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How the Elbe Sandstone Mountains formed
The Elbe Sandstone Mountains cover roughly 700 square kilometres and lie along the Elbe between Pirna and Děčín. The German part is called Saxon Switzerland, the Czech part Bohemian Switzerland. The highest peak is the Hoher Schneeberg (Děčínský Sněžník) at 723 metres, just across the border near Rosenthal-Bielatal. It is regarded as the largest erosional landscape of Cretaceous sandstone in Europe and in 2006 was named one of the most significant National Geotopes of Germany. The rocks around the Bielatal valley also tell this story – it begins in a sea.
The Cretaceous Sea
For a long time this was dry land – from about 320 million years ago the area was weathered and eroded; in the Jurassic, about 180 million years ago, it was under water only briefly. About 95 million years ago, in the Cretaceous period, the land sank and a shallow sea advanced from the west. It was a strait between the North German–Polish Basin and the Bohemian–Moravian Basin, with islands on either side. For around eight million years, rivers washed sand, gravel, silt and clay into it; on the seabed these gradually turned into the sandstone layers. In the lowest layers, uranium-bearing clays accumulated – they were mined from 1963 to 1990 at the Königstein uranium mine, very close to the Bielatal valley.
Layer upon Layer
The sea came and went several times. That is why hard, sandy-gravelly beds up to 120 metres thick alternate with thin, soft layers of clay and silt, which often measure only a few centimetres. On the Saxon side the sandstone is up to 550 metres thick in total, in Bohemia up to 600 metres. The geologist Friedrich Lamprecht designated the hard steps from bottom to top with a to e and the soft intermediate layers with α to δ – and geologists still speak this way today. The youngest layers are now carried by the Winterberge, the Schrammsteine and Affensteine, and as a thin cap by the Lilienstein and Pfaffenstein; in Bohemia they are preserved at the Prebischtor. When the land rose again and the sea withdrew, a large, still undivided sandstone plate remained.
Granite Pushes Over It
Afterwards the Lusatian granite massif pushed over the sandstone plate from the northeast, pressing it down until it broke. This fracture zone, the Lusatian Thrust, runs from Pillnitz via Hohnstein and Hinterhermsdorf to Krásná Lípa. In the process, layers were tilted upright – the Hohe Liebe owes its pointed shape to beds that stand at slopes of up to 30 degrees, and west of the Wolfsberg they are even overturned. Older rocks came to the surface, such as Jurassic limestone near Zeschnig, Saupsdorf and Hinterhermsdorf, which was quarried in the past. At the southwestern edge the plate was raised by more than 200 metres along the Karsdorf Fault; it tilted, and the Elbe gained a steeper gradient.
Volcanoes in the Sandstone
In the Tertiary, everything around was seething: volcanoes formed the Bohemian Central Uplands and the Lusatian Mountains. Some magma conduits also pierced the sandstone table and solidified into basalt. This is how the conical hills in the middle of the sandstone came about – the Rosenberg (Růžovský vrch) in Bohemia, the Cottaer Spitzberg, the Raumberg and the Great and Small Winterberg. They can still be recognised today by their rounded domed shape and by the denser forest on the fertile basalt soil.
The Elbe Cuts Its Way In
Because the plate was raised and tilted, the Elbe cut ever deeper and created its valley with its steep walls; the streams followed suit in the side valleys – this is how the Gründe came about, including the valley of the Biela. During the Ice Ages the river changed its course several times; with a gentler gradient its bed grew wider. At Schmilka the cut reaches down into the lowest sandstone step, and opposite, the Schrammsteine show the entire sequence of layers from bottom to top – like an open book of history.
How the Rocks Get Their Shapes
Hard beds cemented with silica form walls and cliffs, the soft clayey layers between them terraces, rock ledges and hollowed-out notches. Vertical joints run through the stone in two directions and divide it into blocks – the geologist Bernhard Cotta already described this in 1839; the quarrymen called these joints “Loose”. Water, frost, salt, wind, lichens and microbes shape from this towers, chimneys, crevices, hourglass forms and honeycombs – honeycomb weathering can be seen on many rocks in the Bielatal valley. Where a soft layer is washed out, overhangs and bedding-plane caves form; climbers spend the night beneath them in their “Boofen”. Whether the grooves on some rock summits are true karst is something geologists still argue about today.
Sandstone as Building Stone
For around a thousand years sandstone was quarried here, and this has visibly changed the landscape in many places – many a rock face along the Elbe is an old quarry. The natural joints helped the quarrymen to detach whole walls and to dress blocks. Shipped down the Elbe, Elbe sandstone became one of the best-known building stones in Central Europe; among other things, Dresden's Frauenkirche and the Zwinger are built from it.
Building material straight from the slope
For the people here, sandstone used to be the cheapest building material of all – which is why most of the old houses in the area are built from it, including the Hammergut Neidberg; you can still see it beautifully in its walls today. The stones were taken straight from the slope and built in right on the spot. Supply chains hardly get any shorter – it was a very efficient way to build, with whatever the landscape offered on the doorstep.
Connections to Other Places
Königstein Fortress, the Lilienstein and the Pfaffenstein are table mountains – remnants of the old sandstone plate that remained standing when everything around was eroded away. Stolpen Castle, by contrast, stands on a basalt hill, a volcanic conduit like the cones of the Bohemian Central Uplands. The Hickelhöhle cave in the Großer Zschand is a typical bedding-plane cave, and the hunting lodge Kristin Hrádek lies at the foot of the Hoher Schneeberg, the highest peak of the mountains.
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