Rediscovery of the Elements: Germanium Page: 1 of 3

                                
Rediscovery of the Elements
Germanium: Freiberg, Germany

James L. Marshall Beta Eta '71 and
Virginia R. Marshall
Department of Chemistry, University of
North Texas, Denton TX 76203-5070;
jimm@unt. edu;
Computer Technology, Denton ISD,
Denton TX 76201
Half a millennium ago, alchemy was
maturing into chemistry by advancing on
two fronts: medicine and mining. In
medicine, Paracelsus (Phillipus Aureolus
Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim,
1493-1541) was promoting the use of chemical
preparations and preached that a medicine
possessed a quintessence that could be extract-
ed and used to combat disease. In mining,
Georgius Agricola (Georg Bauer, 1494-1555)
was preparing classic treatises on mining and
metallurgy.2 The most famous work of Agricola
was De Re Metallica, which appeared a year
+              T
Figure 2. Frequent festivities are held celebrating
the mining tradition. On the hat of this musician
are the famous "crossed hammers" ("Eisen und
Schlugel"), the symbol of the miners in the Saxony
and Bohemia regions. Inset: close-up of pewter
chalice with "crossed hammers"and the miner's
greeting"Gluck aufi"

after his death.' Agricola lived most of
his life in Saxony and Bohemia; he
was born in Glauchau, Saxony;
worked   in   Sankt  Joachimsthal,
Bohemia; and later became Burger-
meister of Chemnitz, Saxony (Note 1).
De Re Metallica, translated from the
original Latin into English by Herbert
and Lou Henry Hoover,' not only con-
tains full textual descriptions of the
construction of mines and the assay
and smelting of metals, but also
abounds with detailed woodcut fig-
ures. Agricola was one of the first to
differentiate among bismuth, antimo-
ny, tin, and lead.
The rich mining tradition of this
Saxony-Bohemia region carries on to
this day and centers about Freiberg,
Germany (Figure 1). Annual festivals Figure
and parades are held with the miners  Saxon
in their uniforms with the classic    region
crossed hammers (Figure 2). The uni-  instit
forms are worn with pride, as they
commemorate a centuries-old guild
tradition that gifted the miners with rank and
respect. The crossed hammers, known as"Eisen
und Schagel" originated in the thirteenth cen-
tury near Kremnica, Bohemia, and are now the
universal symbol of mining throughout eastern
Germany and the western Czech Republic. Not
only can visitors to the region attend these fes-
tivities, but they can also roam through scores
of mines which in past centuries have delivered
silver, gold, nickel, tin, bismuth, tungsten, and
copper, and which today are open to the public
as"museums."
One of the famous mining institutes in this
region is the Technisches Institut Bergakademie
(Mining Academy) in Freiberg, founded in
1765. Freiberg had become the economic and
scientific center of the Saxony Erzgebirge
region, where silver ore had been discovered in
1168. During    the  early  days   of the
Bergakademie, chemistry and mining had not
yet separated into different disciplines. The best
known mineralogist of this time, Abraham G.
Werner (1749-1817) of the Bergakademie, was
a proponent of the Neptunian hypothesis,
which held that geological structures were laid
down by water deposition." Indeed, the present

/

Freiberg
Germany

U

Munchen
.. 200 k
1. Freiberg is the focus of mining activity in the
y area and boasts the major mining university in the
the Technisches Institut Bergakademie (the technical
te and mining academy).
famous   Mineralogical   Museum    at  the
Bergakademie is named after him.7
Of the hundreds of mines about the region,
one   particularly rich  mine  named   the
Himmelsfirst Mine in St. Michaelis (about 15
kilometers south of Freiberg) yielded an unusu-
Argyrod it
GRUBE HIMMELSFURST
Figure 3. Argyrodite, AgsGeS6, collected from
the Himmelsfirst Mine south of Freiberg, and
displayed in the Werner Mineralogical Museum.
Argyrodite was the source of the germanium dis-
covered by Winkler "Grube"translates as "mine."

THE HEXAGON

Berlin.

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