Theuern Gold Museum
The Gold Museum is a museum in the village of Theuern in the city of Schalkau in the Thuringian Slate Mountains . It is housed in a large mill building , the castle mill.
The theme of this museum is the geological formation of gold and the search for it.
It is shown that gold is only eligible for funding if its concentration exceeds a certain minimum amount. This can happen, for example, when hydrothermal solutions that carry gold wash through rocky fissures and crystallize into quartz . In the course of the weathering of these quartz veins, the enriched gold is then carried away in streams and forms small nuggets , so-called soap gold , in the course of the transport . Gold can also be found in conglomerates of fossil stream beds.
A second focus is on the locations and how to recognize them. Almost all watercourses in the Thuringian slate mountains are gold-bearing and gold was already being searched for intensively in the Middle Ages. These brooks and rivers carried their cargo on and ensured that gold was also found in the Elbe , Saale and Main .
Finally, the practical process of gold mining is demonstrated. A small model of a stamp mill shows how stone was beaten with iron blocks and then washed and sifted in the Middle Ages . A replica gold washing channel and a variety of different gold washing bowls give an impression of the craftsmanship.
literature
- Markus Schade: Gold in Thuringia . Ed .: Thuringian State Institute for Geology, Weimar 2001.
See also
Web links
- Gold Museum website
- Little glittering dots in the river. Museum of the week: German Gold Museum in Theuern / Thuringia (broadcast by Deutschlandradio Kultur on May 30, 2008, MP3 )
- Goldmuseum Theuern at Urlaubsland-Thueringen.de
Coordinates: 50 ° 25 ′ 36.1 ″ N , 11 ° 2 ′ 20.9 ″ E