Bergregal

[4] The first regalia, or royal privileges, emerged in the first millennium, but there was still no Bergregal governing mining rights as part of the laws regulating property.

Emperors and kings, the nobility or clerics who ruled over a territory, established this right for themselves, based on their ownership of land and the mineral resources found therein.

The Emperor, Barbarossa, had the Bergregal recorded in writing for the first time in Germany as part of the Roncaglian Constitution in 1158.

As a result of the Roncaglian Constitution, mining rights passed over time into the hands of the territorial lords.

[4] Because of Kleinstaaterei – the plethora of minor states – and the special position of ecclesiastical principalities in the Holy Roman Empire, enforcement of the Bergregal by the emperor was virtually impossible.

[6] Likewise, the Bishop of Chur was given the Bergregal in 1349[4] and the King of Bohemia already received these rights even before the Golden Bull was issued.

In 1356, the Golden Bull finally enshrined in writing that these rights were ultimately held, not by the emperor, but by the seven electoral princes (the archbishops of Cologne, Mainz and Trier, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, Margrave of Brandenburg) as his territorial lords.

In Prussia, the Bergregal was ended by the General Mining Act for the Prussian States (Allgemeine Berggesetz für die Preußischen Staaten) or ABG of 24 June 1865.

[8] This process began with the Napoleonic conquests, when French law was temporarily enacted in many parts of Germany, and was largely completed with the adoption of the General Mining Act of the Kingdom of Saxony (Allgemeinen Berggesetzes für das Königreich Sachsen) on 16 June 1868.

[14] The lower Bergregal covered the mining of base metals, like iron, tin, copper, cobalt, lead and bismuth, as well as the minerals arsenic, sulphur, saltpetre and antimony.

[6] Peat cutting continued to fall outside the Bergregal,[12] as did the quarrying of gravel, clay, marl and limestone.

The entitlement to a fixed percentage (usually 10%) of the commodity (in the early days of mining usually salt or ore) from each pit, (the so-called mine tithe, Bergzehnt or Fron) formed the basis for the wealth of the great rulers, for example, in the Electorate of Hanover and Duchy of Saxony, helping to finance their expensive royal households.

In this way, many regions laid the economic foundations for their future development and the territorial lords and princes showed great interest in the promotion of the mines in their lands, whether through advances, grants or joint construction, because a decline in the mining industry could result in an empty treasury.

Following the end of the Bergregal, mining acts were introduced in the individual states to govern the extraction of mineral resources.

In Germany the exploration and extraction of natural resources is governed by the Federal Mining Act (Bundesberggesetz).