OH-H01 OH-H01 Ehrenfriedersdorf "Conservation works at mining water systems & technical artefacts" Solidarités Jeunesses

PARTENAIRE

Open Houses – rooms open for those who come along. Open Houses – not empty buildings, but places with visible and invisible traces of history, places which have grown and decayed over the centuries, places which were shaped by those people who lived there long ago as well those who left only yesterday – places which will be shaped by those who live there or who come as a guest. Open Houses – rooms which want to be filled with dreams and ideas, with meetings and exchange, by people of different backgrounds, different cultures, different generations and different ideas and visions. The history of Open Houses Network dates back to the mid-1980s, when a group of young people started to restore village churches in East Germany in voluntary work to protect them from decay. The engagement for these buildings united people who enjoyed the freedom these activities provided and who filled these rooms with life again in ways which by far exceed the craftsmen's work done – through exhibitions, concerts, making music together or just sitting by the camp fire. Meanwhile, rooms free of political and ideological pressure are no longer urgently required; however, places have become rare where people can meet without commercial pressure, free of bureaucracy and institutionalism, free of nepotism and the exclusion which it produces. What should be easy – to go somewhere in order to meet people and to work together – has become difficult. The tightrope walk between, on the one hand, public activities in a monetary and functional sense, and the retreat into private life on the other, is very difficult, and it requires a lot of power and permanent efforts to tackle red tape and financial restrictions. Free spaces are less and less understood as common property, and are permanently being cut back. The idea of public property seems to have gone out of fashion, and places of common responsible work have become rare. Open Houses Network tries to create and protect such spaces. In this process, we do not want to be the doers, but be people who have a vision, who want to initiate something, but who also are aware of depending on the co-operation of others. We understand our projects and events as offers – as offers to create space for commitment, for changes, for meetings.

Localisation

Ehrenfriedersdorf Tin Mine / Ore Mountains Cultural Landscape / Saxony / Germany

gare la plus proche

Chemnitz Train Sation arriving from Berlin, and from there there are Buses transporting from the Chemnitz Bus station to Ehrenfriedersdorf Neumarkt bus stop. Other train stations near are the Annaberg-Buchholz train station. Transport from the arrival meeting point will be informed in the infosheet.

aéroport le plus proche

BER

Informations supplémentaires

For application, complete CV + letter of interest on the topic of the project are required prior to being selected for an online interview to define if the candidate will be accepted to join the project.

Travail

The project will consist of two parts – a practical working part and an educational part. The working part will last six hours per day. In the evenings and during the weekend, educational and cultural activities will take place. The participants will be engaged in two works at the areas of the visitors’ mine, which will allow them to understand and learn about two important components that allowed this region to become a hub of industrial mining development through different stages in the mining history of the Ore Mountains. The first work will take place at the Röhrgraben canal water system. The participants will be tasked with carrying out urgently needed conservation works on the wooden elements of the canals, helping to secure and repair damaged parts of the water system structure. The rotten beams have to be taken off, and new ones transported by hand to the respective sections of the canals, prepared and put on the place of the removed ones. The other work will bring the participants underground to the tunnels of the visitor’s mine. There they will take part in conservation work on historical locomotives and trailers that were used for mobility and ore transport on the rails of the mine. The work will be guided by museum personnel in charge of the conservation activities at the visitor’s mine. The educational programme will be complemented by lectures on the values of the UNESCO World Heritage site and the procedure involved in the recognition of the region as a place of significance under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, imparted by the Saxon World Heritage Coordination. Finally, guided visits and excursions to historical landmarks of mining heritage of the region will allow contextualising for the participants the works at the Zinngrube (Tin Mine) Ehrenfriedersdorf Visitors’ Mine and provide them with an overview of the interactions between the mining history and the local traditions of the communities living in the Ore Mountains.

