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Mining in narrow, damp galleries meant that workers had to have two main articles of essential clothing: a pointed hat, made of unbleached linen, often attached to a large linen shirt or jacket, and a kind of leather apron which, as it was worn backwards, reinforced the trousers under it. The hat protected miners’ heads and necks from dripping water and falling pebbles, and the apron from water running down their bent backs. It was also useful when the miners sat down or slipped backwards on cold, wet rock. This apron, the most original article of clothing, has come to be the miners’ professional badge. The rest of their garments were ordinary working clothes.
One change came with the growing importance of mining in the Tyrol after 1450. As mining was governed by the local prince, the influx of the court influenced what the Tyrolese miners wore. The oldest depictions of miners are those on a fresco of 1478, damaged, on the south wall of the parish church of Imst. In the South Tyrol, the miners’ chapels and churches often contain representations of miners in the working clothes of the time. In the central casket of the main altar of the miners’ church at S. Magdalena at Ridnaun, the patron saint is show above a mining gallery in which two men are at work: one pushing a truck and one hammering at the rock. As well as their pointed hats and reinforced aprons, they wear the court dress which clerks wore, to show that miners were servants of the court. Almost identical figures from the early 16th century may be found in the chapel of St. Barbara at Gossensaß and on a painting on glass in the parish church of Villanders.
Developments in miners’ clothing are next found in the Schwaz Mine Book of 1556, with numerous illustrations. Here, for the first time, differences in costume according to the wearer’s rank may be seen. The mining judge, the highest official of a mining district, already wears the black costume of the Spanish court, imposed around 1550 for all court functionaries. Foremen and other workers all wore typical miners’ clothes.
Sometimes they adopted additional ornaments for their clothes, as shown in Lukas Geizkofler’s memoirs referring to the wedding of his father (1576), a highly esteemed mine owner. Among the guests there was also ‘the mining judge of Sterzing and a representative group of miners, in their best clothes. They had added silk embroidery to their shirts and jackets, and even wore silver chains and collars.’
There was also a surprising variety of colours in working clothes.
One illustration in the costume book of archduke Ferdinand II of the Tyrol, compiled around 1580, shows simple miners in a procession, wearing the black costume of the Spanish court. They were clearly wearing uniforms to indicate that they were in the service of the local prince.
In the 17th century, probably due to the decline in Tyrolese mining, miners’ clothing did not develop in any particular direction. But things changed in the 18th century, when improved method of quarrying led to renewed activity. Unlike preceding centuries, mining was now state-run, and miners’ clothes were transformed into uniforms. Throughout the 18th century, green and white prevailed, although considerable changes were made in single garments, which increasingly began to resemble soldiers’ uniforms.
The influence of the French Revolution was evident in the long trousers, worn everywhere after 1815. Black dominated during the Bavarian occupation of the Tyrol.
After 1850, emperor Franz Josef issued clearcut instructions regarding miners’ uniforms. The last, still in force, goes back to 1890.
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history of mining on Schneeberg
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