Heringen

The Salzberg (“Salt Mountain”, also known locally as “Monte Kali”) at the Wintershall potash works in Heringen

The outlying centre of Kleinensee with “Monte Kali” in the background

In 1153, Heringen had its first documentary mention. The Fulda Abbey enfeoffed the nobleman Heinrich von Heringen about 1170 with the place. The Heringen court comprised in the early 15th century not only the current town area but also the Thuringian centres of Vitzeroda, Gasteroda and Abteroda, all of which now belong to the Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Berka/Werra. In 1432, Margarethe von Heringen sold the court to the Landgraves of Hesse, thereby binding Heringen to Hesse.

With the opening of the Wintershall potash works, which began mining in 1903, the community got its first industrial jobs. Later, the Neu-Heringen and Herfa-Neurode potash mines were built. The mine is today the world's biggest potash-mining area and has an area about the same as Greater Munich's.

At the end of World War II, the libraries of the German Army's Military Geology Unit (Wehrgeologenstellen) and the German Patent Office (Reichspatentamt) were removed from Berlin and secretly stored in the deep Wintershall potash mine in Heringen. There they were discovered by the US Third Army in March 1945, and removed to the US. The German Patent Library was later restored to Germany, but the military geology materials of maps, reports and books, often stolen from other countries during the invasions, were retained by the US as Nazi materiel.[3] Most of these maps and books remain in the US Geological Survey Library today, with an obscure United States Army Corps of Engineers stamp on each that reads "Heringen Collection".[4]

Market rights were granted the community in 1526, and in 1977 came town rights to what was then a greater community (formed out of several smaller former communities).

There are also successor buildings of the knightly estate of Vultejus.

• Uwe Bein (b. 26 September 1960 in Heringen), professional footballer and world champion in 1990
• Jürgen Gehb (b. 9 August 1952 in Heringen), since 1998 Member of the Bundestag and currently rightwing speaker of the CDU/CSU Bundestag faction.
• Michael Roth (b. 24 August 1970 in Heringen), German SPD politician and Member of the Bundestag

• Hadden, Robert Lee. 2003. "The Heringen Collection of the US Geological Survey Library" Geological Society of America. Seattle Annual Meeting (November 2–5, 2003). Paper No. 94-7. Abstract: "One special collection of German, Polish and Russian language books, maps and reports in the US Geological Survey Library has an interesting and unusual history. The “Heringen Collection” came from Nazi Germany. In the last days of the war, these maps, photos and other records were sent from the Military Geology offices in Berlin to the safety of a deep potash mineshaft in Heringen (Werra), in Hessen, Germany. A special group of US Army soldiers were ordered to find these lost records of the Third Reich. When found and removed from the Heringen mine, those records which dealt with the earth sciences, terrain analysis, military geology and other geological matters were sent to the USGS, and eventually came to reside at the USGS Library. The printed papers and books were mostly incorporated into our main collection, but a significant portion of the materials were never cataloged, calendared or indexed. This paper describes the history of the USGS Library's “Heringen Collection,” and some overview of the scope of the materials."
• Hadden, Robert Lee. 2008. "The Heringen Collection of the US Geological Survey Library of Reston, Virginia." Earth Sciences History, Volume 27, Number 2. Pages 242-265. ISSN 0736-623X. Abstract: "A special collection of German, Polish, and Russian language books, maps and reports in the US Geological Survey Library has an interesting and unusual history. The so-called ‘Heringen Collection’ came from Nazi Germany. Many of these items were captured from libraries, offices and even private homes as the German Army advanced into neighboring countries. In the last days of the war, these maps, reports, photos and other records were sent from the Military Geology offices in Berlin to the safety of a deep potash mineshaft in Heringen (Werra), in Hessen, Germany. A group of US Army soldiers found these lost records of the Third Reich. When removed from the Heringen mine, those records that dealt with the earth sciences, terrain analysis, military geology and other geological matters were sent to the USGS, and eventually came to reside at the USGS Library. The printed papers and books were mostly incorporated into the main collection, but a portion of the materials have never been cataloged, calendared or indexed. These materials have many current uses, including projects of value to citizens in their nations of origin."
• Willig, Dierk. 2009. "Die Odyssee des Wehrgeologenarchivs als Teil der Heringen Collection: Versuch einer Rekonstruktion der Vorgänge von März 1945 bis heute." Euskirchen: Amt für Geoinformationswesen der Bundeswehr. 31 pages.

• Official website (in German)

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