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Mining
All around the Bielatal, mining was carried on for centuries – and each district produced something different: in Berggießhübel iron ore, the “Pirnisch Eisen” (Pirna iron), which was forged in the hammer mills along the Biela, including here at the Hammergut; in Altenberg and Zinnwald tin, for more than 550 years; at the Hoher Schneeberg in Bohemia fluorspar, until 1993; and right next door in Leupoldishain, Wismut mined uranium in GDR times. I can tell you something about each of these districts.
Berggießhübel and the Pirnisch Eisen
In Berggießhübel, a quarter of an hour from us, ore mining is first documented in 1388 – when it actually began, nobody knows for sure. Magnetite iron ore was mined, and in the 16th century the iron made from it was regarded as a quality product under the name “Pirnisch Eisen”: in 1589 the chronicler Petrus Albinus wrote that the most excellent iron was made in Lauenstein and Berggießhübel. It was sold through the Eisenkammer (iron chamber) in Pirna, which held the trading monopoly from 1472 to 1686. The town takes its name from the Gießhütten, the smelting works in which the ore was melted down.
The heyday around 1600
Around 1600, before the Thirty Years’ War, some 90 pits, adits and shafts were in operation around Berggießhübel, with around 300 miners; a mine plan from 1607 lists 51 pits alone. More than 40 hammer works and smelting works processed the ore into as much as 1,000 tonnes of iron a year. The Thirty Years’ War brought the collapse.
From ore to hammer in the Bielatal
The ore from Berggießhübel came along the old iron roads into the Bielatal, where the Biela drove the water wheels of the blast furnaces and hammer mills: Oberhütte near Rosenthal, Brausenstein, Neidberg, Reichstein and, further down, Hütten. The Brausenstein blast furnace of 1693 still stands today – the only surviving blast furnace in the whole Pirnisch Eisen district, just a short way upstream from us. And our house carries mining in its very name: in 1792 the hammer master Andreas Lugur from Lohmen was granted permission to set up a tool, iron and weapons hammer on the “Hammer-Wercks-Stätte des Hammergutes Neidberg” (the hammer works site of the Hammergut Neidberg).
Cannonballs and cast-iron art
Around 1520 Hans Rabe began casting iron in moulds at Giesenstein near Berggießhübel – this is regarded as the beginning of Saxon cast-iron art; in 1541 he moved his foundry to Hütten in the Bielatal. Cannonballs were cast too: in 1704 the Brausenstein blast furnace supplied cannonballs to the arsenal in Dresden.
The Marie Louise Stolln and the end in Berggießhübel
From 1726 the miners drove the Friedrich-Erbstolln adit into the mountain; around 1870 the Magdeburg industrialist Hermann Gruson renamed it the “Marie Louise Stolln” after his eldest daughter. Under Gruson there was one more brief boom – in the best year, 1875, around 14,000 tonnes of ore – but by 1892 the deposit was exhausted. The last exploration attempts ended in 1942. Today the adit is a show mine, and bats hibernate in the old galleries.
From mine to spa
In 1717 an iron and sulphur spring was discovered in Berggießhübel, and in 1722 the Johann-Georgen-Bad was established – the water flowed out of one of the miners’ adits. Thus the mining town gradually became a spa resort; it still bears the title “Kurort Berggießhübel” (Spa Town Berggießhübel) today.
Altenberg, tin and the Pinge
Around 1440 Bohemian miners from Graupen found tin near Altenberg, and in 1451 the town received its charter. For more than 550 years the “Zwitterstock” ore body was hollowed out – until in 1620 the mountain collapsed: this created the Altenberger Pinge, a crater today around 400 metres wide and a good 150 metres deep. In total some 37 million tonnes of ore and more than 100,000 tonnes of tin were extracted from the mountain. On 28 March 1991 the “last tub” came up – and that was the end.
Zinnwald and World Heritage
In Zinnwald tin was mined from the 15th century, later also tungsten and, from 1890, the lithium-bearing mica that is named “zinnwaldite” after the village. Since 1992 you have been able to go underground in the “Vereinigt Zwitterfeld” show mine. Since 6 July 2019 the Altenberg-Zinnwald mining landscape – the Pinge, the tin washery and the Arno-Lippmann shaft – has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region, as have the medieval silver mine in Dippoldiswalde and, on the Bohemian side, the Krupka mining landscape with the Mückentürmchen.
Fluorspar at the Hoher Schneeberg
The Hoher Schneeberg is a sandstone mountain, not an ore mountain – and yet mining went on at its foot until 1993, for fluorspar. In 1953 the vein was found south of the village of Schneeberg (Sněžník); from 1955 until the end of 1993 the miners extracted some 203,000 tonnes of fluorite ore, digging 21 kilometres of tunnels in the process. During the mining work in the 1980s they came upon natural caves in the sandstone, the fluorite caves – a natural monument since 1999 and open to visitors on only a few days a year, by prior registration.
Uranium in Leupoldishain
Between Königstein and the Bielatal, in Leupoldishain, lay a uranium mine of the SDAG Wismut, the Königstein mining operation: exploration began in 1961, the deposit in the sandstone was found in 1963, and extraction started in 1967. At times more than 2,200 people worked here, and by the end of 1990 around 18,000 tonnes of uranium had been produced. This had consequences for the village: the open-air theatre of 1959 had to close as early as 1964 because of the mining.
As of: 10/2026
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