On the art of bell casting

The visit to the Mabilon Bell Foundry Museum in Saarburg was behind us, and on our stroll through Saarburg we had arrived at the beautiful parish church of St. Laurentius . There we met a priest who led my Icke through the parish garden with great enthusiasm and showed her all the wild herbs that grew there, explained them to her and even let her taste each one. For Icke it was like Christmas, Easter and a birthday all in one day. While she exchanged plant-related experiences with the priest, I waited with Pipo and Emmi in front of the church. After what felt like two hours they came, the priest with a flowerpot from which a bright green herb was peeking out. He came up to me, pressed the delicate plant into my hand and said quietly: "This is an immortality herb. A tea of it every day. I think you could use it." And before I could say anything, he was gone again. I stood there with my bulging backpack, two dogs and a pot of immortality herb in my hand. "I could have bombarded this man with questions about his herbs for another two hours." At that moment, a few things became clear to me...

Have you ever been to a bell foundry? No? That's no great surprise, because there are only three companies left in Germany that are dedicated to this art. The Mabilon family of foundrymen in Saarburg has not been one of them since 2002. Due to age and a lack of new recruits, Marlis and Wolfgang Hausen-Mabilon - their ancestors' roots as bell founders go back to the 16th century - decided to give up production and turn the listed building complex into a museum. And they have done an excellent job.

During a tour of the facility, we were able to marvel at everything. From the drawing room, where the masters calculated the bell tone and designed the wooden rib - the basic structure for the bell - to the clay room and the workshops and the foundry hall, a production period spanning many centuries was reflected. What is fantastic is that the technology has remained unchanged to this day. Our guide through the exhibition explained the process of bell casting and its difficulties in great detail, which also made it clear under what extreme, almost unimaginable conditions the people had to do this work.

Over coffee and cake at the end, Icke told us that she still had a lot of questions. I thought about my little pot with the herb of immortality. Maybe I should have taken a cutting for our guide...