, Bayer, and Agfa — purchased the mine for 17.7 million Mark, making it one of the few major Ruhrzechen in sustained non-Ruhr industrial ownership. The chemical industry's growing demand for coal, combined with the strategic importance of the AV field, drove investment and expansion.
In 1912 three miners were killed by rockfall; in 1924 four died in a hoist accident. In 1925, as the Dreibund structure was absorbed into IG Farben, Auguste Victoria entered the Interessengemeinschaft der deutschen Teerfarbenfabriken and thereafter remained in BASF ownership until 1991. The AV 1/2 installation was expanded over the following decades: Schacht 3 was sunk from 1927 but its development was severely disrupted when quicksand burst in on 24 July 1927, killing five miners and causing Schacht 3 to fail; the shaft and headframe collapsed and work was not resumed until 1937. During the Second World War, both Schacht 1 and Schacht 2 were hit by bombs, causing the operation at AV 1/2 to switch to Schacht 3 as the main production point. A Kokerei was operated at the AV 1/2 site until 1966. Between 1938 and 1962, a Blei-Zink ore body discovered in the Blumenthalsprung fault zone during the development of the Schacht 4/5 connection was worked at the separate Erzschacht 4/5 installation; a museum at that site now commemorates this ore-mining phase.
In 1966 the new Doppelschachtanlage 3/7 — developed around the rebuilt Schacht 3 and the new Schacht 7, the latter equipped with a skip hoisting installation — assumed the mine's entire coal production, and the AV 1/2 installation together with its Kokerei was closed. Schacht 5 was backfilled and its headframe demolished in 1968. In 1991 BASF transferred the mine to the Ruhrkohle AG; in 2001 the Bergwerk Auguste Victoria was merged with the Bergwerk Blumenthal/Haard to form the Verbundbergwerk Auguste Victoria/Blumenthal. The final closure of the Zeche Auguste Victoria — the third-last active hard coal mine in Germany — came on 18 December 2015 at the Schacht 3/7 and Schacht 8/9 locations. The AV 1/2 shafts had long since ceased production; they were backfilled in 2007 when their hoisting ropes were removed. The buildings on the former AV 1/2 site subsequently served as the Ausbildungszentrum of Auguste Victoria; workshop and administrative buildings remained in use. Both headframes survive at the Victoriastraße site. A statue of the Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria, formerly sited before the office building of the AV compound, was relocated in 2016 to the Hülsstraße, where it faces in the direction of the former mine.