and Exhibition

Building B, ground floor, central entrance in front of the building

Contact: Harry Becker, Elis Hoffmann

The exhibition is accessible from the central entrance of House B at the ground floor level. The focus of the exhibition is on large specimen of ores from the seafloor, including large fragments of black smoker chimneys, massive sulfides, cobalt-rich manganese crusts and polymetallic manganese nodules. Also on display are samples from various continental ore deposits, and ore-forming minerals and their crystals.

The origin of the FU ore collection is dating back to 1965, by the first chair for Applied Geology/Raw Material Geology H. J. Schneider. Schneider donated many samples from carbonate-hosted base metal deposits of the eastern Alps. In the 1980s and 1990s, P. Halbach expanded the inventory of the collection and established the exhibition, by including many samples from marine ore deposits collected during expeditions to the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific ocean. Additional samples were collected during field trips to South Africa, Turkey, Spain and Austria.

The collection contains ore samples and minerals for most relevant chemical elements. Ore deposits and their samples are also arranged according to genetic criteria. All major types of deposits are represented and specimen from many classic locales are at hand, including samples from Bushveld, Rammelsberg, Rio Tinto, Broken Hill, Almaden, Cobalt, Potosi, Schneeberg, Tsumeb, Oruro Trepca, Toscana, Smaland-Taberg, Malmberget, Chalkidiki, Göcek, Bidagic, Bleiberg, Lahn-Dill, Oberpfalz, Bad Grund, Zinnwald and many others.

Yet another part of the collection contains characteristic ore textures from different types of ore deposits.