28 "Surely there is a mine for silver,
And a place where gold is refined.
² Iron is taken from the earth,
And copper is smelted from ore.
³ Man puts an end to darkness,
And searches every recess
For ore in the darkness and the shadow of death.
⁴ He breaks open a shaft away from people;
In places forgotten by feet
they hang far away from men;
they swing to and fro.
⁵ As for the earth, from it comes bread,
But underneath it is turned up as by fire;
⁶ Its stones are the source of sapphires,
And it contains gold dust.
⁷ That path no bird knows.
Nor has the falcon's eye seen it.
⁸ The proud lions have not trodden it,
Nor has the fierce lion passed over it.
⁹ He puts his hand on the flint;
He overturns the mountains ^[c]at the roots.
¹⁰ He cuts out channels in the rocks,
And his eye sees every precious thing.
¹¹ He dams up the streams from trickling;
What is hidden he brings forth to light.

(New King James Version, NKJV)

Saint Barbara has by tradition been the patron saint of many professions that face sudden death. Some of her widespread images and celebrations are connected to mining and by extension to geology…

Wikipedia (consulted on 03/26/2020) states: “Some university geology departments hold annual ‘Barbarafests’ if not on the 4^th of December then the closest Friday.” The Wikipedia article cites several German departments and this writer can testify that this was the custom at the Bergakademie Clausthal, now Technische Universität Clausthal in northern Germany, in the 1960s.

Saint Barbara lived according to legend in the 3rd Century but has been ‘desainted’ by the Roman Catholic Church in 1969 because her existence cannot be confirmed in historical records. Nevertheless, Saint Barbara represents a cultural heritage for mining and geology.

A nice tradition are the Saint Barbara Zweige (St. Barbara twigs). If one cuts twigs or branches of cherry trees, apple trees, or Forsythias on December 4^th and puts them into water – renewing the water every day – these twigs will bloom at Christmas on December 24^th or 25^th.

A hammer is the basic tool of any geologist dealing with indurated rocks in the field. It is most convenient to carry the hammer in a hammer holder on the belt or even better on an extra belt for all the tools and the case for field book and maps. There are a number of hammer holders on the market but they each have different characteristic that are not ideal. For some one needs two hands to extract the hammer or put it back. In others the hammer swings too much. A third type is prone to catch twigs besides other drawbacks…

Below I present a hammer holder that I designed, had made and tested in extensive field research. The “Pfefferkorn hammer holder” is made from thick, rather stiff saddle leather. The hammer can be taken out and put back with one hand. The hammer can swing a little but not much. The holder sticks out far enough but not too far.

The leather should be 4 mm thick, that is 5/32 of an inch for those who are metrically challenged. The opening for the hammer should be somewhat wider at the top than at the bottom. At the top it should be wide enough so that the flat parts of the front and rear of the hammer rest on the leather. That way the hammer will swing very little. The bottom opening should be a somewhat wider than the thickest part of the hammer handle.

The photograph shows an intensively-used example in which the leather has adapted somewhat to the hammer.

     The geologist field bag shown below was designed by Karl Heinz Wend in the 1950s when he was an undergraduate student of geology at the University of Münster (Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster) in Germany. Students and professor of the Geology Department (Institut für Geologie und Paläontologie) had copies of the bag hand-made well into the 1960s. The bag carries hammer and umbrella (essential in central and western Europe) on the outside and has special compartments for map, food and drink, field note book, hand lens, acid bottle, and writing utensils.

     The designation used most often for it was “münstersche Geologentasche.”
Karl Heinz Wend changed fields and became a landscape architect. In that capacity he continued to use his bag on field trips. The facts of the origin of the design were checked with former students and in a phone conversation with Karl Heinz Wend.

Mapping Exercise in Northern Spain, March 1961 Prof. Lotze looks down at his camera while talking to a local farmer who rides a donkey. Three persons carry a münsterche Geologentasche: an older student (3rd from left margin), Prof. Lotze (center), and Prof. Rosenfeld (3rd from right margin of photograph).

     Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller published in 1797 a large number of two-line long, critical poems that castigated aspects of the intellectual life of their times. They called these poems "Xenien." I present here their thoughts on science with my translation. Their thoughts have still validity today!

Wissenschaft
Einem ist sie die hohe, die himmlische Göttin,
dem Anderen eine tüchtige Kuh, die ihn mit Butter versorgt.

Science
To some she is the high and exalted Goddess,
To others just a solid cow that supplies them with butter.

Setting of this excerpt:
The tragedy of “Faust” plays in medieval times and this particular scene at a university where Faust is a professor.
After Faust has made an agreement with the Devil (Mephistopheles or Mephisto) he does not feel inclined to advise a student but Mephistopheles takes over. In this way Goethe could express more radical and unorthodox ideas. The scene is both funny and deep. It should be remembered that Goethe had a law degree and had worked at the highest court of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation before that nation ceased to exist.