The Upper Harz Mining Museum (, ) is a museum of technological and cultural history in

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. The town hosts the Clausthal University of Technology. The health resort is locate ...

in the

Harz mountains The Harz (), also called the Harz Mountains, is a Mittelgebirge, highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The nam ...

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 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 16t ...

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 is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

, especially

man engine A man engine is a mechanism of reciprocating ladders and stationary platforms installed in Mining, mines to assist the miners' journeys to and from the working levels. It was invented in Germany in the 19th century and was a prominent feature o ...

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 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 ...

* 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 The Upper Harz (, ) is the northwestern and higher part of the Harz mountain range in Germany. The exact boundaries of this geographical region may be defined differently depending on the context. In its traditional sense, the term Upper Harz cover ...

. * Film show with original photographs of the Silbersegen and Kaiser Wilhelm Mines from the year 1924.

History

The history of the

mining museum Mining is the extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or feasibly created artificially in a la ...

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

, 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).''Das Oberharzer Bergwerksmuseum''
at www.bergwerksmuseum.de. Retrieved on 9 Jun 2010.

Operation

The mining museum is operated by the Upper Harz History and Museum Society (''Oberharzer Geschichts- and Museumsverein''). The municipality of

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 Rosenhof is a hamlet in Coulee Rural Municipality No. 136, Saskatchewan, Canada. The hamlet is located on Range Rd. 123 4 km south of Highway 363, about 15 km south of Swift Current. Demographics In 2010, Rosenhof had a populatio ...

. 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.

References

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

Upper Harz Mining Museum
{{Authority control Mining in the Harz Mining museums in Germany Museums in Lower Saxony Clausthal-Zellerfeld