I visited this locality in 1985 with an mineralogical field trip organized by the Mineralogcal Institutes of Göttingen University. Yugoslavia
was still a socialistic country - and an undivided state - at that time, so it was much
easier to travel this region of the world as it is now.
Though I had been in many underground mines before and visited a lot
of spectacular geological sites since then I never again experienced such
a "fairy tale feeling" as in this particular mine. In front of the mine was a long row of mine
wagons filled to the top with "Marienglas" = transparent gypsum crystal fragments, glistening in the sun. To
my surprise many of them were quite huge, easily reaching a size of half a meter and more
Our group entered the mine trough a dark adit and after some hundred meter
we came into a huge cave, which was lit by strong electric floodlights. And there
it was ! The thought '...and he entered the cave of crystals !' suddenly flooded my mind and I was,
totally enchanted by this unexspected view. All the ceilings, all the walls were entirely
made up of glistening brilliant gypsum crystals, one larger than the other...
We students then learned, on a far more scientific level, that this
was an eocene gypsum deposit, heavily recrystallized and that the average
crystal size was about 3 m with the largest crystals being up to 7 m large !
My visit now is more than 20 years ago and the mine was sold inbetween to a major german
gypsum company and is mothballed in the moment. But I will never forget
this 'fairy tale crystal cave' in my life...
Update June 2007 :
It took some time, but courtesy of Mr. M. Holzapfel of Knauf / Iphofen we finally have some images here. Thank you very much ! And there is also a bit of more information from Mr. Holzapfel, who just came back from a recent visit to the mine. The mine is still out of production, basically due to qualify reasons and limited reserves. Though the gypsum crystals are extremely pure, they wont make a good plaster due to their very crystalline nature. However, the mine is still acessible. Further it seems, as if the giant gypsum crystals form a large vein structure within otherwise barren anhydrite.
