Visitor mine in the Ore Mountains: Instead of silver, there are now raisins in the mine

The 555 Christmas stollen from Annaberger Backwaren GmbH still have to ripen slowly - and ideally at a consistently low temperature. As every year in October, the bakery's employees drag their pastries down 80 steps into the first shaft of the “Im Gößner” visitor mine. Stollen in the Stollen: You can only wish for good luck.

They were lucky in Annaberg when the former mine was discovered by chance in 1992. A new savings bank building was planned above the market near the Annenkirche. Because the subsoil of the Erzgebirge town is perforated like Swiss cheese, drilling is required before every new building project. This is how the preservationists came across the former silver mine, one of 600 mines that were active under the city from the late Middle Ages to modern times.

However, studs could not have been stored for tires at the time of discovery. Because the shafts must have smelled terrible. This is what the guide tells us, with whom a group of 10 visitors “arrives”, as the miners say, shortly before the Christmas Stollen are put into storage.

Anyone traveling from Chemnitz with the Erzgebirgsbahn towards Cranzahl has three train stations to choose from in Annaberg-Buchholz. None of them are close to the market or the Annenkirche. A bit of walking should be planned. The entrance to the Erzgebirgsmuseum and the “Im Gößner” visitor mine is at Große Kirchstraße 16.

Admission is only for adults and children aged 6 and over. This is what the regulations of the Oberbergamt provide. Surefootedness and, of course, sturdy shoes are important. Helmets are available to borrow on site.

It exists at every turn. Hence the helmet. As a reward, it's worth taking a detour to the neighboring St. Anne's Church and to the mountain altar with the famous painting.

“Until Annaberg got a sewer system, all the feces were channeled into the former tunnels,” explains the guide. You can no longer smell any of this when you descend to a depth of 13 and then 24 meters. It's just humid - and a constant 8 degrees cool.

When the mine was in operation between 1497 and 1520, miners had to climb down to depths of 104 meters. This also had consequences for the German language. “The miners who came in not with the ladder but with the rope,” says the guide, “sometimes got caught in the ropes.” And the mining industry in the Erzgebirge gave the Germans another saying. “If you didn't operate the reel on which the ropes hung correctly, you got tangled up.���

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It's tight underground and you have to bend down again and again. The miners laboriously worked their way forward with their mallets and irons. They had to take several mallets underground with them because steel didn't exist back then and iron quickly became dull.

The miners only made progress a few centimeters a day - always looking for one of the narrow ore veins, often only one centimeter wide, as it is called in mining German. And how did the miners know that they had found a silver vein, asks a visitor. “You smelled it,” is the answer. “Because silver smells a little like garlic.”

The first silver discoveries in the Erzgebirge were in Freiberg in 1168. Soon thousands flocked to the thriving mining landscape. In addition to silver, tin, cobalt and nickel were mined - and later also uranium. With the end of uranium mining by the mining company Wismut, mining came to an end in 1990.

The tunnel ends at one point. It is the underground border to the Annenkirche district in Annaberg. The church was taboo for mining.

And another piece of luck for Annaberg. The painter Hans Hesse painted a famous picture on the back of one of the side altars in 1522, shortly before the silver mine was exhausted. It shows scenes from the everyday life of the miners who once donated the altar.

The “mountain altar” in the St. Anne’s Church, the city’s “miners’ cathedral,” has been part of the “Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří mining region” Unesco world heritage site since 2019. The nearby tourism information center also shows how much mining is part of the regional identity. Only one greeting can be found on T-shirts, pencils and bottle openers: Good luck.

The miner's greeting, which sounds like a defiant pat on the back in the region characterized by migration, dates back to around 1500, as does the visitor mine. Getting lucky didn't just mean getting out of the shaft in good health. There is also the desire to finally find silver when opening a new tunnel.

When the tunnels come out again at Christmas, the tourists still don't have the mine to themselves. The fire department, which has a special unit in Annaberg, also likes to stop by here. “They train mining and high-altitude rescue with us,” says the guide.

After the tour you have to climb 24 meters on narrow metal steps. Right next to it is the much narrower shaft into which the miners entered around 1500.

Unless they got caught in the ropes or someone got tangled up at the top.