Media table Museum Bad Salzdetfurth
City whispers
Underground – Above days
The work of the miners underground has had a significant impact on economic and cultural life. And this has been the case since the Middle Ages.
Signs of industrial boom:the newly built train station of the Salzdetfurth potash plant, photography in: German Industry, German Culture. Biographical journal for German economic life, 7th year (1909) No. 14: Kaliwerke Salzdetfurth number, p. 2
Guild and city
Bad Salzdetfurth received the title of “city” in 1949. The residents had already prepared the ground for Salzdetfurth's self-government in the Middle Ages. Although the salt pans did not originally belong to the producers, the salt pans managed to acquire ownership of most of the salt pans by the end of the 14th century. They formed a community and obtained the right to form a council for local government.
A salt pan guild and a council of councilors emerged. The leading men of the Salt Pan Guild also provided the councilors. The two were inextricably linked. In 1602 the councilors had a town hall built, but the place was not granted city privileges. Salzdetfurth was too small. It was only in the 19th century that the population rose to over 1,000, and as potash mining and spa operations gained momentum, the town grew to a population of almost 2,000 people in 1900.
The graduation towers in flood (Photograph February 24, 1940)
The plagues of the city
For the medieval salt boilers, Salzdetfurth offered the necessary conditions for the rapid development of table salt production. The slopes were forested and provided wood for firing the boiling pans. There were productive brine wells and the lamb brought fresh water through the town. Although the narrow river was not navigable to facilitate the transport of materials and goods, the Lammetal was repeatedly hit by floods - thirteen times in the past three centuries, most recently in 2017.
The fire from the Salzkothen also caused problems for the place. As early as 1334, half of the 30 residential and work houses fell victim to the flames. Paradoxically, for a long time the livelihoods of the residents threatened the existence of the place. The construction of the graduation towers and the salt works from 1746 took place some distance from the residents' farms and close to the Lamme. In the event of a fire, extinguishing water was available and the flames did not spread to neighboring buildings. Flooding was taken into account: the foundation of today's saltworks is two meters deep in the ground.
Bad Salzdetfurth receives the designation “city”
With effect from December 1, 1949, the former potash miner and then Interior Minister of Lower Saxony, Richard Borowski (1894−1956), gave the municipality of Bad Salzdetfurth the name “city”. At the end of the war in 1945, a wave of refugees overwhelmed the town. In 1949, around 5,500 people lived in the city. The population had doubled in just a few years; more than half of the people came from the eastern regions of the defunct German Empire. The refugees stayed because the Marshall Plan and the currency reform in the first post-war years had a beneficial effect on the economy. At that time, around 1,100 people worked in the potash plant. Inspired by this development, the new city administration took over the spa and bathing operations from the Salzpfännerguild on its own in 1949. In the city's first financial year, the council managed a total budget of 2 million German marks.
Certificate from the Lower Saxony Interior Minister Richard Borowski on the awarding of the name “city” to the municipality of Bad Salzdetfurth (November 14, 1949)
