Lüneburg Saltworks

The Lüneburg Saltworks (German: Lüneburger Saline) was a saline in the German town of Lüneburg that extracted salt.

According to legend, a hunter killed a wild boar whose coat was snow-white from crystallised salt. The sow must have wallowed in a salt spring and so the first source of salt was discovered in Lüneburg about 800 years ago.

From the 12th century salt mining was the dominant feature of life in the town of Lüneburg. At that time, table salt was almost as valuable as gold and was measured in chors (1 chor = 554.32 kg), one chor being worth about 300 Reichsmarks. The saline was located between Sülzwiese and the hill of the Kalkberg. Its main entrance was on Lambertiplatz and the whole site was surrounded by thick walls and high towers.

To assist in the transportation of salt, a canal and a crane were built on the Stint, a former smelt market by the harbour. The square known as Am Sande was uncobbled in medieval times and covered in sand, hence the name. It acted as a trading centre for the merchants and their wares, including salt.

The centre of the saltworks was a salt spring (Sod) surrounded by 54 boiling huts (Siedehütten). The four boiling pans (Siedepfannen) in each hut, which were named after their first occupants, were supplied by channels and canals with brine. The brine was carried in buckets from the boiling chamber (Siedekammer) to ground level and then divided up between the 216 boiling pans. On the boiling site there was a salt stall (Salzbude) for selling small quantities of salt, as well as a tax office (Zollbude) responsible for handling tax and duty.

The owners of the pans were called Sülzbegüterte ("salt gentry") and did not necessarily live in Lüneburg. They did not boil the brine themselves, but leased them to those with boiling rights living in Lüneburg. If such a Siedeberechtigter leased at least four pans, he became known as a Sülfmeister ("master salter") and had a claim to his own boiling hut. That said, a master salter was not allowed more than two huts i.e. eight pans. The lease amounted to one half of the revenue from the boiling pan.

...
Wikipedia