Station: [12] Old mining tunnel

Here you can see a typical mining tunnel. This one is approximately 1,20m or 3.9 feet high, but at that time they were only 80 to 100 centimeters high, which equals about 3 feet.
This meant that the miners were not able to work standing up, but had to break open the hard rock lying down, kneeling, and crawling, using hammers and chisels.

Of course, searching for gemstones here was not free. The miners had to give a third of the findings to the owners of the area, the counts of Idar - Oberstein at the time.

It can be assumed that a man had to perform about one year of extremely hard physical labor to advance about one meter in the hard rock.
Unfortunately, it also happened that no gemstone vein was found and no gemstones were discovered.

Electric light did not exist at that time. Oil lamps were used as a source of light. They were called "iron frogs." Oil, tallow, and animal fats were burned in them with the help of a  wooden wick.

To give us an impression of the lighting conditions at that time, this oil lamp will now be lit and the lights will be switched off.  

These tunnels also used as ventilation shafts. However, this meant that the agate miners were constantly exposed to drafts. This, combined with the heavy physical labor, constant humidity, and poor air quality from the oil lamps, meant that the  miners often fell seriously ill at a young age. Pneumonia and bad coughs were part of their daily life, and were hardly ever curable due to the lack of medical care at the time.

The average life expectancy of  gemstone miners was just 35 to 40 years.