History
The Kaliwerk Krügershall Aktiengesellschaft was constituted on 29 March 1905 by the merchants Krüger, Krumbiegel, and Grau together with the banker Weinstock and Dr. med. Friedmann; it was entered in the Handelsregister on 19 June 1905. The name Krügershall was chosen in honour of Friedrich H. Krüger, the first Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender. The underlying kali deposit had been confirmed by a Bohrprogramm of the Internationale Bohrgesellschaft zu Erkelenz from 1902, whose exploratory drilling Teutschenthal I, approximately 70 metres west of the later shaft, encountered Steinsalz at 450.8 metres and a 55.3-metre-thick Kalilager at 634.7 metres. By 1905 ten further borings had been completed.
Sinking of Schacht Teutschenthal (Krügershall) began on 1 September 1905. The first 20 metres were sunk by the Senkschachtverfahren until December 1905; the shaft then stood at 75 metres in mid-March 1906 and at 162 metres three months later. By 22 March 1907 Steinsalz had been encountered at 495 metres; on 25 June 1907 the Kalilager was intersected at a depth of 646 metres. The shaft was completed and declared betriebsfertig on 24 June 1907 with a final depth of 674 metres in earlier references and 733 metres by its final configuration, with the Füllort of the Hauptförderstrecke at 660 metres and the Wettersohle at 650 metres. The shaft has a lichte Weite of 5.25 metres and a Rasenhängebank at +110.0 m NN. The upper 192 metres were constructed with Tübbingausbau (ten-segment Deutsche Tübbings with wall thicknesses of 30–70 mm), Ziegelmauerwerk from 192 to 276.9 metres, further Tübbings from 276.9 to 290.9 metres, and Ziegelmauerwerk to 662 metres.
Kaliproduktion began in 1907, with the salt processed predominantly for Düngemittelproduktion. In 1912 the Gewerkschaft Burbach acquired a Mehrheit in the Krügershall-Aktien, installing Gerhard Korte as the new Aufsichtsratsvorsitzender; in 1929 the Kaliwerk Teutschenthal (as it was then known) passed to the Burbach-Kaliwerke AG, Magdeburg. By 1929 the mine had been incorporated with the adjacent Grubenfelder Salzmünde and Angersdorf into a connected underground system, linked from 1925 at the 713-metre Sohle.
On 24 May 1940 at 21:07, a catastrophic Gebirgsschlag destroyed almost the entire underground extraction field — some 600,000 m² at depths of 610–650 metres — within seconds. Of the 49 miners underground at the time, 42 were trapped in a Stollen and could not be rescued; the search was abandoned after several days. The resulting earthquake registered 4.3 on the Richter scale and toppled the spire of the Elisabethkirche in Halle, 20 kilometres distant. The trapped miners were not discovered until the early 1950s when a breakthrough to the collapsed area was achieved; the bodies, preserved by the salt environment, were found to have died of thirst rather than crushing. A Gedenkstein in front of the former Kaliwerk commemorates the 42 victims. The post-1940 Grubenfeld was reoriented, with new Sohlen established at 610, 660, and 713 metres. From 1963 Abbau was extended strongly eastward towards the city of Halle. In 1965 Steinsalzsole was extracted from three underground Kavernen for Speise- and Industriesalzproduktion.
From 1 July 1948 the Kaliwerk Teutschenthal was incorporated as Volkseigentum into the VVB Kali und Salze in Halle; thereafter it operated under successive VEB designations including VEB Kali- und Steinsalzbergwerk Deutschland and VEB Kali- und Steinsalzbetrieb Saale Werk Teutschenthal. On 1 June 1990 the works was reconstituted as KALIMAG GmbH, Bahnhof Teutschenthal, with the Treuhandanstalt as sole shareholder.
Kaliproduktion ended on 22 December 1982 with the last Förderwagen of Rohsalz. On 1 June 1992 the GTS Grube Teutschenthal Sicherungsgesellschaft mbH took over the Kaliwerk Teutschenthal together with the neighbouring Grubenfelder Salzmünde and Angersdorf. The headframe over Schacht Teutschenthal — photographed in successive forms in 1907 (first Abteufgerüst), circa 1946 (Haupt- and Nebenförderung offset 90 degrees), 1991 (combined headframe), and 1994 shortly before demolition — was demolished in 1994. The headframe site at Teutschenthal-Bahnhof now carries a Gedenkstein for the 1940 victims. A third serious Gebirgsschlag occurred on 11 September 1996 at 05:36, when approximately 700 pillars in the Ostfeld collapsed in a chain reaction across 2.5 km²; the shock registered as magnitude 4.8 and was felt up to 100 kilometres away, causing surface subsidence of approximately 50 centimetres and widespread structural damage. The GTS Versatz operation, placing over 200,000 tonnes of bergbaufremde mineralische Abfälle underground annually, remains the primary mechanism for reducing residual Gebirgsschlagsrisiko from the approximately 12 million cubic metres of void space.