Dennert-Tanne

The so-called Dennert fir was reinstalled at the main building of Clausthal University.

The “Dennert boon” has been part of Clausthal-Zellerfeld’s cityscape for decades. It is a signage panel that shapes the Harz region, which provides information about historically significant places. Its initiator Herbert Dennert (1902 – 1994) was Oberbergrat at the Oberbergamt in Clausthal-Zellerfeld and holder of the Order of Merit of Lower Saxony. As chairman, later honorary chairman of the Upper Harz History and Museum Association and author of numerous publications, he has rendered outstanding services to the region and its history.

Despit with all his praiseworthy commitment to regional historical research, his past may not be concealed before the end of the Second World War: Herbert Dennert joined the Nazi regime just one year before the Nazi seizure of power, as well as he belonged to the SA and made it to the Oberschar leader. In the mid-1930s, he joined the civil service was also appointed Bergrat. From 1938, he was responsible for the mountainegotiable affairs of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration reserve as a mining officer at the local Oberbergamt. He was also head of the district organisation of the NSDAP and company leader in the Volkssturm in the region. In the course of the denazification procedures immediately after the war, he was decommissioned as an "active National Socialist" and, for the time being, removed from civil service until 1950.

In 2024 as part of the 500th anniversary of the mining authority, today's State Office for Mining, Energy and Geology (LBEG), the old old Denner Tanne, who has come into the age of the old office at the historic office building of the Oberbergamt, which stands diagonally opposite the main building of Clausthal University, was revised. The new table there provides additionally transparent information about Herbert Dennert's problematic past before he turned to the preservation of the mining past of the Harz region with a lot of personal commitment.

Due to its historical roots in mining and the region, TU Clausthal, which is celebrating its 250th anniversary in 2025, has decided to re-enter its “Dennert fir”, which refers to the history of the former mining academy and today's Clausthal University of Technology.