Current Exhibits

The horn of the alpine ibex was processed from the second half of the 17th century on. The material was said to have healing properties. Local craftsmen not only created objects for daily use, such as the ibex bowl at the Mining and Gothic Museum, but, among other items, rings for people suffering from gout.

However, the mass processing of horn led to the drastic decline of the eastern alpine ibex at the beginning of the 18th century. In the Zillertal valley for instance, the last mention of ibexes in a written document was in 1706.

It was not until the mid-18th century that the number of ibexes in Salzburg’s mountains started to rise again. In documents from same time we find evidence of horn carvers, such as Lorentz Härmler - the “ibex horn carver of the meadows” - or the sculptors Leopold Ehegasser and Joseph Glarer, being based in Salzburg.

The so-called hand stones represent the pinnacle of Baroque and Late Baroque mountain art. Hand stones are particularly beautiful pieces of crystallised mineral or ore with subjects added from miners’ everyday life, resting on costly bases. There are hardly more than a dozen of these rare examples of mountain art left in the world.

The cabinet of mountain curiosities at the Leogang Mining and Gothic Museum has two hand stones with added pannier carriers on display, created by Simon Troger in his Tyrolean workshop in the 18th century.

First there is a large figure with a hat, its face made from ivory or bone, walking on a hill made of minerals and stone. You can recognise smoky quartz, mica schist and actinolite (from the Greek for ‘shining stone’) but also a small piece of amethyst, polished carnelian and fossilised snails and corals. The hand stone and figure rests on a wooden, contoured base.

The second hand stone from the workshop of the Tyrolean master craftsman is similar: a mineral and stone hill on a semi-circular carved gilt base. Here too can be found smoky quartz, pieces of marble, a typically tapered actinolite, polished carnelian and fossilised coral and mussels. On the top is a large figure with a tall hat, its face and hands made of ivory or bone.

Both hand stones are on loan from the Spängler bank in Salzburg.

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.