Life in Lautenthal

The record of St Andreas Kirche in Lautenthal show the Niewand family living there from 1785 until they emigrated in 1849. Lautenthal takes its name from the Laute river which flows through the town, and is an ancient village, dating back to at least the 1530s, though the area was inhabited for thousands of years before that.

(Click to enlarge pictures)

Illustration from a book published in 1658. Plumes of smoke at left from the smelters.

The old mine buildings at Lautenthal house a Museum of Mining. It is even possible to be married in the old mine chapel. For the traditionally minded, St. Andreas Kirche still faces the Markplatz as it has done since Martin Luther’s day, though he might be surprised to discover that the church is now shared with the Catholic congregation!

Many residents today run guest houses for visitors, or work in the tourist industry. A modern tourist brochure lists the attractions: in the winter there are snow sports, in the summer sailing on the lakes and hiking through the forests. You can also take a health cure at one of the sanitariums, which features a pump house for the mineral water, a heated pool and mud wraps. The fresh, clean mountain air is an added attraction.

Mining in the Harz
Archeological studies have shown that there were mines in the Harz since the 3rd century. This early mining was done with the simplest technologies. The mines were just holes in the ground down to a depth of about 40 metres, and the ore was brought up with hand winches. Between 1348 and 1379 the Black Death (bubonic plague) raged across Europe; nearly all the people in the Harz died and mining ceased.
In 1532, a prospector found a large silver deposit in the valley of the Laute river, and mining began again with the support of the regional lords. As so many years had passed, nobody knew how to mine any more, and workers had to be recruited from other mining regions.
Most of them came from the Erzgebirge region, near the Czechoslovakian border, and they settled in the Harz with their families. To encourage the new workers, the lords granted special privileges, called "Bergfreiheit" (literally ‘freedom of the mountain).    These privileges included

Lautenthal coat of arms

• exemption from taxation
• the right to hunt
• the right to brew
• the right to fish
• the right to cut wood
• the right to vote

(The history as written implies that the local lords granted these privileges from the goodness of their hearts, but it doesn’t seem likely. The diminished population after the plague had meant labour shortages, and consequently improved bargaining power and general conditions for the peasants of Europe. Those imported miners seem to have been pretty good  industrial negotiators.)

Lautenthal, like most of the towns in the western Harz, dates from this time, and the area soon became prosperous. Originally silver was mined, and later lead, zinc, tin, and some copper. Mining continued there until the 1930’s, when cheaper foreign ore caused most of the mines to close.
Only two mines continued: the Rammelsberg at Goslar, closed in 1988, and the Hilfe Gottes at Bad Grund, which closed in 1992.

Mining has always been difficult, dirty and dangerous work, and the Harz mines were no different. Despite their privileges, the miners of Lautenthal and Bad Grund worked long and hard for their wages.
Originally the only light the miners had was a candle – just one candle each, there was no other lighting in the shafts or in the tunnels. Later carbide lamps were used, and eventually electric lighting.

As the mineral veins were followed into the rock, the mines became ever deeper – some of them as much as 400 metres below ground. So every morning the miners climbed down on ladders. It took about an hour to get down to the working face, and after they had worked their 8 or 12 hour shift, another 2 hours to climb back up again. This 3 hours of climbing wasn’t paid time, either.

In the 1830’s someone finally invented a kind of Bosun’s Ladder, powered by the mine waterwheel, which shortened the up and down time to about 20 minutes each way. Even better, hardly any physical energy was needed. It wasn’t terribly safe, of course, but one can’t have everything.

In the 16th century the only power source for the mines was the huge wooden waterwheels. which enabled the ore to be winched up to the surface. To power these wheels, reservoirs were dug, over 70 of them through the area, connected by ditches.

The only way to keep the mines dry enough for working, was by means of drainage tunnels cut through the rock. For a long time there was no powder or dynamite for blasting, so the tunnels were hewn out by hand with a hammer and miner’s bar. A miner could cut out about 3 metres of rock in a year.

Every mine had a chapel near the entrance, where the miners would assemble before going underground. Here prayers would be said at the start of each shift, followed by a roll call. This not only recorded each man’s working hours, but enabled the management to know how many men were underground in case of an accident.

The miners were well trained – a young miner or Berggesell, (literally ‘miner’s mate’) served an apprenticeship before he could call himself a Bergmann (miner). But miners didn’t often make old bones; if you managed not to fall down a shaft, and avoided anything heavy falling on you, there was still the prospect of ‘miner’s disease’ or silicosis. This was a lung disease caused by breathing the dust in the mines.

If mining was hard on the men, it was also hard on the local countryside. Rivers were dammed and the original forests were cut down for timbering the mine tunnels, and later to make charcoal for smelting the ore. The native bears and wolves are now extinct, but  lynxes, which were also extinct, have recently been re-introduced to the Harz.  Deer, foxes, and badgers still remain.

Extensive reforestation has also taken place - the Harz is now a National Park - and there is a beautiful Arboretum at Bad Grund.

If you want to know more about the region, there are websites for the Harz, Bad Grund, and Lautenthal.

Images in this post from Wikimedia & Wikicommons