FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Andreas Gerstenberg]

Jesse, your fluorite is not from Marienschacht mine, i think. The old label says "Wölzenburg", that should mean Wölsenberg, a small village near Wölsendorf. In that area there were some very old mines, most of these closed during the 19th century.

[Jordi Fabre]

A type locality specimen.

The world famous locality of Hagendorf has the honor to be the type locality for the Phosphophyllite.

[Tobi]

[Gerhard Brandstetter]

Bavaria has some nice rarities .......

[Jesse Fisher]

The Cacilia Mine in the Wolsendorf area is famously known for a find of highly distorted fluorite crystals in 1963. These are referred to as "scalenohedral" or the (731) form for the miller indices of the best developed faces. An article on these fluorite crystals was published in Lapis in 1981 (Preuss, E., "Fluorit - Skalenoedrische Flußspat-Kristalle mit {731} von Wölsendorf und Zschopau" Lapis 6, Heft 1 S.9-14, München 1981). In German, of course!

[Tobi]

A famous oddity from Germany, Jesse. But "real" scalenohedrons (actually crystals that have a scalenohedron-like shape) were extremely rare there, most of the unusual looking fluorite crystals from this mine are just etched. The Marburg Museum has a ~ 25-30 cm specimen from there:

[Jesse Fisher]

A nice little penetration twin fluorite from Wölsendorf.

[Jesse Fisher]

Another specimen from Wolsendorf

[Tobi]

[Jesse Fisher]

Thank you for this information, Tobi. The dealer I got the specimen from said it was Grube Marienschact, but an old collection label just said "Wolsendorf." As the dealer was not German, I did not have total trust in his label. Unfortunately, no one has given any information about Grube Erika on Mindat. Can you tell me anything about when the mine was active and when the specimen may have been found?

[Tobi]

I think writing "Marienschacht" on Wölsendorf labels was a common practice because this mine was the most famous of that area because of its Honigspat occurences. As I said before, your specimen really looks like like from Erika Mine, I have never seen such ones from Marienschacht, so not fully trusting the label was the right intuition ;-)

Concerning the Erika Mine, fluorite mining started there in the late 1920s, it was named "Grube Erika" in 1931. It was an active mine from the 1930s to the late 1960s and closed in 1973. I have no information when these reddish fluorites with baryte were found, sorry :-(

Tobi