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| A brief history of the mines at Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines |
by Pierre FLUCK
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The photographs illustrating this article come from the book of Jean-Luc HOHL : MINERAUX ET MINES DU MASSIF VOSGIEN
published in the "Editions du Rhin" and are reproduced here with the authorization of the author
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In his 1552 book Cosmographie (compiled and documented in 1545 by Landrichter Haubinsack) Sébastien Munster is in no doubt about how the seams were rediscovered. He states that what caught the prospectors' eye was the myriad old collapsed shafts (pingen) that lined the mountain ridge…… "they found several long-established shafts and pits , called pingen, from which they drew the conclusion that, in days of yore, men had tried to find metal in this place" ( ancient letters provide evidence to support this claim).
In 1502, the first mine was opened in Fundgrube, at the foot of the Fertrupt valley by Brunon de Ribeaupierre, who both overlooked and financed the operation. However, he eventually went bankrupt and was duly dismissed by his cousins and his uncle. They in turn appointed conrad Boltzenschnitzer as his replacement, a renowned engineer and Master of Mines in the former Austrian states.
However, the true flourishing period of the Ribeaupierre mines only occurred twenty-two years after the opening of the Fundgrube and lasted for ten years. During this period, the Duke of Lorraine's mines (both at Sainte-Marie and La Croix-aux-Mines) had reached their finest hour. For example, in just one year (1529) no fewer than one hundred and thirty-seven gallery research porches were built on the Lorraine side of the Vosges mountains alone. This frenzied activity inevitably, although belatedly, broke through to the Alsace side.
In the Altenberg, the major extraction sites sprung up in quick succession between 1524 and 1534. The first Judge of the Mines, Henri Berneck, was appointed in 1526 and a mining statute was promulgated in 1527.
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Click on the picture for a larger image
Native silver
Sainte-Marie-Aux-Mines
34 mm tall
This specimen has been described in the book of A.Lacroix : " Minéralogie de la France et de ses colonies " |
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Thus, due to its famed reputation, the region attracted miners in their thousands. Not only Rhinelanders but also Central Europeans flocked to the area not to seek their fortune but simply to find employment. This hive of activity, fed by licencee-injected capital, did not in any way resemble the various gold rushes of the nineteenth century, simply because the ore was not close enough to the surface. Instead, it was located in ore-deposits deep underground (the seams) and therefore its extraction was both very technical and very costly (for example, up to two hundred workers were required per dig).
However, the famous amazing finds which helped establish the mines' renown did not spark off this "blaze of glory", but resulted from it.
The incredibly narrow division of shaft boundaries ,which were demarcated by mining surveyors, led the almost asphyxiated workers to cross over their allocated space to explore or exploit their neighbour's territory. The resulting inextricably complex legal battles were nicknamed "the subterranean wars", because digging towards the depths of the mine only increased problems related to the build-up of water, the winching of rock and ore to the surface and the time spent lowering miners to their workplace- all of which meant an increase in mining expenditure. Drilling very long galleries for water drainage purposes ( as at the Erbstollen mine), which was also very costly, only partly solved the problem because some mine shafts (for example, the Rumpapum) at depths of between two hundred and three hundred metres below the valley floor would infringe on columns of ore. Consequently, as of 1545, visible signs of fatigue began to appear, until in 1550 an extraordinary thing happened -the seven seams of the Neuenberg network (south of Echery) was discovered in rapid succession. |
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| Last update : 06.19.2007 |
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