Meter-large drusen in the Brauneisenstein ...

Text: by Norbert Stötzel, Siegen.

"The brown iron stone is always fissured and also contains a large number of drusen of various sizes distributed throughout its mass; their diameters vary from a few inches to 10 to 15 feet," HILT (1865) described the in the oxidation zone of the Louise pit conditions encountered.

The brown iron stone was often closely fused with quartz. The cavities in it were always lined with brown or black "glass heads" (goethite and manganese ores such as "psilomelan"), which formed the "most beautiful stalactites and stalagmites" (HILT lc). From a mineralogical point of view, the particularly beautiful "glass head" formations of the Goethite are interesting. And the older collections contain many variants of the brown iron stone: all kinds of cone, columnar, humpback and kidney-shaped aggregates. The lepidocrocite also formed extremely splendid steps, once in the form of almost perfectly spherical, reddish brown structures grown on brown iron stone with quartz and goethite and accompanied by "hydrohematite"; and on the other hand beautifully crystallized as "ruby glimmer". Together with the limonite, magnificent manganese minerals such as pyrolusite, manganite, "wad" or "psilomelan" were repeatedly found in the Louise mine: "Manganese ores are found quite frequently in the whole mass of brown iron stone, especially in the gland areas, both shell-like accompanying the walls, as well as stalactite, "wrote HILT (lc). Every now and then stalactic formations of "brown glass heads" occurred, which were completely covered with small, shiny "hydrohematite" spheres. Of course, the rhodochrosite from the Louise pit must also be presented here, which sits in particularly beautiful scalenohedral crystals in the drusen of the brown iron stone or which formed on a manganese-containing matrix. The few, but very high quality rhodochrosite from the Louise pit need not fear comparison with other Siegerland finds.