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The Brennender Berg (Burning Mountain) is a natural monument located in a deep and narrow
Mineralienatlas – Das Naturdenkmal Brennender Berg bei Dudweiler – with photographs
/ref> It is a popular destination for excursions and school trips. A convenient starting point is the parking lot of the Dudweiler cemetery at the end of Neuweiler Straße.
The Brennender Berg (Burning Mountain) is a natural monument located in a deep and narrow gorge
A canyon (from ; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), or gorge, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency to cu ...
between Dudweiler
Dudweiler is a borough of Saarbrücken, on the Sulzbach creek. In 977, Dudweiler was first mentioned in official documents of German Emperor Otto II as the location of a chapel (Duodonisvillare).
Dudweiler received town privileges on 12 Septembe ...
and Sulzbach in Saarland
The Saarland (, ; french: Sarre ) is a state of Germany in the south west of the country. With an area of and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German state in area apart from the city-states of Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg, a ...
, Germany. It is a smouldering coal-seam fire
A coal-seam fire is a burning of an outcrop or underground coal seam. Most coal-seam fires exhibit smouldering combustion, particularly underground coal-seam fires, because of limited atmospheric oxygen availability. Coal-seam fire instances ...
that ignited in 1668 and continues to burn today.
History
The exact cause of the fire is unknown, but it was probably a case ofspontaneous combustion
Spontaneous combustion or spontaneous ignition is a type of combustion which occurs by self-heating (increase in temperature due to exothermic internal reactions), followed by thermal runaway (self heating which rapidly accelerates to high te ...
caused by pressure and decomposition as a result of unplanned coal mining
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...
. According to legend, a shepherd lit a fire at a tree stump, which propagated down through the roots to the coal seam. An unsuccessful attempt was made to fight the fire with water. It does not burn with an open flame but instead glows. Originally this glow could be seen through cracks in the rock and there was a considerable build-up of smoke. The fire began to weaken by the end of the 18th century. Depending on the weather, smoke is visible and in at least one of the rock crevices an outflow of warm air can be detected.
Tourism
The Brennender Berg is one of the region's places of interest./ref> It is a popular destination for excursions and school trips. A convenient starting point is the parking lot of the Dudweiler cemetery at the end of Neuweiler Straße.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as t ...
also visited the Brennender Berg in 1770 and a commemorative plaque records the event. He later reminisced about this visit as follows:
See also
*Burning Mountain
Burning Mountain, the common name for Mount Wingen, is a hill near Wingen, New South Wales, Australia, approximately north of Sydney just off the New England Highway. It takes its name from a smouldering coal seam running underground through ...
* Centralia mine fire
The Centralia mine fire is a coal-seam fire that has been burning in the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States, since at least May 27, 1962. Its original cause and start date are st ...
* New Straitsville mine fire
* Smoking Hills
The Smoking Hills are located on the east coast of Cape Bathurst in Canada's Northwest Territories, next to the Arctic Ocean and a small group of lakes. The cliffs were named by explorer John Franklin, who was the first European to see them on h ...
References
Literature
* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: ''Dichtung und Wahrheit
''Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit'' (''From my Life: Poetry and Truth''; 1811–1833) is an autobiography by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that comprises the time from the poet's childhood to the days in 1775, when he was about to leave for ...
''. Zweiter Teil. Zehntes Buch. 1812. (Internetfundstelle)
* Martin Schuto: Neue Wirtschaftszweige – Alaunhütten, Kokserzeugung, Sudhaus. In: ''1000 Jahre Dudweiler 977–1977''. Saarbrücker Zeitung
The ' (''SZ'') is a daily (except Sundays) newspaper published in Saarland
The Saarland (, ; french: Sarre ) is a state of Germany in the south west of the country. With an area of and population of 990,509 in 2018, it is the smallest German ...
Verlag. Saarbrücken 1977. S. 228–233.
* Karl Heinz Ruth: Die Alaungewinnung am Brennenden Berg. In: ''Historische Beiträge aus der Arbeit der Dudweiler Geschichtswerkstatt''. Band 5. Saarbrücken 1988, S. 1–17.
{{coord, 49, 17, 20, N, 7, 3, 13, E, region:DE-SL_type:landmark_source:dewiki, display=title
Geography of Saarland
Persistent natural fires