I saw it for the time first time last year, as we drove to Brandenburg, and then again this weekend on our way back from Gotha (which is well worthy of another post). Luckily this time, we had time to go crazily down many winding roads and through small villages. The lady on our car GPS went crazy too. Trying to re-calibrate routes back to its setting for ‘home’!
An half hour later we finally came to The Salzberg (“Salt Mountain”, also known locally as “Monte Kali”) at the Wintershall potash works in Heringen.It dominates the landscape for miles. And naturally so, since the mine is today the world’s biggest potash-mining area and has an area about the same as Greater Munich’s.
The strange colour of the mountain comes from the ‘Tailings’ which are extremely fine particles of rock mixed with water during the chemical extraction process. This slug flows down the mountain and giving it a creamy marble like appearance.At the end of World War II, the libraries of the German Army’s Military Geology Unit (Wehrgeologenstellen) and the German Patent Office (Reichspatentamt) were removed from Berlin and secretly stored in the deep Wintershall potash mine in Heringen. There they were discovered by the US Third Army in March 1945, and removed to the US. The German Patent Library was later restored to Germany, but the military geology materials of maps, reports and books, often stolen from other countries during the invasions, were retained by the US as Nazi materiel.[2] Most of these maps and books remain in the US Geological Survey Library today, with an obscure United States Army Corps of Engineers stamp on each that reads “Heringen Collection”.
The strange colour of the mountain comes from the ‘Tailings’ which are extremely fine particles of rock mixed with water during the chemical extraction process. This slug flows down the mountain and giving it a creamy marble like appearance.At the end of World War II, the libraries of the German Army’s Military Geology Unit (Wehrgeologenstellen) and the German Patent Office (Reichspatentamt) were removed from Berlin and secretly stored in the deep Wintershall potash mine in Heringen. There they were discovered by the US Third Army in March 1945, and removed to the US. The German Patent Library was later restored to Germany, but the military geology materials of maps, reports and books, often stolen from other countries during the invasions, were retained by the US as Nazi materiel.[2] Most of these maps and books remain in the US Geological Survey Library today, with an obscure United States Army Corps of Engineers stamp on each that reads “Heringen Collection”.
Thank you Wikipedia for the info I quote here 🙂
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Thank you so much for providing the historic information. Great photos of this unique mountain.
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