Pulley pillar​

A freestanding gate, with no walls on either side, as in this limestone structure – we are familiar with this from triumphal arches. At first glance, it is difficult to tell what this structure is all about. If the pulleys that gave the building its name, 'Seilscheibenpfeiler' (pulley pillar), were still in place, it would be easier to guess. The pulleys were five large steel wheels mounted parallel above the slightly sloping roof. They had a guide on the outside in which thick wire ropes ran.

Four sturdy cross walls extend from the pillar towards the open-cast mine. They can transfer large forces into the foundation, which extends a full five meters into the ground for this purpose. At the top of the front, several beams were embedded, part of an elaborate steel structure that connected to the building and extended diagonally down to the former edge of the open-cast mine.

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Parallel to this, two pairs of tracks ran diagonally into the open-cast mine for a good 200 meters on a ramp that had been artificially driven into the limestone soil, which has long since been mined away. Wagons ran on these tracks, pulled out of the open-cast mine by the wire ropes mentioned earlier, overcoming a height difference of almost 50 meters. While loaded wagons (mine cars) were hauled up at one end of the cable, empty wagons ran back down at the other, deflected end. The work required for this was done by two 130 hp steam engines located to the side of the tracks.

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Incidentally, it was entirely the intention of the builders that the pulley pillar should resemble a triumphal arch: like the shaft furnace battery, this building also owes its existence to the course of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, which ended in victory for the newly founded German Empire. The reparations payments from France immediately ushered in the so-called 'Gründerzeit', or founding era, which was to culminate in the founding dispute, or founding crash, less than three years later. Within a very short time, numerous buildings such as the pulley pillar were constructed, as well as the typical buildings of the founding period in Berlin, which was to quadruple in size by the First World War.