The best mountain hikes around Sehmatal

Unfortunately, it was not yet open in April

always worth a trip

This column testifies that the Fichtelberg was one of 158 stations of the "Central European Triangulation" in 1864. During the Royal Saxon Triangulation, the land in Saxony was surveyed between 1862 and 1890, and a trigonometric grid was created at the same time, which was intended to serve as the basis for accurate maps.

The Traktor Oberwiesenthal sports club's luge track has been out of use for 35 years. Founded in 1955, the club was dissolved in 1990, and its successor, the Oberwiesenthaler SV 1990, saw itself as its successor. The naturally iced luge track, constructed from concrete elements and opened in the winter of 1969/1970 for the GDR luge training center, has been deteriorating since 1990 and is overgrown with vegetation. However, you can still walk the entire 1,100-meter-long track with its 18 curves and admire the buildings that enrich this lost place, such as the scoring booths and observation bridge. At the first Olympic luge competitions in Innsbruck in 1964, SC Traktor athletes dominated the field. Ortrun Enderlein and Ilse Geisler won gold and silver medals in the women's race, and Thomas Köhler and Klaus-Michael Bonsack won silver in the men's race.

The large peace bell on the Fichtelberg had to remain silent for six months in 2024. Stone throwing in May 2022 had so badly damaged the bell that its sound suffered. It was decided to stop ringing it and replace it with a new one. The old bell rang for the last time on Easter Monday 2024. Just in time for the mountain service on German Unity Day on October 3, the new bell was officially rung for the first time in the fall of 2024. The idea of using a peace bell to commemorate the peaceful revolution of 1989 in the GDR and German reunification in 1990 came from watchman Gerd Schlesinger and night watchman Jörg Eller from the Ore Mountains town of Schwarzenberg. The bell was also intended to be heard in neighboring Czechia and thus ring for a united Europe. The cast steel bell, already ninety years old at the time, was rung for the first time in 2010. The new bell was cast in Innsbruck by the Grassmayr company. At 2,700 kilograms, it is about 1,100 kilograms heavier than the old bell.

Since 1977, a 3.2-kilometer-long nature trail on wooden planks has led through the Božídarské rašeliniště peat bog nature reserve. It features twelve stations with information panels. The 11.61-square-kilometer area has been protected since 1965. It encompasses a series of raised bogs with spruce, pine, Scots pine, dwarf birch, heaths, and meadows. A carnivorous plant characteristic of peat bogs, the round-leaved sundew, also grows here. The largest peat bog in the Ore Mountains lies at an elevation of 940 to 1116 meters; its specific mountain climate creates challenging conditions for animals and plants.

The third church building in the history of the mining town of Boží Dar (Gottesgab) was built in 1771 in the late Baroque style according to plans by the Prague architect Filip Heger. Previously, a wooden early Renaissance church had stood here since the 1630s, followed by a stone late Renaissance church from 1593 onwards. This church burned down in the mid-18th century and was replaced by the current church building. By the end of the 1960s, the church was in such poor condition that it had to be closed to the public for safety reasons. A fundraising campaign made the necessary repairs and the reopening of St. Anne's Church possible in 2016. Located at an altitude of 1,020 metres above sea level, it is not only the highest church in the Ore Mountains, the third highest church in the Czech Republic, and one of the highest town churches in all of Central Europe.

The Zelený dům (Green House) Hotel is a late Classicist building dating back to 1917. In that year, the original inn, which had stood on this site since 1542, was again expanded and modernized. A typical element of the then-popular Heimat style was the wooden cladding of the facades. In this house, the wood has always been painted green. This is likely where the hotel gets its name from.