{"it":{"id":"W11A14","kind":"artifact","sub":"Hoax or modern","name":"Wolfsegg Iron (= Salzburg cube)","place":"Vöcklabruck","mat":"iron (cast/meteoric disputed)","dims":"67 x 62 x 47 mm, 785 g (Gurlt 1886) vs 67 x 67 x 47 mm (Bad Archaeology) vs 65 x 60 x 50 mm, 730 g (Habeck)","loc":"Vöcklabruck town museum, since 1958 (per Habeck)","acc":"n/a","find":"coal seam Wolfsegg am Hausruck 1885","flag":"disputed (likely modern/industrial)","src":[85,152,568],"lat":48.009,"lon":13.656,"tags":["Hoax or modern"],"sum":"In 1885 a worker near Vöcklabruck in Austria said a heavy iron lump fell out of a block of brown coal from the Wolfsegg mines. Adolf Gurlt called it a meteorite, but in 1888 the Vienna curator Aristides Brezina found it behaved like artificial soft iron.","why":"It is a classic out of place artefact where the object survives and can still be checked.","nfacts":3,"nsrc":3,"yt":"Check the find chain from mine to museum.","rel":["W16A07"],"hook":"Books said the Wolfsegg iron vanished from a Salzburg museum. It has sat in a museum in Vöcklabruck since 1958.","date":"found 1885"},"S":{"85":["Wikipedia Wolfsegg iron","https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wolfsegg_Iron&oldid=1372038103"],"152":["en.wikipedia.org","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsegg_Iron"],"568":["Brezina 1888, Über das Eisen von Wolfsegg (Geologische Bundesanstalt)","https://opac.geologie.ac.at/ais312/dokumente/Brezina_1888_Eisen_Wolfsegg.pdf"]},"rec":{"id":"W11A14","alias":["ART018"],"ms":[{"a":"dimensions","v":"67x67x47","u":"mm","unc":"","by":"Gurlt","yr":"1886","m":"","b":"V","t":"MEASUREMENT","id":"W11M030","s":["W11S17","W11S90"],"c":"Wikipedia Wolfsegg iron","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wolfsegg_Iron&oldid=1372038103"},{"a":"mass","v":"785","u":"g","unc":"","by":"Gurlt","yr":"1886","m":"","b":"V","t":"MEASUREMENT","id":"W11M031","s":["W11S17","W11S90"],"c":"Wikipedia Wolfsegg iron","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wolfsegg_Iron&oldid=1372038103"},{"a":"specific_gravity","v":"7.75","u":"","unc":"","by":"Gurlt","yr":"1886","m":"","b":"V","t":"MEASUREMENT","id":"W11M032","s":["W11S17","W11S90"],"c":"Wikipedia Wolfsegg iron","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wolfsegg_Iron&oldid=1372038103"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[{"a":"museum_accession","r":"not in staged/legacy artifact record (free sources)"},{"a":"find_circumstances","r":"not in staged/legacy artifact record (free sources)"}],"dat":[],"aa":[{"id":"AA167","a":"Manufactured object in Tertiary coal","who":"fringe OOPArt lists","main":"Probably modern cast iron (mining tool/fragment)","ms":"W11S17;W11S90","st":"unresolved","n":"Salzburg cube is the same object as Wolfsegg Iron; merged.","nl":"1"},{"id":"AA097","a":"Machined cube in Tertiary coal","who":"popular AA literature/TV","main":"Likely a cast-iron hammer head/ironwork artefact; not meteoric","ms":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsegg_Iron","st":"unresolved","n":"status from artifacts row; no new lab rows this batch","nl":1}],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"art":{"claimed_anomaly":"Manufactured object in Tertiary coal","mainstream_reading":"Probably modern cast iron (mining tool/fragment)","provenance_flag":"disputed (likely modern/industrial)","current_location":"Heimathaus Museum, Vocklabruck (per Wikipedia; not \"lost 1910\")","find_circumstances":"coal seam Wolfsegg am Hausruck 1885","claimant":"fringe OOPArt lists","status":"unresolved","dimensions":"67x67x47 mm; 785 g; SG 7.75","material":"iron (cast/meteoric disputed)","date":"","culture":"","museum_accession":"n/a","b":"V","s":["W11S17","W11S90"]},"sub":[],"src":[{"id":"W11S17","t":"Wikipedia Wolfsegg iron","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wolfsegg_Iron&oldid=1372038103"},{"id":"W11S90","t":"Wikipedia Wolfsegg