Freudenstadt visitor mine

Freudenstadt visitor mine
General information about the mine
Information about the mining company
Start of operation	1530
End of operation	1562
Successor use	Visitor mine
Funded raw materials
Degradation of	Exploration mine
Geographical location
Coordinates	48 ° 27 '29.5 "  N , 8 ° 24' 33.5"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 27 '29.5 "  N , 8 ° 24' 33.5"  E
Location Freudenstadt visitor mine
local community	Freudenstadt
District ( NUTS3 )	Freudenstadt
country	State of Baden-Württemberg
Country	Germany

The Freudenstadt visitor mine (formerly the Holy Three Kings pit ) was an exploratory mine operated around 1530 and from 1559 to around 1562 in search of silver and copper ores near Freudenstadt in the Black Forest . There was no extraction because no silver or copper ores were developed. It has been used as a visitor mine since 1999 . After it was rediscovered in 1996, the pit was incorrectly referred to as Friedrich's treasure trove , but it was located further south.

history

Mining on silver was first mentioned in a document in the Freudenstadt area as early as 1267. There are no reports for the following centuries, only for the 1520s and 1530s are indications of mining in the region again. In the vicinity of older shafts, the Holy Three Kings Pit (later named as it was) was started around 1530 and a 36 m deep day shaft was sunk , an approximately 10 m long cross passage was established and a second shaft was built underneath; this blind shaft was 12 m deep. The work was stopped again before 1550.

In 1550, Christoph von Württemberg became the fourth Duke of Württemberg, at which time all the mines in the district were closed and inaccessible. Duke Christoph was very interested in mining and in 1551 issued a new mountain code and ordered the investigation of the areas around Neubulach , Reinerzau and Dornstetten (including the area around Freudenstadt, which was only founded in 1599). Mining was resumed from 1558, and a union was founded between 1560 and 1564 . This had several pits in the Christophstal , in particular the St. Christophs Erbstollen and the Holy Three Kings Pit , the name of which is now being expressly mentioned for the first time.

The blind shaft of the pit was deepened further from 1559 and finally a new floor was created in a total depth of 52 m from which a second blind shaft was sunk. Overall, a depth of 69 m was reached, around 1562 the mining was stopped because all hopes to find silver had not come true. A rich silver vein was discovered in the neighboring St. Christophs Erbstollen in 1567, and in the following year the even more profitable one on the Kehrsteige in Christophstal, so that mining in the region concentrated on the exploitation of these two deposits .

Visitor mine

Today's mine consists of a separate shaft , which consists of three sub- shafts of 29 m, 24 m and 16 m depth, which are connected by two floors . Four more levels were driven from the upper part of the shaft, the day shaft. During the exposure, the well-preserved corrugated tree of a hand reel was found on the bottom of the middle shaft and dendrochronologically dated to the year 1560 (with an accuracy of ± 5 years). In the reel chamber above the lower shaft, an inscription with 5 characters is carved into the rock, which can be read as the year 1556 or 1561.

In the 1930s, during construction work to build an air raid shelter, the main shaft of the mine was cut by accident, but bricked up without further exploration. The shaft behind the wall of the air defense system was only rediscovered in 1996 and systematically explored and cleared up over the following three years . The visitor mine has been open since 1999, and in the years that followed, other parts of the mine were opened up parallel to the visitor operation.

literature

• Wolfgang Werner, Volker Dennert: Deposits and mining in the Black Forest. Published by the State Office for Geology, Raw Materials and Mining, Baden-Württemberg, Freiburg im Breisgau, 2004, ISBN 3-00-014636-9 .
• Uwe Meyerdirks: Annual rings, files and signs on the wall: New findings on the three-kings visitor mine in Freudenstadt. In: Freudenstädter Heimatblätter, 43, No. 9, 2012.
• Uwe Meyerdirks: Medieval and early modern mining in the Northern Black Forest (SW-Germany): An integrated historico-archaeological approach and its synergetic effects, in: Proceedings of "Medieval Europe", 4th International Congress of Medieval and Modern Archeology, Paris 2007 . Full text , PDF, accessed on July 16, 2014.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Werner, Dennert, 2004, p. 187 f.
2. ↑ Meyerdirks, 2007, p. 1. Meyerdirks, 2012
3. ↑ Meyerdirks, 2007. S. 2. Meyerdirks 2012.
4. ↑ Meyerdirks, 2012. Werner, Dennert, 2004, p. 194.
5. ↑ Meyerdirks 2012. Meyerdirks, 2007. p. 3.
6. ↑ Werner, Dennert, 2004, p. 194.

See also

• List of show mines