Anhalt mineral collection

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The state mineral collection of Anhalt is in the Museum Schloss Bernburg .

Anhalt ore mining in the Harz Mountains

The direct imperial principality of Anhalt , which emerged in the High Middle Ages , had its origin in Anhalt Castle in the eastern Lower Harz . This area soon shrank for various reasons; after 1315 it always belonged to the house of Anhalt-Bernburg as the so-called Upper Principality . The first mention of mining activity on the Anhalt Harz dates back to the year 1300 and is one of the oldest written sources for mining on the Harz.

Coin for the resumption of mining in the Harz Mountains (1693) Coin for the resumption of mining in the Harz Mountains (1693)
Coin for the resumption of mining in the Harz Mountains (1693)

Silver mining around Harzgerode and Neudorf experienced its first heyday between 1530 and the end of the 16th century. Talers made of Anhalt silver were first minted in 1539. Already at this time, the respective miner gave his prince handstones made of particularly silver-rich ore, which were probably kept and exhibited in Bernburg Castle, without it being possible to speak of a collection. There followed a long time without any notable mining, at the end of which in the 1690s under Prince Wilhelm the silver mining around Neudorf, Harzgerode and Gernrode was briefly revived. Of these, only a few of the beautiful mining features, the Harzgeröder Church, which was rebuilt at this time, and an unheard-of economic loss of allegedly 300,000 gold guilders are interesting from today's perspective.

After this disaster, the trade union, i.e., mining financed with private capital, came to an end. In the 1720s, Prince Victor Friedrich von Anhalt-Bernburg resumed the work as the sole mountain lord , financed it and introduced the principle of management . This prince personally took care of the operation of his silver mines, had a silver and an iron works built and brought the plant to a new bloom. His son, Prince Friedrich Albrecht , successfully continued the smelting operation. After a remarkable economic boom in the middle of the 19th century and after the Bernburg line had expired, the mining industry was privatized , but the mines were already considered exhausted by 1900, and shortly afterwards all ore mining and smelting operations in the Harz Mountains came to a standstill.

The Princely Collection

Prince Friedrich Albrecht von Anhalt-Bernburg (1735–1796) moved the residence from Bernburg to Ballenstedt when he took office in 1765 . Encouraged by his father to work in mining, he got to know the underground working world of miners as a child. Perhaps even then a tendency to collect minerals began . The year the collection was founded is 1783. Bergrat Johann Gottfried Keßler , director of the Anhalt mines, built the " Anhalt - Bernburg Provincial - Collection of Some Fossils " at Ballenstedt Castle on behalf of his prince . It contained 590 minerals, ore stages, rock samples and some fossils from 80 sites from the Anhalt Harz and the Straßberg pits. In the catalog, handwritten by Keßler, there is the entry: “I myself have all the minerals listed here on the spot a. Place collected from 1783 - 1808 ”. Keßler looked after the collection until 1813. While the catalog is still available, the collection no longer exists as a historical unit. Only a few pieces can be assigned to the suite later known as the “Kessler Collection”. From today's point of view, it corresponded to a depository collection of districts without a systematic structure. About half of the material came from the iron ore mines , especially from Tilkerode . Most of the levels were Derberze .

The catalog is remarkable for its precise and detailed description of the external characteristics of all samples. Even more remarkable is the prince's commission not to put together one of the collections customary in the late baroque period with valuable displays for representation, but rather a state collection serving economic aspects and scientific purposes. If Keßler began collecting for the “Provincial Collection” in 1783, one can assume that the Prince's collection was older. In 1798 a traveler who was allowed to inspect the mineral collection in the library at Ballenstedt Castle wrote: “ The mineral collection is considerable, and especially with resin products it is quite complete. “The choice of words suggests that minerals from areas in other parts of the Harz Mountains and outside the Harz Mountains were also to be seen.

