Slate houses like these inGehren characterise many of the villages in the Thuringian Highland
TheThuringian Highland,[1]Thuringian Highlands orThuringian-Vogtlandian Slate Mountains[2] (German:Thüringer Schiefergebirge orThüringisches Schiefergebirge, literally "Thuringian Slate Hills") is a low range of mountains in the German state ofThuringia.
The slate mountains of the Vogtland and Thuringian Highland stretch from the Thuringian Forest to theOre Mountains. They are between about 300 m to500 m above NN high, and comprise gently rolling hills which are part of the backbone of theCentral Uplands. They extend for about 75 km from east to west and 50 km from north to south. Typical features of the landscape are thedolerite peaks orKuppen (like thePöhlde or theHübel) with their wooded crests. These are made from a volcanic rock, dolerite, which is harder than the surrounding rocks and so weathers more slowly, giving rise to the characteristicKuppen.
As its German name suggests, the Thuringian Highland is mainly made ofslate rock. Although this region was formed in a similar way to theHarz, it lacks the sharp divisions caused by fault lines. Almost all the way round the region transitions gradually into the surrounding land. The rocks found here are from thePalaeozoic era, i.e. theOrdovician,Silurian,Devonian andLower Carboniferous periods. The most important ones are:
Around the steep-sided valleys of theSchwarza andSaale the height difference between hilltops and valley bottoms is often as much as 300 m or more, which is large for hills of this size.
^Dickinson, Robert E. (1964).Germany: A regional and economic geography (2nd ed.). London: Methuen. p. 629.
^Kohl, Horst; Marcinek, Joachim and Nitz, Bernhard (1986).Geography of the German Democratic Republic, VEB Hermann Haack, Gotha, p. 7 ff.ISBN978-3-7301-0522-1.
