Rammensberg's Mines And Goslar 🇩🇪 Germany Best Place - Travel & Discover

The imperial city of Goslar has a history stretching back for over a thousand years. This city in the German region of Lower Saxony held an important place in the Hanseatic League because of the rich metallic ore deposits in the nearby Rammelsberg mines. It also served as one of the seats of the Holy Roman Empire from the 10th to the 12th century. Its well-preserved medieval historic center has some 1500 half-timbered houses dating from the 15th to the 19th centuries. A stroll through the streets of Goslar offers an encounter with history that is lived in the everyday life of the town's residents who always keep one eye on the future. The regular structure in the woodwork of the half-timbered houses makes it difficult for the average person to distinguish their age, though buildings dating back to the Middle Ages are usually easily identified by the protruding upper stories that overhang the street. Ornaments such as suns, palmettos, or other symbols frequently adorn the earliest houses, though by about 1600 metal ornamentation began to be used. In later periods of construction, patterns of floral design were favored. With the arrival of the Baroque, the highly ornamental design gave way to rather simple profiling. Of Goslar's four major gates, only the east one, the Breitetor, or wide gate, has survived. Statues of the Holy Roman Emperors greeted visitors to the city at every gate, underscoring the city's close relationship to the Empire. The church on the Frankenberg hill towers above the city like a fortress of the Christian faith. Franks were the name for the city's first tradesmen, while the native Saxons began to run their mine at the Rammelsberg. The church has remained the parish church of the miners to this day. Beyond the market square, a side of the town hall, the two different spires of the market church soar skywards. The significance of the market fountain, upon which perches Goslar's symbol, the eagle, is obvious. It marks the center of the market square, as well as the center of town. 1968 was a year of endless celebrations as miners' delegations from all over Europe paid homage to 1,000 years of continuous mining at and in the Rammelsberg mountain. On this special occasion, the Preussag, then the owner and operator of the mines, donated the carillon housed in the upper story of the Baroque house opposite the town hall. Located on the south side of the marketplace, the Wirth, the guildhall of the import expert merchants, was built in 1494. The liberties and custom privileges granted by the emperors prompted the guild to put up these Baroque statues of emperors in their gothic decorated niches. Here, a deftly humorous symbol of justice. Located not far from the market square, the shoe square is probably Goslar's oldest market square. It is framed by majestic half-timbered houses and the arcades of the shoemakers' guildhall. The west side of the market square is dominated by the town hall. The hall of homage was set up as a council chamber between 1505 and 1520. It is a unique jewel of late gothic interior decoration. Its walls, ceiling, and even the window alcoves are completely covered with wood panel paintings. The town hall still serves its original purpose, housing the lord mayor's office and the hall where the town council still discusses the wheel of the city under a splendid star-studded wooden ceiling. Around the year 1500, 47 churches, abbeys, and chapels graced Goslar's streets and squares. Many of them, unfortunately, succumbed to a similar fate. They were built in the Romanesque style of the Middle Ages, enlarged during the Gothic period, and fell into disuse after the Reformation. As an independent imperial convent, Goslar's Cathedral was part of the palace complex. Demolished in 1819, only the porch survived. The town owes its name to the Goza Creek, whose name is kept alive in a number of Goza streets. When the mines above the town started to leak their wastewater into the Goza, its water became unfit to drink, and so a canal was built to divert the creek upstream from where the waste entered. Water power was the main source of energy for many of the town's businesses. The imperial palace, built between 1040 and 1050 during the reign of Henry III, served as a summer residence for the emperors. For over 200 years, German and European history was made at this unique secular architectural monument. The imperial palace at Goslar extends over an area of approximately 340 by 180 meters at the foot of the Rammelsberg, just to the south of the city of Goslar. The equestrian statues in front of the palace date from around 1900. Frederick Barbarossa, who resided in the palace in the 12th century, was one of the most powerful emperors. The ore mines of the Rammelsberg are the only mines in the world which were in continuous