Steinbruch Ober-Wüstegiersdorf

Steinbruch Ober-Wüstegiersdorf is a former melaphyre quarry on the eastern slopes of Ostoja (753 m; German: Stuben Berg) in Głuszyca Górna, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Poland. The quarry, also associated with the locality of Łomnica, was one of the best-known former stone workings in the Głuszyca area and is today an abandoned, partly flooded site known locally as Kamyki.^[1][2]

The quarry is located in the Sudetes, on the eastern slope of Ostoja in the Góry Suche range, above Głuszyca Górna. Municipal sources identify the mountain by its Polish name Ostoja and its historical German name Stuben Berg.^[3]

Today the former quarry forms a water-filled excavation and has become a local recreation and sightseeing area marketed under the name Kamyki.^[4][5]

The quarry exposed an early Permian trachyandesite body in the Intra-Sudetic Basin. In older local and regional literature these rocks were commonly described as melaphyre, while more recent petrographic work classifies them as altered trachyandesites affected by spilitization.^[6]

According to the 2022 study by Powolny and co-authors, the Głuszyca body is a laccolith-type magmatic intrusion about 200 m thick and about 300 m long. The rock contains spilitic assemblages including secondary albite and chlorite, and apatite fission-track dating indicates Jurassic low-temperature alteration long after the original early Permian volcanism.^[7]

The quarry was historically connected with the railway station at Głuszyca Górna by an aerial material ropeway used to move stone down to the crushing plant and loading facilities at the Schotterwerk near the station. Municipal historical material describes the ropeway as approximately 1,100 m long.^[8]

This installation is referred to in modern literature as the Oberwüstegiersdorf Material Ropeway.^[9]

According to a historical overview published by the municipality of Głuszyca, quarrying on Ostoja began around 1900, initially under the firm Wilhelm Blank of Głuszyca. The extracted melaphyre was valued for its hardness and uniform texture and was later linked with the company of August Krause from Rusinowa, after which the enterprise was operated as Blank & Krause.^[10]

In its early period the stone was hauled by horse-drawn transport. Rising production after the introduction of pneumatic drilling and blasting led to the construction of a crushing plant and the aerial ropeway to the station area in Głuszyca Górna.^[11]

During the Second World War, the area of the quarry and the crushing plant was connected with the Gross-Rosen concentration camp system. The Gross-Rosen Museum identifies AL Schotterwerk at Oberwüstegiersdorf as one of the subcamps of the Riese complex, established near the railway station at the end of April or the beginning of May 1944. Around 1,300 Jewish prisoners from Poland, Hungary and Greece were held there and were forced to work in the quarry at Oberwüstegiersdorf, in a metal plant, and in the reloading of building materials.^[12]

Part of the prisoners joined the evacuation column from AL Wüstegiersdorf shortly before the end of the war, while others were liberated on 8 May 1945.^[13]

After the war, extraction continued under a state enterprise, but was ended in 1975 because of limited possibilities for further expansion of the pit. The crushing plant remained in operation until the early 1980s, after which the site was abandoned and gradually filled with water.^[14][15]