Current Exhibits

A selection of our current exhibits


  • Georgius Agricola

    Georgius Agricola (Latin for ‘Georg Bauer’) was a German doctor, pharmacist and scientist who is regarded as the ‘father of minerology’ and founder of modern geology and mining engineering. His main work De re metallica libri XII, ‘12 books on mining’, appeared for the first time in Latin in 1556, a year after his death, in Basel.

    Agricola’s work is the result of his travels through the mining regions of the Saxon and Bohemian Ore Mountains and demonstrates a systematic, technological investigation of mining and trade associations. Decorated with woodcuts, the entire mining knowledge of the day was compiled by the author, who in doing so became the founder of mountain scholarship. For two hundred years, Agricola’s books remained the decisive work on the subject.

    Later, the famous mining book was translated into many different languages. Philippus Bechius (1521-1560), a friend of Agricola and a professor at the University of Basel, translated the manuscript into German and published it in 1557 under the title Vom Bergkwerck XII Bücher.

    The cabinet of mountain curiosities at the Leogang Mining and Gothic Museum has three different editions of the famous work on display: the second Latin edition from 1561, the second German edition from 1580 and the first English edition from 1912, also called De re metallica.

    The first English translation was published by Herbert Clark and Lou Henry Hoover, a married couple, who added commentary and footnotes. Herbert Clark Hoover was not only a trained mining engineer and successful entrepreneur, but the 31st president of the United States of America from 1929 to 1933.

    The three editions of Georgius Agricola’s work on show at the Mining and Gothic Museum come from Achim and Beate Middelschulte’s famous private collection of mountain art in Essen.


  • Screw-medal from Abraham Remshard

    The silver screw-medal at the Mining and Gothic Museum dedicated to the Salzburg émigrés of 1731 and 1732 comes from the workshop of master craftsman Abraham Remshard in Augsburg.

    The term ‘screw-medal’ refers to medal-like trinkets consisting of two parts threaded together. The production of screw-medals and screw-coins began in the late 16th century and continued until the first half of the 20th century.

    Abraham Remshard’s workshop in Augsburg was one of the leading firms but screw-medals were also made in Vienna and Nuremberg.

    Most of these objects produced after around 1730 are not only signed but contain valuable copper engravings, like the one at the Leogang Mining and Gothic Museum.

    The front of the screw-medal shows an emigrating family in a landscape, with Salzburg’s mountains in the background. God the Father can be seen in the clouds overhead with a banner above him reading, ’Leave your Fatherland and friendship(s).’

    On the reverse is King Frederick William I of Prussia receiving a delegation of Salzburg émigrés. Over this is another banner which reads, ‘The kings shall be your keepers.’ The coloured copper engravings inside the screw-medal show maps of Salzburg and Prussia as well as 17 scenes from the history of the Salzburg émigrés of 1731 and 1732.


  • Cobalt and cobalt blue glass

    From the beginning of the 16th century until the end of the 18th century, Leogang was famous throughout Europe for its abundance of cobalt and nickel ores.

    From the mid-16th century, cobalt ores were of particular importance. In blue colouring works’, safflorite was first produced by heating cobalt ore. This served as the raw material for the production of smalt, a powdery blue glass pigment. Since both safflorite and smalt are fireproof, they were used for colouring glass, porcelain, ceramics and oil paints.

    Coloured Venetian glass was seen as a special luxury in the German-speaking countries of Europe from the mid-15th century. German merchants such as the Welser and Fugger families had already founded the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (‘the Germans’ warehouse’) in Venice in 1225. Situated on the Canale Grande right next to the famous Rialto Bridge, the building became the trading centre for luxury export goods from Venice to the German-speaking countries.

    As the use of safflorite and smalt for colouring glass increased, cobalt from Salzburg became an indispensable raw material for the production of luxury Venetian glass from the mid-16th century.

    Its extraction and use in glassware is mentioned in Georg Agricola’s De re metallica Libri XII from 1556, a masterpiece of mining literature which can also be admired at the Leogang Mining and Gothic Museum.

    There was an unprecedented increase in the use of blue in painting too. From as early as the 12th century, what was at first a dark and lacklustre colour was redefined as the symbol of Heaven and the virginity of the Blessed Mother. Glassmakers and illuminators strove to reconcile this new kind of blue with church architects’ altered perception of light adopted from theologians. The radiance of cobalt blue oil paint opened up a completely new set of possibilities in the visual arts.

    Today, smalt, or cobalt blue glass powder, is mostly used for restoring old masterpieces.


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