Exciting geological tours in Germany
My passion for geology arose in my next home, namely in the Heilbronn region. For years I was there with my friend Matthias Lange to the various stone quarries of the Triassic period. Our goal was to discover rare minerals and especially fossils. With the bike and heavy tools we looked for ceratites, dinosaur bones and fossilized plants.
At some point I met Heinz Stempel, who ran a small mineral museum in Hornberg / Black Forest. He was a passionate nature lover, photographer and mineral collector. I regularly spent my school holidays with his family. We hiked in the area around Hornberg in search of rare minerals. We discovered rare pegmatic veins in the local granite rock. Rare beryls, which were even present in light blue aquamarine crystals, were our most beautiful find. In the evening Heinz Stempel showed me his tiny minerals under the microscope and slides of his greatest finds.
During that time, Matthias Lange and I discovered a small marl pit on the Heilbronn-Stuttgart motorway. There was a thick, hard layer of dolomite rock in the dark brown layers of the Keuper. In small cavities of fossil shells we discovered beautiful, deep blue azurite crystals, green malachite tufts and silvery, shiny galena crystals.
Through Heinz Stempel, I learned to photograph the finds and made my first publications in the LAPIS magazine.
Germany is an ideal country to experience all facets of geology. Who knows how many volcanoes there are in Germany? I have just come back from a tour in Saarland and was amazed at the andesite rose near Freisen. Agates used to be won there, which were ground in Idar Oberstein. The Eifel is the youngest volcanic area and exciting because you can still see gas bubbles at Lake Laacher See. This shows that there will be outbreaks again at some point in the future.
And then there is a 12 km large crater in southern Germany, which has an extraterrestrial cause: The Nördlinger Ries was created by a meteorite impact, just like the Steinheim basin parallel.
Anyone studying geology in Germany has chosen the ideal country. Because here there is everything from mining to meteorite craters that a geologist could dream about!
And even as an amateur geologist, mineral or fossil collector, you can still make interesting discoveries that will also help science. Yes - many outstanding finds have been made by amateur geologists!
E.g. the primeval amphibians of the Triassic period when the motorway was built near Kupferzell in Baden Württemberg or the marine dinosaurs of the Jurassic period in Holzmaden in Baden Württemberg ...
The minerals of the Clara pit have been extensively researched and photographed by mineral collectors. There are interesting outcrops almost everywhere in Germany, such as quarries, mine dumps or opencast mines.
And you rarely need a lot of equipment: hiking boots, a geologist's hammer, a hard hat and a magnifying glass are often enough!