From the slate mine to the classroom
The slate mines around Frutigen provided the material for millions of slate boards used by schoolchildren. Thanks to the hard work of the miners, the product found its way from the remote mines to classrooms in Europe and further afield.
Reto Bleuer
Reto Bleuer is a volunteer at the Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern.
However, Professor Studer was not the first person to refer to these slate deposits. There is a record dating back to 1786 of slate extraction in the region when the lord of the castle at Spiez had his boat house roof on Lake Thun made out of slate from a mine near Mülenen, at the foot of the Niesen. Slate mining received a boost following the big fire of 1827 in Frutigen. The use of wood shingles in roofing was subsequently banned and locally sourced slate was the obvious alternative. However, it proved less weather-resistant than roof slates from other regions, causing a sustained decrease in demand and by 1868 mining had ceased in the area as it had become uneconomical.
Mining in Frutigen later made a comeback when three families from Elm, a major rival slate-mining area in the canton of Glarus, moved to Frutigen around the mid-19th century bringing their expertise, capital and customers with them.
The mines had meanwhile moved up the valley to Engstligental where the stone had a different composition, making it suitable for other applications. This slightly softer and jet black slate was particularly suited to slate board production. Bern geologist Eduard Gerber also confirmed this in a report evaluating the quality of the deposits in the Gantenbach area. He estimated that there were about a million cubic metres of raw slate available for mining, stating:
In any case, the slate deposits around Frutigen are among the biggest in Switzerland, and they are especially valuable as the slate has qualities making it the best raw material for school slate boards […].
Hard and dangerous work
The work in the small mines going as far down as 300 metres below the mountain was also physically draining. The slate blocks first had to be exposed by an explosive charge, then physically hammered, chiselled out and cut. The introduction of pneumatic hammers and milling, drilling and splitting machines did speed up the work and meant less manual labour. However, the machines also exacerbated the poor respiratory conditions in the mines by releasing dust. Many miners contracted silicosis causing severe respiratory problems and later died of lung damage.
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The wages earned from mining were a great help to the families in paying the bills and bringing up their many children. The situation became precarious if the father suffered an accident making him unfit for work. And accidents were no rarity: between 1875 and 1920, the media reported 24 incidents with 11 fatalities and 18 seriously injured. It is also reasonable to assume that some misadventures went unreported. About a quarter of those accidents that made the headlines resulted from handling explosives. The newspaper reports also show that minors worked in the mines. On 6 July 1915, for example, 13-year-old Johann Trummer was sadly killed when he slipped while transporting slate blocks and fell off a cliff.
The product was transported either as untreated slabs or as ready-made boards with or without a wooden frame. The wooden frames were made for a long time as a cottage industry in or near Frutigen. The idea of having red lines on the boards also came from the region: senior teacher Johann Egger was the first to use the lines, leading to the name ‘Egger-Tafeln’ (Egger boards).
Slate instead of paper
The boards were mainly exported to France and Germany, although they also travelled further afield to schools in Egypt, Russia, Greece, Turkey and many countries in South America.
However, these discussions were soon overshadowed by a pervasive shortage of raw materials during the two world wars and global economic crisis, which hit the paper industry hard and prompted a rethink. The Department of Economic Affairs recommended the use of slate tablets to the cantons to cut down on paper consumption.
We would also like to take the opportunity to bring to your benevolent attention the possibility of reintroducing slate boards to schools. We believe this to be an appropriate measure for a number of reasons.
