The Harz, Part I: A Thousand Years Underground
In late March 2022 it was just Ellie, the boys and me on a six-day trip through Lower Saxony that started in the Harz, the low mountain range in the middle of Germany that is best known for its mines, its half-timbered towns and its witches. The first stop was the Rammelsberg mine at Goslar, and it was massive.
A Thousand Years of Mining
The Rammelsberg is a 635-meter mountain just south of Goslar, and it was mined for more than 1,000 years, almost without a break. Silver, lead, copper and zinc came out of it, about 30 million tonnes of ore in total, until the mine finally closed on June 30, 1988. When it closed it had been working continuously for more than a thousand years, which is hard to wrap your head around. The oldest mining may go back to the Bronze Age, though the earliest hard evidence points to the late 7th century AD.
The name has a legend attached. A knight named Ramm, a henchman of Emperor Otto the Great, tied up his horse here in 968, and the horse pawed the ground and uncovered silver ore. Goslar itself was first mentioned in 979, and in 1005 Henry II built an imperial palace there, partly because of all that silver. The mines were an imperial holding until the town council bought the mining rights in 1359.
The mine and Goslar's old town became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992. In 2010 it was expanded to include the Upper Harz Water Management System, the network of ponds, ditches and tunnels that powered the mines, along with Walkenried Abbey. A citizens' group stopped the demolition after closure and turned it into the museum we visited.
In the mine museum there was also a display of horse barding (armor made for a warhorse), a black horse figure in colorful metal plates with a long spike on its head. It was one of the boys' favorite things there.
Underground
The entrance we took has a plaque that credits O.B.M. Röder with the project, begun in 1798 and finished in 1805. A Stollen is a gallery, a horizontal tunnel into the mountain, and this one is the Röder-Stollen, a water course that kept the mine from flooding. It is more than 200 years old, and inside you can see the hand work in the rock.
It is hard to explain how big and old it all feels down there. The timbers, the wet rock, and the stairs spiraling down into the dark all made the "thousand years" feel real.
Evening in Wernigerode
After the mine we drove east to Wernigerode, where we were staying. The settlement was first recorded in a 1121 deed naming Adalbert of Haimar, Count of Wernigerode. By evening we were walking around the market square.
The Rathaus ("council house", the town hall) is first mentioned in 1277 as a "playhouse and court house". A fire destroyed the old building in 1528, and the town took over and converted the one on the market square, which was later extended with the half-timbered section, a big flight of steps and a high gable. The cellar is still a Ratskeller ("council cellar", the traditional restaurant under a town hall).
The neo-Gothic fountain has been on the square since 1848. It's the Wohltäterbrunnen, the "benefactor fountain" (a Wohltäter is literally a "good-doer"), and its basin has the coats of arms and names of the noble families and citizens who worked for the town.
We finished the day with this view over the rooftops at dusk. The next morning we climbed up to the castle.
Possum et ego.
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