Iron","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wolfsegg_Iron&oldid=1372038103"},{"id":"S0634","t":"en.wikipedia.org","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsegg_Iron"},{"id":"S2569","t":"Brezina 1888, Über das Eisen von Wolfsegg (Geologische Bundesanstalt)","u":"https://opac.geologie.ac.at/ais312/dokumente/Brezina_1888_Eisen_Wolfsegg.pdf"},{"id":"VW11A14-5","t":"Bad Archaeology: a cube from Schöndorf (Dr Gurlt's cube)","u":"http://www.badarchaeology.com/out-of-place-artefacts/mysterious-objects/a-cube-from-schndorf-dr-gurlts-cube/"},{"id":"VW11A14-6","t":"Geologische Bundesanstalt (Austria) library: AL0011_167_A (PDF on the Wolfsegg iron)","u":"https://opac.geologie.ac.at/ais312/dokumente/AL0011_167_A.pdf"}],"sum":"Paranormal books often say the Wolfsegg Iron disappeared without trace in 1910. It did not. The small iron block sits in the Heimathaus museum at Vöcklabruck, in Austria, and a cast has been kept at Linz.\n\nIn autumn 1885 a workman named Reidl, breaking lignite at Braun's foundry in Schöndorf, found it in a lump of coal mined at Wolfsegg. It weighs 785 g, measures 67 × 67 × 47 mm, and has a groove around its middle. In 1886 the mining engineer Adolf Gurlt reported it to the Natural History Society of Bonn, and Nature and L'Astronomie carried the news. Scientists at first took it for a fossil meteorite.\n\nThe puzzle is its setting. The coal is Tertiary lignite. Popular accounts put its age at 20 or 60 million years, but a 1989 paper from Austria's Geological Survey places the Hausruck coal in the uppermost Miocene, a little over 11 million years old by one estimate it cites. An iron object shaped like this, sealed inside coal that old, would be very hard to explain by ordinary means.\n\nTests at Vienna's Natural History Museum in 1966 and 1967 found no nickel, chromium or cobalt, ruling out a meteorite. The researchers Kurat and Grill suggested it was cast iron, perhaps a ballast weight from mining machinery, and in 1973 Mattlianer judged it made by lost-wax casting. For believers it remains an out-of-place artefact; for most others it is a 19th-century object that ended up in the coal.\n\nNo one recorded where in the seam it lay, or whether the coal around it was intact. That missing note is the whole case.","qs":["A machined-looking iron block was reported inside coal millions of years old. Mining accident or genuine anomaly, and what single test would decide it?","No one recorded how the iron sat in the coal. Without that, can any find like this ever be settled?","Why does the story that the object vanished persist when the object is on display?"],"article":{"id":"W11A14","mode":"rewrite-plus-quick-research","research":"quick","title":"The Wolfsegg iron: a lump of metal from a coal block","dek":"In 1885 a foundry worker split a block of Austrian brown coal and a heavy iron lump fell out. A geologist called it a meteorite from the age of the coal, a Vienna curator called it ordinary soft iron, and the object itself never went missing at all.","byline":"The Nommo","updated":"1 Nov 2026","sections":[{"h":"The strangest true fact","p":["For decades, books on lost civilisations said a strange steel cube from Austria vanished from a Salzburg museum, but the lump had been sitting in a small town museum in Vöcklabruck since 1958 [3].","Even Reinhard Habeck, a writer of popular mystery books, admits he repeated the vanishing story in 2006 before a curator told him in 2017 that the iron was simply in the storeroom [3]."]},{"h":"What it is and why it matters","p":["The Wolfsegg iron is a heavy lump of iron that a workman named Riedl said fell out of a block of brown coal from the Wolfsegg mines in Upper Austria [1] [2].","The man who first reported it to the French Academy of Sciences, the geologist Adolf Gurlt, called it a meteorite that had dropped into the coal while the coal was forming [1].","If he was right, it would have been one of the rarest finds there is, a meteorite caught inside ancient rock [3].","Later writers of fringe books turned the same lump into a machined cube left by a lost civilisation or by visitors from space [3].","So one small object has been read as a space rock, as a factory scrap and as proof of impossible history, which makes it a good test of how stories grow [3] [4]."]