Friedrich Anton von Heynitz, Saxon Mining Commissioner General and member of the State Economic, Manufactory and Commerce Deputation, together with Freiberger Oberberghauptmann Friedrich Wilhelm von Oppel submitted a proposal on 15 November 1765. On 15 November 1765, he proposed to Prince Regent Xaver, who was staying in Freiberg, that a fund financed from state funds be made available for the establishment of a geometric drawing school and a metallurgical and chemical school in Freiberg. For Saxony, which had been economically devastated as a result of the Seven Years' War, the reform was intended to raise the level of education of the civil servants entrusted with specific tasks. The proposal therefore fitted in well with the Restoration Commission's reform concept. Just six months later, lectures could begin and the "Berg Academy" was born.

Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749-1817), the most important scholar at the Bergakademie in its early days, brought order to the world of minerals and rock strata. He was appointed as a teacher at the Bergakademie in 1775. Werner is regarded as the founder of geognosy, the study of the structure and construction of the earth's solid crust, which can be described as the forerunner of geology. He laid the foundations on which mineralogy and geology could develop as independent sciences.

Exactly 250 years ago, Werner published a ground-breaking work that still has an impact today. In 1774, a book on mineral identification was published with the full title Von den Äußerlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien. To this day, researchers use very similar catalogues of the sensually perceptible properties of minerals.

Werner attracted such important personalities as Alexander von Humboldt, Franz Xaver von Baader, Leopold von Buch, Friederich Mohs and Robert Jameson. Under the influence of his students, a scientific society was founded in England in 1808, the Wernerian Natural History Society, whose members devoted themselves to a broad spectrum of scientific research, including mineralogy, botany and entomology.

Under Werner, the Freiberg Mining Academy developed into an internationally esteemed and recognised centre of mining science with global appeal.

With August Wilhelm Lampadius (1772-1842), the people of Freiberg saw the light. The professor was the first on the European continent to install a gas lantern at his home in Freiberg's Fischergasse and developed the principle of gas lighting to such an extent that it could be used in an industrial plant for the first time. In order to promote practical teaching, Lampadius set up a chemical-metallurgical university laboratory at the Bergakademie in 1796/97.

In 1886, Clemens Alexander Winkler (1838-1904) isolated the chemical element germanium when a difference repeatedly occurred in the chemical analysis of a mineral, thus confirming the periodic table of elements developed by Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907), who had predicted an element with the properties of germanium in his list with "ekasilicon". The chemist Hieronymus Theodor Richter (1824-1898) and the physicist Ferdinand Reich (1799-1882) had already discovered the metal indium in 1863. It was given its somewhat misleading name because of its characteristic indigo blue spectral line.

Chemical elements were also discovered by former students of the Bergakademie, such as tungsten (1783) by the brothers Juan José (1754-1796) and Fausto d'Elhuyar (1755-1833) and vanadium (1801) by Andrés Manuel del Río (1764-1849).

One of the more curious facts in the history of the Freiberg Mining Academy is the dungeon, which was in operation from 1851-1872. In the historic detention room, students were imprisoned here, for example for not handing in books or receipts, and later for more serious offences such as insulting teachers or fellow students or arguments with Freiberg night watchmen. The longest punishment recorded in the dungeon book was 14 days. However, in the 20 or so years of its existence, only 48 students were punished with detention. The dungeon was used around the middle of the 19th century and documents everyday student life at the time with its numerous murals and inscriptions.

The historical detention room for students at the Bergakademie is the only preserved dungeon at a German technical college or university and can still be visited today.