Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines is a French commune located in the Haut-Rhin department, in the Grand Est region. This town is located in the historical and cultural region of Alsace but is traditionally a border town between Lorraine and Alsace. Its inhabitants are called the Sainte-Mariennes / Sainte-Mariens.
Church of Saint-Pierre-sur-l'Hâte (in the hamlet of Échéry) – Monument classified or registered as a historical monument in France Church of the 15th and 16th centuries that became a Protestant temple. It is still a "simultaneous church" today.
The climate of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines is temperate, with winters that experience negative temperatures generally moderate and hot summers not devoid of sometimes significant precipitation. According to Köppen's classification, it is oceanic (Cfb), on the border with a continental climate (Dfb). The average temperature in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines is 8.9 ° C with an amplitude of the monthly averages of 17.5 ° C. Rainfall averages 770 mm per year6. It is a typically Vosges climate which differs from that of Colmar by much higher precipitation especially in summer (770 mm per year compared to 607 mm in Colmar) and by lower temperatures of 1 ° C (winter) to 3 ° C (summer) which can be explained partly by the modest difference in altitude between the two towns (around 250 meters) and partly by the greater sunshine in Colmar. On the other hand, located just east of the crest line of the Vosges, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines is much less watered than the western slope of the Vosges, witness the annual average 990 mm recorded at Épinal.
The historical importance of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines (Latin S.
Maria in fodinis or ad fodinis) derives from the mineral resources
present there, mainly silver and lead, and their exploitation. Until
the 19th century, the place was the third largest city in Upper
Alsace.
There is no evidence that the mines were discovered
and used as early as Gallo-Roman times, as is occasionally assumed.
In the Middle Ages, however, the monks of the Échéry monastery,
which was founded in the 13th century by the monk Bildulf, were
already mining the mineral resources, with the rights to this wealth
probably lying with the von Échéry (Eckerich) family, whose castle
is near today's location was standing.
The territory of
today's Sainte-Marie belonged to two different dominions: the
Alsatian side belonged to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
and was subject to the Lords of Rappoltstein, the other side
belonged to the sphere of influence of the Dukes of Lorraine. From
the 16th century these differences became particularly clear: the
Alsatian side was German-speaking and Protestant, which meant that
numerous German and French Protestants, Mennonites and Amish, whose
origin lies here, came to the city, where there was also work for
3000 miners offered; the Lorraine side was Francophone and Catholic.
After 1790, when the borders within revolutionary France had become
less important, the two districts of Sainte-Marie-Alsace and
Sainte-Marie-Lorraine merged to form a municipality of
Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines.
From 1871 to 1918 the place belonged
to the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine to the German Reich. As a result,
Markirch became a border town again; the Franco-German border ran
very close by on the Vosges ridge. From 1918 the Rhine again became
the border between France and Germany and the place was once again
French, although it was temporarily occupied by German troops during
the Second World War from 1940 to 1944.
In 1868, the community received the Sélestat–Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines
railway connection. The station, which opened in 1868, was a terminal
station and the terminus of the line. For strategic military reasons,
the line was extended to the west between 1929 and 1931 and connected to
the Strasbourg–Saint-Dié railway. During the necessary modifications to
the route, the old station was abandoned and a new through station was
built at a different location. The 6874 m Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines railway
tunnel was also built at that time, the longest railway tunnel that was
entirely on French territory. The French President Albert Lebrun opened
the route and tunnel on August 8, 1937. The industrialist and politician
Maurice Burrus had a chocolate tunnel made for the occasion, which the
children present were allowed to “plunder” after the opening.
After the military-strategic value of the route was lost under the
changed political conditions after the Second World War and increasing
individual traffic caused the already weak volume of travelers to
decrease further, rail traffic in the section between
Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines and Lesseux-Frapelle became the Abandoned June 2,
1973. The summit tunnel was - initially for a limited period - converted
into a road tunnel (see section "Road"). In 1980, passenger traffic in
the direction of Sélestat was also abandoned, followed by freight
traffic in 1990 and the line was closed in 1996/97.
Street
Via
the Col de Sainte-Marie pass (772 m) seven kilometers away, you can take
route 59 over the Vosges ridge to neighboring Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in
Lorraine. Climbing the valley leads to the Col des Bagenelles (903 m),
which leads to the Col du Bonhomme (949 m) - also a transition to
Lorraine - and the Route des Crêtes. It is about 20 km to Ribeauvillé
over the 742 m high Col Haut de Ribeauvillé on the edge of the mountains
in the south-east, about 23 km to Sélestat in the Upper Rhine plain,
Saint-Dié in the west is about 23 km away.
The connection to
Saint-Dié is also possible through the Maurice Lemaire toll tunnel. The
original railway tunnel, later converted into a road tunnel, is the
longest road tunnel entirely on French territory. After the completion
of extensive construction work, which mainly served to ensure safety, it
was reopened on October 1, 2008.
Since 1989, Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines has had a partnership with Untergrombach, a suburb of the town of Bruchsal 200 kilometers away. The partnership with the Slovenian municipality of Tržič has existed since 1966.