Lehrbergwerk Grube Roter Bär

Useful Information

Location:	Roter Bär 1, 37444 Sankt Andreasberg im Harz. A7 exit Seesen, B243 to Herzberg am Harz, turn left to St. Andreasberg. (51.712236, 10.527608)
Open:	APR to OCT Sat 14. [2023]
Fee:	donations welcome. [2023]
Classification:	Iron Mine
Light:	electric miners lamps provided
Dimension:
Guided tours:	L=200 m, D=60 min, VR=0 m, St=0, V=500/a.
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:	Wilfried Ließmann, M. Bock (1993): Die Grube Roter Bär bei St. Andreasberg / Harz, Buch zum Lehrbergwerk, 1993. Wilfried Ließmann (2002): Der Bergbau am Beerberg bei St. Andreasberg, St.Andreasberger Verein f. Geschichte u. Altertumskunde e.V. 2002. 150 S. ISBN 3-932752-90-2. Wilfried Ließmann (2006): Das Lehrbergwerk Grube Roter Bär in St. Andreasberg (Harz) - Untertägiges Geotop und Stätte aktiver Montanforschung EGMA-News 2/2006, S.4-11.
Address:	Grube Roter Bär, Roter Bär 1, 37444 Sankt Andreasberg im Harz, Tel: +49-5582-1597 St. Andreasberger Verein für Geschichte und Altertumskunde e. V., Dr.-Willi-Bergmann-Str. 28, 37444 Sankt Andreasberg im Harz, E-mail:
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

~1800	mining of Brauneisenstein (iron ore) with Keilhauen (picks) starts.
1860	Karl August Friedrich Wedler buys the Grube Unverhofftes Glück and it with the Grube Roter Bär.
~1866	closed.
1922	research for Brauneisenstein potential.
1924	research for lead, copper, zinc, arsene, anitmone, cobalt, nickle and more.
1931-1943	first show mine of the Harz opened in the Tagesstollen.
1946-49	research for slate.
1988	restauration of the collapsed Bärner Tagestollen started.
1989	Lehrbergwerk founded.

Geology

Lenticular deposits of brown iron ores occur in a Middle Devonian clay-shale-limestone series.

Description

In the Bären valley at the foot of the Knöchel, east of the mining town of St. Andreasberg, there are several abandoned mines, two of which are operated by the St. Andreasberger Verein für Geschichte und Altertumskunde e. V. as show mines. As the two mines are only a few metres apart, we have described them both on this page.

The Eisenerzgrube Roter Bär (Roter Bär iron ore mine) is also known as the Lehrbergwerk Grube Roter Bär (Grube Roter Bär training mine). Mining began around 1800 and ended in the mid-1860s. So-called Eigenlehner, a kind of freelance miners, operated the mine with a workforce of only 4-6 men and extracted about 50-60 tonnes of ironstone annually. The soft, often clay-like ore could be mined without the use of drilling equipment or explosives. It was sorted by hand and thus enriched to 35-40 % Fe. The result was easy to smelt and had a high manganese content, and good wrought and rope iron could be produced from it. Over the years, a network of about 1,000 m of adits was created. However, the mine had only one customer, the state-owned Hanoverian Königshütte in Lauterberg, and when they stopped smelting with a charcoal blast furnace in 1871, the mine no longer had any customers. It was abandoned and fell into disrepair.

At the beginning of the 1920s, it was excavated again along with other abandoned mines in search of ores that had hitherto gone unnoticed. Despite great effort, the results were poor. But this work made the galleries accessible again, and in 1931 the newly founded Sankt Andreasberger Verein für Geschichte und Altertumskunde e.V. took over the mine and established the first Harz show mine here. During the Second World War, the mine was closed and used as an air raid shelter. Renewed attempts to mine the mine in the years after the war were again unsuccessful, and the mine was again used for other purposes. The owner of the mines, mining engineer Dr Ernst Bock, used it as a teaching mine for the Clausthal Mining Academy. Afterwards it fell into disrepair again and was reopened in 1988 by the mining working group and made accessible again as a show mine.

Another mine made available by the association as a teaching mine is the Wennsglückt mine. It was excavated in 1991 and is used for various research purposes. For example, it was used for 3D modelling from a point cloud as part of a student thesis by the Geomatics Team of the Clausthal University of Technology under the direction of Prof. Paffenholz in 2021.