Raw material knowledge instead of lessons: fourth-grader Ansgar came to the "Salt of Life" raw materials exhibition with his classmates from Freiberg primary school Carl Böhme on Monday morning (12 January 2026). He was drawn by lot and received the certificate as the 1,000th visitor to the exhibition after moving to the Centre for Efficient High-Temperature Material Conversion (ZeHS) on behalf of his class.
"The pleasing majority of the interested visitors we have welcomed since the exhibition moved to the ZeHS are pupils from various grades," says initiator Professor Carsten Drebenstedt. "Our programme is aimed specifically at young people. There are guided tours and accompanying teaching materials for the subjects of geography, chemistry, social studies and economics." Teachers and researchers from other institutions have also visited the exhibition since the first guided tour at the ZeHS on 19 January 2024.
While the exhibition, which was conceived in 2020 as part of the Saxon State Exhibition "Boom. 500 Years of Industrial Culture in Saxony", was open to the public next to the Silberbergwerk Freiberg visitor mine during opening hours until 2021, guided tours for schools and other interested parties are available at the new location on salzdeslebens [at] tu-freiberg [dot] de (request by email).
In the meantime, significant parts of the exhibition have also been shown in the foyer of the Saxon Ministry of Economics and Labour and in the Moritzburg Deaconry Academy for Further and Continuing Education.
The "Salt of Life" exhibition makes it easy to understand how raw materials characterise modern everyday life and what challenges will be associated with the increasing demand for raw materials in the future.
