Germany - classic country of geology

My passion for geology was born in my home region around Heilbronn. For years, I explored the Triassic quarries there with my friend Matthias Lange, searching for rare minerals and especially fossils. Equipped with bicycles and heavy tools, we hunted for ceratites, dinosaur bones, and fossilized plants.

One day, 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 often spent my school holidays with his family. Together we roamed the hills around Hornberg in search of special finds. In the local granite, we discovered rare pegmatite veins and even found pale blue aquamarine crystals — still among our most beautiful discoveries. In the evenings, Heinz showed me his tiny minerals under the microscope and stunning slides of his best specimens.

Later, Matthias and I found a small marl pit along the Heilbronn–Stuttgart highway. In the dark Keuper layers, we uncovered a hard dolomite bed, where fossil shells had formed tiny geodes filled with deep blue azurite, green malachite, and shimmering galena crystals.

Heinz also taught me how to photograph my finds, and soon I published my first articles in the mineralogy magazine LAPIS.

Germany is an ideal country to experience the full spectrum of geology. Who would guess how many volcanoes exist here? I just returned from a trip to the Saarland and was amazed by the andesite rose of Freisen, where agates were once quarried and later cut and polished in Idar-Oberstein. The Eifel is Germany’s youngest volcanic region — fascinating because you can still see gas emissions at Lake Laach, proof that the area remains geologically active and could erupt again far in the future.