operation for over 1,000 years. The mines, together with the medieval old town of Goslar and the imperial palace, were placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992. The core of the above-ground plant of the Rammelsberg is the ore dressing plant, which moves in seven stories up the slope of the mountain. It was designed in the mid-1930s by the architects Fritz Schrupp and Martin Kramer, from whose drawing boards other important industrial plants arose, including the Zecke-Zollverein plant in Essen, also a World Cultural Heritage site. The ore dressing plant made it possible to produce concentrates out of the finely intergrown Rammelsberg ore. Beginning in the period 1936 through 1942, the concentrates could be smelted in the smelting works in the Goslar district of Ochre. Today, visitors to the Rammelsberg have the opportunity to pass to the gallery system, an impressive network of galleries, waterwheels, and shafts. From the early Middle Ages, the Harz Mountains were famous for their ore deposits, and the mining of the Rammelsberg made the city of Goslar wealthy and powerful. The mined ores were sulphuric lead and zinc ores, which contained many other metals in low percentage. But other rare and valuable metals, such as gold and silver, made the mine very important. The metals were coined in Goslar, providing the sovereign's coffers with a continuous flow of money. The Rixschaft was the first pit in the Rammelsberg into which ore was transported by electric power. In 1911, it went into operation after the use of waterwheels for ore transportation, as can be seen in the rotor gallery, had been discontinued. In the following decades, mining in the Rammelsberg underwent fundamental changes. Drilling and blasting, loading and transporting, the most important duties of the miners remained. But human-powered manual labor decreased, while the use of machines continually increased. Ten centuries of mining history are documented in the Rammelsberg, and have left an enormous inventory of mining monuments. Slag heaps from the 10th century, the 12th-century Raffstiefsche gallery, one of the oldest and best-maintained galleries of German mining, the 13th-century Feuergesäer vault, Europe's oldest underground stone masonry mine chamber, the 15th-century Maltermeister tower, the oldest above-ground structure of German mining, the rotor gallery from the 18th and 19th centuries with its two original waterwheels, and the above-ground mining plant from the 1930s. With its wealth of nearly 30 million tons of ore, the Rammelsberg influenced the history and development of the town of Goslar. The silver and copper-rich Rammelsberg gave Henry II the impetus to establish a royal palatinate here in the 11th century. In 1009, the first imperial diet was held in Goslar. The water's route was channeled into the mine to set four waterwheels in motion. Two of these wheels served in the transportation of ore, while the other two were used to lift the water out of the mine. Like most of the above-ground buildings, the Kauer, dry room, came from the drafting table of the architects Fritz Schupp and Martin Kramer. The clothing baskets hanging under the ceiling are typical, and convey an impression of the activity which prevailed here during the last golden days of Rammelsberg mining. There are four separate dry rooms at the Rammelsberg. The mine foreman's and disabled dry room, which today serve as cloakroom and helmet room, the youth dry room, and the spacious crew wash house. The size of the museum itself reflects the vast area that was mined. The museum site covers 20,000 square meters and is one of the biggest in Germany. Its huge halls have a unique beauty and strange charm. The huge ore processing plant, built on the mountainside, was once the most modern of its kind and worked until the mine was shut down. The museum's exhibit guides visitors through the process of ore enrichment. Starting from the highest point of the plant, they pass through the halls housing enormous machines used to crush ore from the mine and mill it in order to obtain enriched ore concentrates. On the lowest level of the plant, processed ore was prepared to be melted, loaded into carts, and then shipped to steel mills. Scientists have greatly benefited from the fact that unlike in similar situations, the changeover from active mine to museum took place without much interruption. So that the traces of work from over 300 years of activity had been preserved, could be easily studied. In the central power plant, where electric power was formerly produced, the compressors that once supplied compressed air to the underground mine works are still standing. The wrapped up ore transport cart, the last to leave the mines, stands in the midst of all the machinery. Package on a Hunt is one of the very few permanently wrapped works by Christo and Jean-Claude.