EISENERZ ("

See also:

• IRON [symbol Fe, atomic weight 55.85 (0=16)]

Iron ore ")  , a market-place and old mining town in Styria, Austria, 68 m . N.W. of Graz by rail . Pop . (1900) 6494 . It is situated in a deep valley, dominated on the east by the Pfaffenstein (614o ft.), on the west by the Kaiserschild (683o ft.), and on the south by the Erzberg (5030 ft.) . It has an interesting example of a medieval fortified church, a Gothic edifice founded by Rudolph of Habsburg in the 13th century and rebuilt in the 16th . The Erzberg or Ore Mountain furnishes such rich ore that it is quarried in the open air like stone, in the summer months . There is documentary evidence of the mines having been worked as far back as the 12th century . They afford employment to two or three thousand hands in summer and about half as many in winter, and yield' some 800,000 tons of iron per annum . Eisenerz is connected with the mines by the Erzberg railway, a bold piece of engineering work, 14 M. long, constructed on the Abt's rack-and-pinion system . It passes through some beautiful scenery, and descends to Vordernberg (pop . 3111), an important centre of the iron trade situated on the south side of the Erzberg .

Eisenerz possesses, in addition, twenty-five furnaces, which produce iron, and particularly

steel, of exceptional excellence . A few miles to the N.W. of Eisenerz lies the castle of Leopoldstein, and near it the beautiful Leopoldsteiner Lake . This lake, with its dark-green water, situated at an altitude of 2028 ft., and surrounded on all sides by high peaks, is not big, but is very deep, having a depth of 520ft .