},{"h":"Key data","p":["Gurlt’s 1886 note gives its size as 67 by 62 by 47 millimetres and its weight as 785 grams [1].","The Bonn meeting report of the same year gives the same figures, with a specific gravity of 7.7566 and the hardness of steel [3].","Bad Archaeology instead gives 67 by 67 by 47 millimetres, the same 785 grams and a specific gravity of 7.75 [4].","Habeck gives a third set, 65 by 60 by 50 millimetres and 730 grams [3].","Gurlt described two opposite faces as strongly rounded like cushions, with a deep furrow running along the four narrower sides [3].","He said the whole surface was covered in the small cups typical of meteorites and coated with a finely wrinkled skin of magnetic iron oxide [1].","Brezina found the pits were about 1 centimetre wide and half a centimetre deep, and said the coating was limonite, a common rust, rather than magnetic oxide [2].","Habeck counts about 50 dents on the rounded faces and a groove about 10 millimetres wide around the sides [3]."]},{"h":"How it was found","p":["Around All Saints’ Day in 1885, a worker at the Isidor Braun sons’ steel and file works in Schöndorf near Vöcklabruck was breaking a block of hard brown coal to make it easier to burn [3].","The coal came from the Wolfsegg mines south of the Hausruck hills, which employed 1,200 workers and produced 350,000 tonnes of fuel a year [1].","Habeck puts the mine about 12 kilometres from the foundry [3].","Gurlt told Daubrée that the iron had sat in the middle of three lignite seams, a layer about 4 metres thick [1].","Gurlt presented it at a meeting in Bonn on 7 June 1886, saying it belonged to the Carolino Augusteum museum in Salzburg as a gift from the Braun firm [3].","Daubrée’s own comments make clear that he judged the surface from photographs [1].","Habeck reports that Gurlt’s colleagues in Bonn also saw only photographs, and he doubts Gurlt ever held the object himself [3]."]},{"h":"The strongest cases, mainstream and alternative","p":["The meteorite case rested on the cupped surface, a little nickel, a cubic cleavage and the claim that underground coal could only have trapped the iron as it formed [1].","Daubrée added that the pitted surface in the photographs looked typical of iron meteorites scoured by the atmosphere [1].","Brezina, at the Vienna court natural history museum, rejected this, because an untrained worker could easily mistake a loose piece lying among coal blocks for one that fell out of a block [2].","He etched a cut face with weak nitric acid and found it behaved like several kinds of artificial soft iron and unlike any true meteorite [2].","He saw no cubic cleavage at all [2].","A mine manager, Johann Pirchl, could not explain it and wondered whether it was an odd heating ball, while an expert named Much called it doubtless a human artefact, perhaps a bar or an axe being forged, and called the coal story an evident error [2].","Bad Archaeology reports that tests in Vienna in 1966 and 1967 found no nickel, chromium or cobalt, and that one scientist suggested cast ballast from early mining machinery (secondary) [4].","The strongest alternative case is the fringe claim of a precision tool from before humans, and Habeck traces how a 1960 French magazine article called it a perfectly regular block when nothing about it is regular [3]."]