Goldmuseum Theuern

The Goldmuseum stands in Theuern, a village within the town of Schalkau in the Thuringian Slate Mountains. It occupies a large mill building called the Burgmühle. The museum explores how gold forms in the earth and how people have searched for it through the centuries. Gold only becomes worth mining when it reaches a certain concentration in rock or sediment. Hot, watery fluids carrying dissolved gold can deposit it in rock cracks as quartz. As these quartz veins weather, the gold is freed and carried downstream, forming small nuggets called placer gold. In Thuringia’s streams and rivers, gold is found in nearly every watercourse, and medieval prospectors worked these sites intensively. The Elbe, Saale and Main rivers later carried some of this gold further downstream. Visitors see a working model of a stamp mill that once crushed ore with iron blocks before washing and sieving. A rebuilt sluice box and many different gold pans show how prospectors separated the glittering metal by hand. Displays explain how to spot likely spots along streams and what tools were used. The museum brings geology and history together in one place.