The Upper Harz Mining Museum is a museum of technological and cultural history in Clausthal-Zellerfeld

Clausthal-Zellerfeld

Clausthal-Zellerfeld is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located in the southwestern part of the Harz mountains. Its population is approximately 15,000, Clausthal-Zellerfeld is also the seat of the Samtgemeinde Oberharz....

 in the Harz mountains of central Germany. It is one of the oldest technological museums in Germany and concentrates on the history and presentation of mining in the Upper Harz

Mining in the Upper Harz

Mining in the Upper Harz region of central Germany was a major industry for several centuries, especially for the production of silver, lead, copper, and, latterly, zinc as well. Great wealth was accumulated from the mining of silver from the 16th to the 19th centuries, as well as from important...

 up to the 19th century.

Exhibits

The museum lies in the middle of the district of Zellerfeld within Clausthal-Zellerfeld. Its exhibits include:

• Mock-ups from the former mining school's collection. These were used for training purposes in the 18th and 19th centuries and serve today as an outstanding way of explaining the technology of mining
  Mining
  Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...
  
  , especially man engine
  Man engine
  A man engine is a mechanism of reciprocating ladders and stationary platforms installed in mines to assist the miners’ journeys to and from the working levels...
  
  s and specialised mining techniques.
• Demonstration mine with visitor galleries, based on original machines and structures from a mine at Bockswiese.
• Open-air site with horse gin (Pferdegaipel), gin house (Radstube), head frame (Kunstgestänge) and crushing mill (Pochwerk) (all relocated from their original sites)
• Presentation of the Upper Harz Water Regale
  Upper Harz Water Regale
  The Upper Harz Water Regale is a system of dams, reservoirs, ditches and other structures, much of which was built from the 16th to 19th centuries to divert and store the water that drove the water wheels of the mines in the Upper Harz region of Germany...
  
  
• Manufacture of the oldest wire cables, invented in 1834 in Clausthal-Zellerfeld by Julius Albert.
• Coins: coinage had a special significance in one of the most important silver-mining regions of Germany.
• Minerals, tools and pit lamps.
• Typical living and working accommodation for ordinary people in the Upper Harz
  Upper Harz
  The Upper Harz refers to the western and higher part of the Harz mountain range in central Germany. Much of the Upper Harz is over , but at its eastern edge in the High Harz it climbs to over on the Brocken massif.- Geography :...
  
  .
• Film show with original photographs of the Silbersegen and Kaiser Wilhelm Mines from the year 1924.

History

The history of the mining museum began in 1884, when the Berghauptmann Adolf Achenbach called upon the miners in a directive to bring in artefacts, especially disused tools associated with historical mining, to put together a collection to start a museum. In 1892 the official foundation of the museum took place in the district of Zellerfeld.

After the previously independent towns of Zellerfeld and Clausthal merged into the 'double-town' of Clausthal-Zellerfeld in 1926 the town hall in Zellerfeld became free. In the years that followed the open land was used to build a demonstration mine.

In the 1960s and 1970s the museum was headed by Herbert Dennert. In this period to the end of the 1980s the mining museum had annual visitor numbers than ran to six figures. But from about 1990 the number of visitors declined markedly for various reasons (e.g. reducing tourism in the Upper Harz

Upper Harz

The Upper Harz refers to the western and higher part of the Harz mountain range in central Germany. Much of the Upper Harz is over , but at its eastern edge in the High Harz it climbs to over on the Brocken massif.- Geography :...

, but also with considerably more advertising by other mining museums in the Harz). Nevertheless around 5.5 million people have visited the Upper Harz Mining Museum to date (as at March 2010).

Operation

The mining museum is operated by the Upper Harz History and Museum Society (Oberharzer Geschichts- and Museumsverein). The municipality of Upper Harz has covered its losses in the past.

The museum runs, as satellite branches, all the above-ground mining facilities of the closed Ottiliae and Kaiser Wilhelm Mines as well as the recently inherited facilities (round gin house, etc.) of the Rosenhof Pit.

The museum also hires out an extremely effective and inexpensive electronic guide system E.guide EMIL, which provides commentary along a walking route that 'follows the footsteps of former miners' through the landscape of the disused mines.

Sources

• Helmut Radday: The Oberharzer Bergwerksmuseum Clausthal-Zellerfeld Führer durch das Museum mit einem Abriß zur Kultur- und Technikgeschichte der Oberharzes, 2., überarb. und erw. Aufl. - Oberharzer Geschichts- und Museumsverein, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 2002

External links

• Internet site of the Upper Harz Mining Museum