10 Facts About Bergregal

The first regalia, or royal privileges, emerged in the first millennium, but there was still no Bergregal governing mining rights as part of the laws regulating property.

Emperor, Barbarossa, had the Bergregal recorded in writing for the first time in Germany as part of the Roncaglian Constitution in 1158.

Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, saw the rights of the Bergregal pass from the electoral princes to the lesser nobility.

In Prussia, the Bergregal was ended by the General Mining Act for the Prussian States or ABG of 24 June 1865.

However, this freedom was not part of the Bergregal; it was based, in the German states at least, on the old mining constitutions.

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The upper Bergregal, which covered the mining of precious metals, but could include salt and precious stones remained, almost without exception, in the hands of the state rulers.

The lower Bergregal covered the mining of base metals, like iron, tin, copper, cobalt, lead and bismuth, as well as the minerals arsenic, sulphur, saltpetre and antimony.

Peat cutting continued to fall outside the Bergregal, as did the quarrying of gravel, clay, marl and limestone.

In states where specific resources were not governed by a mining act, but were now regulated by a newly introduced Bergregal, there was serious opposition from the mining companies.

Bergregal represented a considerable source of income for its owner.