Logement & nourriture

FINANCES All costs linked to the project are covered, including food, accommodation, insurance and transportation during the stay at the project. Travel costs to and from the camp place are not covered. Participants should organise their journey to and from the project place by themselves and on their own expenses. Furthermore, participants should bring their own pocket money. ACCOMMODATION In most of Open Houses' camps the volunteers will live at the same places they also work on, what means that they live more or less on a building site. In most of the Heritage Volunteers Projects the accommodation is located in a certain distance to the working site. The accommodation is usually very simple; there are shared rooms with simple beds or mattresses at most of the places. Shower, toilet and kitchen are at the place, but sometimes not in the same building. The equipment is simple but fair. After work, when everybody wants to take a shower, there can be a limit of hot water. FOOD The meals will be prepared together as they are part of the community life, what means that every participant will be responsible for the meal at least once during its stay. So it would be very nice if the participants could bring typical recipes from home in order to introduce each other to the preparation of food from all over the world.

Emplacement & temps libre

The Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří (Ore Mountains) spans a region in south-eastern Germany and north-western Czechia, which contains a wealth of several metals exploited through mining from the Middle Ages onwards. The region became the most important source of silver ore in Europe from 1460 to 1560. Mining was the trigger for technological and scientific innovations transferred worldwide. Tin was historically the second metal to be extracted and processed at the site. At the end of the 19th century, the region became a major global producer of uranium. The cultural landscape of the Ore Mountains has been deeply shaped by 800 years of almost continuous mining, from the 12th to the 20th century, with mining, pioneering water management systems, innovative mineral processing and smelting sites, and mining cities. Tin ore was discovered in the region of Ehrenfriedersdorf, 34 kilometres south of Chemnitz, in the 13th century and was mined until the early 1990s. Some silver was also extracted from the local mines, as well as a wide variety of minerals. The mining landscape of Ehrenfriedersdorf is inextricably linked with the invention of the pioneering technique water pumping system – the Ehrenfriedersdorfer Kunstgezeug – around 1540. This technology was soon applied in other mining regions in Europe and, together with the invention of the artificial linkage in Jáchymov in 1551, became the dominant water hoisting technology worldwide for more than 200 years. In Agricola‘s "De re metallica" such pumping systems are documented in use in the tin mining of Ehrenfriedersdorf in the middle of the 16th century. The original wheel chamber of the Ehrenfriedersdorfer Kunstgezeug is still preserved. After the end of commercial mining in 1990 the mine was turned into a visitor centre, in which visitors are able to experience gallery ore mining typical for the Ore Mountains. At the Zinngrube (Tin Mine) Ehrenfriedersdorf Visitors’ Mine, comprehensive insights into the history and development of the oldest medieval tin mining area in Germany are provided by the archaeological remains and technological ensembles. These ensembles illustrate examples from the period of medieval surface mining and open-cast mining of the 14th century and extensive underground mining from the 15th to 20th century. Outside of the mine, visitors to the site can discover the trails that run along the water system canals known as Röhrgraben. The Röhrgraben is one of the oldest artificial ditches in mining in the Ore Mountains. Its construction falls into the second half of the 14th century. The ditch was used to supply water to the stamp mills and washes as well as to the Ehrenfriedersdorfer tin works both on the Sauberg and in the Seifenbach Valley. Georgius Agricola also reported that the ditch was used to supply water to the Ehrenfriedersdorf artefacts. Until the mining in Ehrenfriedersdorf was stopped in 1990, the Röhrgraben also carried the water for the tin processing, at that time it was the oldest artificial ditch in Germany that was still in operation. The Röhrgraben is fully integrated into the network of hiking trails around the Greifensteine rock massiv. The Zinngrube (Tin Mine) Ehrenfriedersdorf Visitors’ Mine Museum forms part of the Sächsisches Industriemuseum (The Saxony Museum of Industry) and part of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Cultural Landscape which is inscribed in the World Heritage Site List since 2019. From the top of the mine headstock it is possible to view the mining landscape of the region, and to see displays related to the history of metal mining and the ways of life of the miners. A particular feature is the display of more than a thousand different minerals. Visitors are carried on a train into the old workings hundred meters below the surface, many of which are narrow and difficult of access.