Annaberg-Buchholz is a town in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. Lying in the Ore Mountains, it is the capital of the district of Erzgebirgskreis. The previously heavily forested upper Ore Mountains were settled in the 12th and 13th centuries by Franconian farmers. Frohnau, Geyersdorf, and Kleinrückerswalde—all now part of present-day town—are all attested from 1397. The most well-known personalities associated with Annaberg-Buchholz include Adam Riese, the “father of modern arithmetic”.
Barbara Uthmann introduced braid- and lace-making in 1561 and it was further developed in the 1590s by Belgian refugees fleeing the policies of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, Spain‘s governor over the Low Countries. The industry was further developed in the 19th century, when Annaberg and Buchholz were connected by rail to Chemnitz and each other and both settlements had specialized schools for lace-making. The population of Annaberg in the 1870s was 11,693. This had risen to 16,811 by 1905, with another 9307 in Buchholz. The town’s mines formerly produced silver, tin, and cobalt but ceased production before the First World War. After the Reunification of Germany in 1989, some were restored for tourist purposes. In 1945 the two towns Annaberg and Buchholz merged into the new town Annaberg-Buchholz.
The area is a tourist destination and ski resort. The Ore Mountains are referred to as Land of Christmas and famous for the Christmas Markets and the carved sculptures. Annaberg has a Roman Catholic church and three Protestant churches, among them St. Anne’s (built 1499-1525), which is the largest of its kind in Saxony. There are public monuments to Luther, the famous mathematician Adam Ries, and Barbara Uthmann. Buchholz had another Gothic Protestant church and monuments to Frederick the Wise and Bismarck. Annaberg is well known for its historical old town and market square; the house Markt 2 shows the coat of arms of the family Apian-Bennewitz.
The Ore Mountain Mining Region (German: Montanregion Erzgebirge) is an industrial heritage landscape, over 800 years old, in the border region between the German state of Saxony and North Bohemia in the Czech Republic. It is characterised by a plethora of historic, largely original, monuments to technology, as well as numerous individual monuments and collections related to the historic mining industry of the region. The identity and authenticity of the mining heritage landscape of the Ore Mountains on both sides of the German-Czech border has no equivalent anywhere in the world, and if the region succeeds in being recognised as a UNESCO world heritage site – for which it has been nominated – it should help to preserve it for future generations as a “developing cultural landscape”. On 6 July 2019, the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region was inscribed as a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site.
