Schwarzenberg, Saxony

Town in Saxony, Germany

Schwarzenberg is a town in the district of Erzgebirgskreis in Saxony’s Ore Mountains, near the German–Czech border. The town lies roughly 15 km southeast of Aue, and 35 km southwest of Chemnitz. Founded in the 12th century to protect a trade road, the small mountain town became the centre of a territory known as Herrschaft Schwarzenberg and later Amt Schwarzenberg. During the division of Germany, Schwarzenberg was part of East Germany and became the greatest producer of washing machines in Eastern Europe. Schwarzenberg became more widely known in 1987, when Stefan Heym coined the term Free Republic of Schwarzenberg for a small gap between the Soviet and American occupation zones in May/June 1945.

Schwarzenberg is in the southwestern Ore Mountains. It lies at elevations stretching from above sea level. The Old Town with church and castle is located on a rock (the Schlossberg, ) around which a meander of the River Schwarzwasser has formed; the Mittweida flows into the Schwarzwasser inside the town. However, the town's overall situation is in a basin. The most prominent peaks surrounding it, in addition to the Schlossberg, are the Hirschstein , the Hohe Hahn , the Hohe Henne , the Rockelmann , the Galgenberg and the Raschau Knochen .

The town's silhouette is marked by the opposing rocks Ottenstein and Totenstein, which like the Schlossberg consist of Augen gneiss. Other stones include quartz (only some of it pure as rock crystal), biotite, muscovite and feldspar. The Schwarzenberg mining area is pervaded by ore veins of complex origin. Skarn deposits contain magnetite, iron pyrite, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite and galena. The ore deposits are up to 6 metres thick and permeated by silver and cobalt minerals as well as cassiterite.

The Old Town with market square, castle and St. Georgen Kirche (main church) forms the town's historical core. The Vorstadt was originally a southward extension outside the (now vanished) town walls, originally formed around a mill. Late 19th century factories and workers' housing around the station became the Neustadt north of the Old Town, now housing the civic centre with town hall and employment centre. North west and south west of the Old Town, the Hofgarten and Heide low rise residential areas were built in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively, using large block construction (a precursor of plattenbau construction). The plattenbau residential area Sonnenleithe at the town's northern border was built in the 1980s. Although the town has incorporated several nearby communities over recent years, its population numbers remained stable at approximately 20,000 inhabitants. Sachsenfeld, Neuwelt, and Wildenau/Brückenberg were already incorporated into Schwarzenberg between 1913 and 1920. Grünstädtel followed in 1996, Bermsgrün, the hamlet Jägerhaus, Crandorf and Erla in 1999, and Pöhla in 2008.

The communities that border on the town are Grünhain Beierfeld in the northeast, Raschau in the east, Breitenbrunn and Sosa in the south and Bockau and Lauter in the west.

Schwarzenberg is located in the midst of forested hills in the Erzgebirge/Vogtland Natural Park. The flat Galgenberg dome is mostly covered by coniferous forest. Thick copse of sycamore, aspen, mountain ash, hazel and wild cherry grows on the terraces at the forest edge. Sporadic beech and Weymouth pine can be found on the Ottenstein. The feverfew like Tanacetum parthenifolium, known locally as Schwarzenberger Edelweiß, has found a curiously isolated habitat in Schwarzenberg and has resisted attempts at shifting or cultivation.

Schwarzenberg was first documented in 1282 as “civitas Swartzenberg”, but potsherds excavated in 1977 date back somewhat further to c.1200 and the official year of establishment has been fixed at 1150. The town developed out of a fortification which is believed to have been created by Duke Heinrich II of Austria to protect an important trade route between Pleissnerland and Bohemia in the otherwise unsettled area. Schwarzenberg is German for black mountain. According to legend, an emperor of the Ottonian dynasty founded the town and named it after the colour of the rock. It is generally believed that the town was in fact named after the appearance created by the thick, dark forest. The town is said to have passed to Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1170, and then to his son, Emperor Henry VI. Later, numerous changes of ownership occurred. In 1334 the house of Lobdeburg held Schwarzenberg and the surrounding area as a fief. The house of Tettau obtained the town in 1425, and sold it to Elector Elector John the Magnanimous of Saxony in 1533. Villages began to form around Schwarzenberg Castle, and for c.1500, 48 families are documented in Schwarzenberg, which was then the seat of the superintendent of the mines in the area. During the reformation, the town became Protestant.

Schwarzenberg's skyline is dominated by the ensemble of church and palace, the latter having been built on an old castle's foundation walls. This former castle can be considered one of the town's first fortified buildings. The St. Georgen Kirche (church) on the other hand is clearly newer, having been built only in the late 17th century. With the help of the oldest known drawing of Schwarzenberg, a pen and ink work by Wilhelm Dilich from the late 1620s, one can get an idea of the town's original appearance. At the end of today's Oberen Schloßstraße rises the palace (Schloss), which was once built as a castle, and which, over the course of its history, has been expanded and remodelled many times. Right on the marketplace, at the other end of the aforesaid street, is found the Town Hall. The third conspicuous building in the town's historic centre was the church, which became too small in the 17th century and was replaced by the St. Georgen Kirche. Beside the old church lay the graveyard on the site today known as the Unterer Markt (“Lower Market”). It was not long before it, too, became too small, and it was supplemented – and later wholly supplanted – by another graveyard outside the town's walls. Already in Dilich's drawing, nothing more is to be seen of the town's walls. All that remains of them now is the names Oberes Tor and Unteres Tor (“Upper Gate” and “Lower Gate”). Once the buildings within the town could no longer handle the steadily growing population, houses were built outside the town's walls. In the aforesaid drawing, the first “suburban” buildings can already be seen beneath the church.

After Germany's surrender in the Second World War, Schwarzenberg remained, for historically unclear reasons, unoccupied at first. The city issued 42 postage stamps in 1945, all showing a heavy black silhouetted outline of the city blotting out Hitler's face. On 11 May 1945, several antifascist Schwarzenberg citizens took the initiative of filling the resulting power vacuum. This episode lasted only until 25 June 1945 when Soviet troops marched in. In 1984, the writer Stefan Heym coined the term “Republic of Schwarzenberg” in his novel Schwarzenberg, which was based on the episode. A lively accumulation of legends is bound up with this time. In 2004, the writer Volker Braun also treated the topic.

The current mayor is Ruben Gehart (CDU), elected in October 2020.

From being a small industrial centre in East Germany, and home to two large companies, Foron and Formenbau Schwarzenberg, Schwarzenberg has lost most of its heavy industry over the last two decades. Only the latter company has stayed in business, and that as a subsidiary of the KUKA Corporation of Augsburg. Tourism is now the main industry, with the town being an excellent base for hiking tours during summer. Through the town runs the Silver Road. The town has a station at the junction of the Zwickau to Schwarzenberg, Schwarzenberg to Johanngeorgenstadt and Annaberg to Schwarzenberg railway lines, and is served by Regionalbahn trains, operated by Erzgebirgsbahn (a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn) between Zwickau and Johanngeorgenstadt. No regular passenger trains operate to Annaberg.

Schwarzenberg has at its disposal four elementary schools (Neuwelt, Sonnenleithe, Heide and Crandorf) a middle school (“Stadtschule”), a Gymnasium (“Bertolt Brecht Gymnasium”) and a vocational school centre for economy and social welfare. There are also a school for students with learning difficulties, a special school for the mentally handicapped and a folk high school.