Steinbruchmuseum Rammelsbach

Steinbruch-Museum Wilhelm Panetzky - Rammelsbach Steinbruchmuseum

Useful Information

Location:	Haschbacher Straße 14, 66887 Rammelsbach. (49.54273, 7.44469)
Open:	All year Mon-Fri 6-18, Sat 7-12, Sun 7-17. [2024]
Fee:	free. [2024]
Classification:	Quarry
Light:	Incandescent Electric Light System
Dimension:
Guided tours:	self guided
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:	R. Bungert, W.-G. Frey (2008): Die Mineralien des Steinbruchs Rammelsbach am Remigiusberg, Pfalz Lapis, Jg.33, Nr.11, S.16-21. T. Kleser (2008). Lapis Leserpost: Mineralreicher Steinbruch Rammelsbach Lapis, Jg.33, Nr.12, S.7. W.-G. Frey (2012): Calcit-Pseudomorphosen aus der Pfalz Lapis Extra 43 (Pseudomorphosen), S.90f.
Address:	Steinbruchcafé, Haschbacher Str. 14, 66887 Rammelsbach, Tel: +49-6381-4291346. Wilhelm-Panetzky-Museum (Steinbruchmuseum), Haschbacher Str. 14, 66887 Rammelsbach, Tel: +49-163-1701949. E-mail:
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1868	quarry opened.
1989	museum opened to the public.
1991	museum named the Wilhelm Panetzky-Museum after its founder Wilhelm Panetzky.
2004	last quarry closed.
03-JAN-2022	café reopened after renovation with new operator.

Geology

The quarried rock is fine-grained microdiorite from the Rotliegend, which is also known as kuselite. The quarry is the eponymous type locality for kuselite. Pseudomorphoses of dolomite to calcite are a mineralogical speciality of the site. Dolomite veins in the rock contain 21 different minerals, including barite, calcite, azurite, malachite, quartz and chalcopyrite. As you may have mentioned, some of these are ores, mainly copper but also iron and lead. However, these minerals were only present in very small quantities and are only interesting for mineral collectors, not for ore mining. For this reason, the quarry was also a very popular mineral site after its closure.

Description

Steinbruchmuseum Rammelsbach or Rammelsbach Steinbruchmuseum (Quarry Museum Rammelsbach), also known as Steinbruch-Museum Wilhelm Panetzky (Wilhelm Panetzky Quarry Museum), is dedicated to the large quarry in Rammelsbach where paving stones were quarried. Melaphyre or diorite was quarried here, a hard stone which is very resistant and therefore has a very long service life as a road surface. Melaphyre is also known as Kuselite after the neighbouring town of Kusel. It was discovered during road construction, today's B420, and its hardness made it valuable for road and later railway construction. Individual tenants began quarrying the hard stone in small quarries in an area of around 50 hectares. In the beginning, however, the stone was transported by carts pulled by horses or cows. In 1868, the Landstuhl-Kusel railway line was opened, making it possible to transport the heavy stone to the customer at a reasonable price. Previously, transport had simply been too expensive, but the railway changed that abruptly. The quarry was opened in the same year, and the paving stones were quickly extracted in large quantities. They were used in places such as the Place de la Concorde in Paris, Hamburg, Rotterdam and Munich. The Rammelsbach quarry was the largest paving stone quarry in Germany. After the Second World War, however, the demand for paving stones steadily declined and labour costs rose at the same time. Soon, paving stones were only used for historic monuments, but there was still a demand. Sales of gravel and chippings also continued. In the 1970s, the small railway was abolished and switched to large dump trucks. In 2004, mining on the slopes of the Rammelsbacher Kopf finally came to an end. However, stone is still quarried on the southern slope of the Remigiusberg in Haschbach and brought to Rammelsbach for processing and onward transport.

The paving stones were cut by hand on a piecework basis, and the workers developed ther own miners' language. They referred to the slugs as Knüppel (billets) and the cutting as abrichten (dressing). Accordingly, the workers were referred to as Abrichter (dressers). For this work, they sat in tent-like wooden huts, which at least partially protected them from the weather, with their legs spread apart on a work surface. They had the billets in front of them, which they levelled to the right size and at right angles using various hammers and a good sense of proportion. Of course, this required strength, skill and a lot of stamina.

The museum is located in the former office building of the quarry. The building now houses the Steinbruchcafé (quarry café) and a shop selling baked goods and local produce. Some websites state that the museum is closed for renovation. These pages are from 2021, when the building was actually closed due to a change of operator and renovation of the café. Ottwin Merz has been the new operator of the café since 2022.

The museum can be visited free of charge during the café's opening hours. Donations for the voluntary work are of course welcome. Guided tours are also available on request, usually led by a former paving stone dresser.

The building has been a museum for a very long time, with the words Wilhelm Panetzky-Museum on the façade. Below it, in somewhat smaller lettering, it says Sammlungen zur Geschichte des Steinbruchs (Collections on the history of the quarry). The museum was established in 1989 to mark the 625th anniversary of the village. The former quarry administration building was renovated, and a museum about the origins and development of what was once the largest hard rock quarry in Germany was inaugurated. This was done on the personal initiative of Wilhelm Panetzky, the mayor of the village at the time, who persistently collected work tools and other illustrative material. After his untimely death in 1991, the museum was named the Wilhelm Panetzky Museum in his honour. It has four exhibition rooms, two of which depict working life in the quarry, the third shows historical films, and there is a collection of minerals and fossils.

Rammelsbach only made headlines in 2023 when two fossilized dinosaur skulls of a previously unknown species were discovered. One 25 cm and the other 27 cm long. Parts of the spine and shoulder girdle were also found with the larger one. The new species was named Stenokranio boldi (narrow skull) after its characteristic head shape. It lived around 300 Ma ago and was one of the largest predators at that time. It grew up to 1.5 metres long, had a large, flat skull with many pointed teeth and fed on fish and other dinosaurs. Three pairs of large, backward-curved fangs were used to hold on to slippery prey such as fish. It belongs to the Temnospondyli, a group of amphibians that was particularly species-rich in the Palaeozoic. It was a so-called lurking hunter, lying in wait for prey at the edge of tropical waters. It thus occupied the ecological niche that crocodiles occupy today. These and other fossils from the Rammelsbach site are on display in the permanent exhibition of the Geoskop prehistoric museum at Lichtenberg Castle near Kusel.

This quarry does not fulfil our normal criteria for a listing on showcaves.com, in particular, there is no underground part. This is not a mine, but a quarry. We included it anyway because it's the only cobble quarry we've ever heard of. It was also once the largest quarry in Germany, which is an impressive superlative. We think its special features, the craftsmanship of the dresser, mineral and fossil finds, make it such a diverse geotope that it warrants a small exception.