},{"h":"What is still unexplained","p":["Whether the iron truly came from inside the coal cannot be checked, because only the worker saw it happen [2].","The early reports even disagree about nickel, with Gurlt reporting a little and the 1960s tests reported as finding none [1] [4].","The age of the coal is also told two ways, with Daubrée placing the seams in the Neogene part of the Tertiary and Bad Archaeology quoting about 60 million years [1] [4].","Why do the measurements differ by several millimetres and 55 grams between careful writers?","Could a fresh, published analysis of the stored lump settle what kind of iron it is?"]},{"h":"Related places","p":["The Kingoodie nail is another iron object said to have come out of solid rock in the 1800s.","Tutankhamun’s dagger shows what a real meteoritic iron artefact looks like under modern tests."]},{"h":"A last thought","p":["Brezina ended his 1888 paper by asking anyone who knew a similar object to publish it [2].","The lump has been easy to find all along, which leaves a simple question: why did so many writers prefer a vanished mystery to a short trip to Vöcklabruck?"]}],"sources":[{"n":1,"text":"Gurlt, Adolf, “Météorite trouvée dans un lignite tertiaire”, note presented by Daubrée with his observations, Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences 103 (18 October 1886), pages 702 to 703, scanned issue via the Internet Archive (academy proceedings, primary)","url":"https://archive.org/details/comptes-rendus-hebdomadaires-academie-des-sciences_1886-10-18_103_16"},{"n":2,"text":"Brezina, Aristides, “Ueber das Eisen von Wolfsegg”, Verhandlungen der k.k. Geologischen Reichsanstalt (1888), PDF in the library of the Geologische Bundesanstalt, Vienna (government geological survey, primary)","url":"https://opac.geologie.ac.at/ais312/dokumente/Brezina_1888_Eisen_Wolfsegg.pdf"},{"n":3,"text":"Habeck, Reinhard, Mysteriöse Museumsschätze, chapter “Der Wolfsegger Eisenklotz”, publisher’s free reading excerpt on Litres (secondary, popular book; quotes the 1886 Bonn protocol)","url":"https://www.litres.ru/book/reinhard-habeck/mysteriose-museumsschatze-65699641/chitat-onlayn/?page=3"},{"n":4,"text":"Fitzpatrick-Matthews, Keith, and James Doeser, “Dr Gurlt’s iron cube”, Bad Archaeology, archived copy via the Internet Archive (secondary, sceptical website)","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/2024/http://www.badarchaeology.com/out-of-place-artefacts/mysterious-objects/a-cube-from-schndorf-dr-gurlts-cube/"}],"source_note":"Record figures checked against opened sources. The record’s 67 x 67 x 47 mm appears only in Bad Archaeology [4]; the 1886 academy note and the Bonn protocol give 67 x 62 x 47 mm [1] [3]; Habeck gives 65 x 60 x 50 mm and 730 g [3]. All are shown side by side. Weight 785 g [1] [3] [4]. Specific gravity 7.75 kept as Bad Archaeology states it [4], beside 7.7566 in the Bonn protocol [3]. The 1966 to 1967 analysis, the Linz cast and the 1973 visit come only from secondary sources and are labelled. Wikipedia sources from the record are dropped.","related":["W16A07","W11A13"]}},"img":null,"md":{"h":"img/m/W11A14-16x9.webp","w":1600,"hh":900,"alt":"Illustration: setting associated with Wolfsegg Iron (= Salzburg cube), Vöcklabruck","by":"Illustration made for The Nommo","lic":"","lu":"","p":"","g":true,"ct":false,"cap":"","sec":[{"src":"img/t/W11A14.webp","by":"Editor Bob at English Wikipedia","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wolfsegg_iron.jpg","cap":"Wolfsegg iron.jpg"}]},"hh":[{"v":"67","u":"mm","h":"A 785 g cube, 67 × 67 × 47 mm","s":[194]},{"v":"67x67x47 mm","h":"Recorded dimensions: 67x67x47 mm; 785 g; SG 7.75","s":[195]},{"v":"Iron","h":"Made of: Iron (cast/meteoric disputed)","s":[195]},{"v":"found 1885","h":"Date","s":[242]},{"v":"67×67×47 mm; 785 g","h":"Recorded dimensions","s":[242]},{"v":"Iron","h":"Made of","s":[242]}],"hs":{"194":["Wikipedia: Wolfsegg Iron (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsegg_Iron"],"195":["Wikipedia Wolfsegg iron","https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wolfsegg_Iron&oldid=1372038103"],"242":["en.wikipedia.org","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsegg_Iron"]}}