A visit to the Bing Cave

Emil Grimm


It was at the beginning of July 1912 that we carried out our decision to go on a school trip to the Bing Cave near Streitberg in Franconian Switzerland. We took the first morning train via Forchheim to Ebermannsadt and after a good hour's walk we stood in front of the entrance to the underground secrets. The guide was already waiting for us, having been informed of our arrival on the exact day and hour.

The small, iron door that closes the passageway opened. The girls pushed their way in curiously, but immediately turned back because everything was pitch black. Then a few light bulbs flashed on. We enter, the girls more timidly than I had expected. A large, not exactly high grotto, probably three times as long as our classroom. ‘The anteroom,’ says the guide, ’was completely filled with earth and stones that had been washed in when the cave was discovered.’ Not a trace of the stalactite formations I had told the girls about.

The lights go out abruptly. New ones flash in front of us. We are already standing in front of the entrance to the actual cave. But it's narrow here! The passage is so narrow that a villain among the girls shouts a warning to our fattest girl: ‘Watch out, Kätha, go sideways or you'll get stuck!’ The height of the corridor doesn't make a great impression. Our right-hand ‘wingman’ in gym class can reach the ceiling with his fingertips without stretching too much. But the guide forbids this. For up there hang delicate stalactite formations like narrow woven ribbons with short, sharp points. We pass a niche-like depression. It looks as if it is covered by a mighty, wrinkled curtain of heavy yellow-grey silk.

The room we now enter was obviously once blocked off by a rock wall when the cave was discovered, for the gate-like opening, through which a man can just walk, clearly shows that it was broken through the stone with a chisel and mallet. Another narrow corridor opens up before us. Its walls are piled up from huge but very regular boulders. You could be forgiven for thinking that giants had skilfully built it here using plumb bobs and straightedges. Then a loud ‘Ah!’ escapes from our bravest, who has always kept right behind the guide until now. A huge stalactite hermit towers up in the middle of the path. It measures more than two metres in height and its base is so thick that it touches the wall on both sides. And strangely, its surface is not smooth and even like that of its comrades; it has ledges, as if it were made up of individual, thinner and thinner pieces. It is also connected to the ceiling of the vault by a very thin thread of lime. We all carefully squeeze past the wall so as not to injure the wondrous giant.

The path continues between the smooth walls. Suddenly the walls recede - a vault like a small chapel stretches out above our heads. On the floor to the right and left are huge candles made of snow-white stalactite, some taller than me, but none thicker than an arm. The guide flashes an electric light hanging behind one of these slender pillars: it seems to glow through and through in the softest colours of the evening glow. ‘Oh, brothers and sisters!’ one of our girls suddenly shouts. And indeed! There are two strange creatures sitting together in harmony: a short, stocky fellow leaning down towards a smaller, more delicate one. The guide makes them both glow.

Then a new wonder! A low corridor, the ceiling covered with delicate stalactite borders. Thin, dazzling white columns stand close together like lights on a large table and numerous short cones protrude from the walls at an angle, like forgotten lights that have been stuck in. There again, a few giant pillars lean at an angle against the wall. Thousands of years ago, they must have been broken loose by a terrible earthquake. The short stump on which they once stood can still be clearly recognised on the ground. But the lime in the dripping water has long since made them so solid that even the strongest man could not tear them loose. A large pillar reaches from the floor to the ceiling like a mighty supporting beam. But it has broken in half and the upper piece no longer fits on the lower one, but has shifted to the side.

Again we have to squeeze through a narrow passage. The large limestone blocks that form the walls are damp and full of blackish stains. The guide calls back to the girls, asking them to take a closer look at these stains. ‘Oh, they're all little shells!’ ‘But they're made of stone!’ ‘No, fossilised!’ ‘And they're so small they look like they've been made with crepe scissors!’ That's how it goes. Then I tell them briefly: ‘A long time ago, the same slimy molluscs lived between these shells as still live between the shells of our pond mussels today. Of course, back then a great sea flooded here and everywhere where the Jura rises. The limestone mountains we saw this morning were still mud at the bottom of this sea. When the animals in the shells died, the shells sank to the bottom and soon new mud covered them. The sea disappeared, God knows how. The calcareous mud became hard stone and the empty shells with it. So what we are looking at here is a large rock churchyard.’

The girls walk on thoughtfully. Before long, another mighty curtain billows down from the wall. In the glow of the light burning behind it, it really does look like a very delicate fabric, even with brownish bands running through it like a pattern. The guide taps on the thin ceiling with a metal rod. There is a marvellous, long-sounding tinkling, as if a skilful musician is strumming his harp.

‘Is there much further to go?’ an impatient woman asks the guide. He smiles, because we are already standing unexpectedly at the end of the cave. A frozen waterfall lies before us; but the clods are broken and pushed over each other. but it is not ice, but a fine, damp limestone layer. The vault may once have collapsed here. The chalky water poured incessantly over the rubble in thousands of drops and so, over long, long periods of time, the yellow, shiny layer of lime formed over the rock. Who knows what wonders lie behind this rockfall! But if you wanted to continue working with hammer and chisel or even blast it, you would have to destroy this marvellous natural wonder. Who would be able to do that?

Slowly we hike back. Again and again we have to stop and look and marvel. A great joy lives in our hearts that we were allowed to see this marvellous structure of nature. On the journey home, new questions keep coming up, all of which I have to answer as best I can. Many are planning to visit the marvellous cave again soon with their parents.