Eibenstock

Eibenstock is a town in the western Ore Mountains, in the Erzgebirgskreis, Saxony, Germany. It is situated near the river Mulde.GeographyEibenstock has the following constituent communities: Eibenstock, Blauenthal, Wolfsgrün, Neidhardtsthal, Wildenthal, Oberwildenthal, Carlsfeld, Blechhammer, Neues Wiesenhaus, Sosa, Stabhammer, Wilzschmühle and Weitersglashütte.HistoryOwing to its elevation of more than 600 m, Eibenstock would not have been one of the very first farming villages in the Ore Mountains, but rather a longstanding settlement in the form of a radial forest homestead village, founded at the earliest sometime in the thirteenth century in what later became the Barony of Schwarzenberg. About 1.5 km from the edge of town, not far from where the Steinbächel empties into the Große Bockau, a ringwall was unearthed.The first two documentary mentions as Ybenstok and Ibenstok both date from the year 1378. At that time, an Alte Seife (“Old Placer”) was named, hinting that the village’s development was also spurred by mining. Placer mines were being worked in the Eibenstock area even as late as the 19th century, although at the same time, iron ore and tin were also being mined from harder deposits. In 1560 Eibenstock became the official seat of a Bergamt ("mining office") and thereafter called itself freie Bergstadt ("free mining town").