Ochsenkopf bei Jägerhaus

The Ochsenkopf is a wooded hill reaching 823 metres above sea level near the village of Jägerhaus in the Saxon Erzgebirge. It stands just south of the main road between Schwarzenberg and Sosa, rising only forty metres above the surrounding plateau where Jägerhaus itself sits at 782 metres. The summit belongs to the Ochsenkopf high plain, a small upland area within the larger Bockau high plain. A former trade route once crossed the ridge, linking Schneeberg and Bockau with Johanngeorgenstadt before falling out of use. The hill was once famous for its emery mines, where the best Saxon emery was dug until the early 19th century. August Schumann recorded in 1820 that the emery fetched sixty thalers per hundredweight in Dresden and was preferred by local lapidaries to Spanish emery. By the middle of the century the seams had become too thin to work, and miners turned instead to crushed garnets from Zöblitz. Humboldt noted that greenstone in the Zinnerz granites also appeared here, while other writers listed red lead spar among the minerals found on the slopes. Visitors find a quiet forest summit reached by woodland paths. The old trade road still crosses the ridge, though it is little used today. A memorial stone stands beside the track from Bockau to Jägerhaus, marking the spot where a student was killed in 1930. The surrounding plateau offers wide views across the Erzgebirge’s rolling forested hills.