The Ducal Collection

On January 1, 1821, Bergrat Johann Ludwig Carl Zincken (1791–1862) took up his position as director of the mining and steel works and chose the Mägdesprung ironworks in the Selketal as his residence . In the same year, Duke Alexius von Anhalt-Bernburg (1767–1834) authorized him to collect a “newly founded and increased ducal mineral collection” at Ballenstedt Castle. This collection is divided into three parts:

  1. The "State Mineral Collection of the Duchy of Anhalt-Bernburg" (founded in 1821), a collection of mineral deposits in the Anhalt Harz Mountains and the Stolberg mines operated by Anhalt. It contained around 500 samples, including a large number of display steps, but also rocks and some petrefacts . It is remarkable that this is the first time that evidence from the Wolfsberg antimony deposit, selenide and precious metals from Tilkerode and wolframite from Neudorf was systematically collected. The last dated entry in the handwritten catalog by Zincken dates from 1839, the collection was carried out until 1848. It can be assumed that after the death of Duke Alexius at Ballenstedt Castle there was no longer any interest in the collection and therefore the collecting activity ceased.
  2. The "General oryktognostic Collection" (founded in 1823), a collection on special mineralogy with around 3000 minerals, which were mainly bought or exchanged from abroad. According to a catalog entry by Zincken, the collection was organized according to the Abraham Gottlob Werner system . It also contained numerous steps from the Upper Harz.
  3. A collection of more than 600 "oddities, suites and petrefacts not belonging to the collection" that no longer exist today.

Parallel to the private ducal collection at Ballenstedt Castle, Zincken had the Harzgeröder Mining Authority and the Neudorf Mining Administration set up a "corridor collection" containing around 600 levels, which was designed as a mining area collection. The associated inventory volume has been preserved. In addition to the collection, there was the “Anhaltische Gangatlas” with drawings of typical gangway structures of the Anhalt district, as they could be observed in the 1830s and 1840s. It has been lost since it was edited by Hesemann (1930). The gang collection came from Harzgerode to Bernburg in 1938 in such a neglected state that its remains were destroyed in 1952.

After the Bernburg line had expired in 1865, Duchess Widow Friederike left the collections to the Anhalt tax authorities on the condition that they are accessible to the public and remain on the territory of the former Anhalt-Bernburg region. The inventory was moved to the vacant Harzgerode Castle and exhibited as a permanent collection. Until 1873, the Neudorf mining administration was responsible for supervision and maintenance, then the Harzgerode Forestry Office. The Halle mineralogist Prof. Luedecke studied at this collection and named it "Harzgeröder Schloßsammlung".

Since the establishment of the Free State of Anhalt in 1919, the holdings have been part of the state collections. On the occasion of the 800th anniversary, the Anhalt State Ministry transferred the mineral collection to the city of Bernburg as a permanent loan with the condition that it be made available to the public as the property of the Anhalt State. On the same occasion, the Bernburger Solvay-Werke donated a North American collection of around 300 attractive and rare minerals to the museum. As early as 1934, the museum received the valuable, extensive private collection of the Zincken mountain as a gift.

In connection with researching local raw materials in 1941, Dr. Kohl from the Reich Office for Soil Research in Berlin selected all the minerals from the Harz Mountains and put them together in a separate inventory. Exhibition activities and public relations work with this Harz collection shaped the period after 1982. It was initially known as the “Zincken Collection” through the “Bernburg Colloquium on Mining and Metallurgy in the Harz” (1982-2006) and numerous publications. Thanks to numerous new acquisitions, the collection now contains 180 types of mineral from 240 localities in the Harz Mountains. Funded by the state of Saxony-Anhalt , essential parts of the collection are presented to the visitor as the “Anhalt Mineral Collection” in a modern form. A new type of showcase and a multimedia representation of the Harz mining history serve this purpose .

The Anhalt Mineral Collection in the Museum Schloss Bernburg is open to the public and can be viewed.

literature

Dieter Klaus: The natural history collections in the Museum Schloss Bernburg . In: Görgner, Heidecke, Klaus, Nicolai and Schneider (eds.): Kulturerbe Natur - Natural history museums and collections in Saxony-Anhalt . MDV, Halle 2002, pp. 17–24.

Web links