Barite (1392)

specimen number:
8811690

location:
Pohla-Tellerhauser mine, Saxony, Germany

description:

Outstanding example for this German classic, two very thick glassy translucent crystals of barite forming a V-shaped cluster with several smaller crystals and no matrix. This is in super condition.

The Pohla-Tellerhaeuser mine complex, situated near Pohla in the Erzgebirgskreis of Saxony, Germany, is a renowned European mineral locality famous for producing exceptional, highly aesthetic specimens of barite alongside rich ores of uranium, tin, and magnetite. Geologically, this complex skarn and hydrothermal vein deposit is hosted within heavily metamorphosed Cambrian-age schists and marbles that were intruded and altered by the massive, late-Variscan Schwarzenberg granite pluton. Low-temperature, barium-rich hydrothermal solutions moving through Mesozoic-age fault systems precipitated extensive barite veins, where the mineral developed inside large open cavities as magnificent, tabular, water-clear to pale yellow and honey-brown crystals, frequently associated with fluorite, calcite, and native arsenic. Historically, exploration and underground development at Pohla began during the post-World War II Soviet-German uranium rush under the state-run SDAG Wismut enterprise, with commercial shaft-sinking and mining running intensively from 1967 until the sudden collapse of the East German regime prompted the permanent cessation of all extraction operations in 1990.

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