The late Tertiary high ash brown coal (R-r = 0.26%) of the Schirnding Seam Zone is mainly composed of huminite. The seam is underlain by a thick saprock (mica saprock double right arrow kaolinite-mica saprock) some tens of meters thick which gradually developed from phyllitic basement rocks and a thin Footwall Series of coarse-grained elastic sediments which, however, occur only in a few places. The roof rocks ＇Hanging Wall Series＇ abruptly appear on top of the seam and consist of massive gray mudstones and arenites, intercalated with some tuffites. These Tertiary series were studied in open-pit mines operated for coal and clay and in bore holes. Chemical investigation involved the analyses of TOC, TSC, Ni, Co, Pb, Zn, Ga, Be, V, Cr, U, Th, P, Zr, REE and organic compounds of extracted organic matter (= OM). Early Tertiary chemical weathering was responsible for the monotonous kaolinite-mica-goethite mineral assemblage in the saprock and the footwall series. In the coal-bearing basin a more variegated mineral association including, pyrite, kaolinite, illite, smectite, illite-smectite mixed layers and siderite was brought about by volcanic processes, intrastratal solution set free in course of coalification and early diagenesis and by meteoric waters infiltrating the coal-bearing series from uplifted parts of the basin, which underwent strong oxidation. The environment of deposition is interpreted in terms of peatswamps that were fed by small streams and crevasse splays of a meandering drainage system grading towards the basin margin into a braided stream system on an alluvial fan plain. Strongly fluctuating water levels were responsible for the pronounced cyclicity to be encountered across the coal-bearing series. The processes of element redeposition and element migration in the Schirnding Basin are operative across the interface coal-saprolite (detrital influx of heavy minerals and intrastratal solution, hydrocarbon infiltration and redistribution of organic matter, reworking of duricrusts), in the saprolite proper (weathering leachats) and across the redox boundaries between the Schirnding Seam Zone and the Hanging Wall Series (input of physils and diagenetic alteration) as well as its strongly oxidized stratigraphic equivalents at the basin edge (volcanic influx, intrastratal solutions). Chemical and mineralogical variations across the coal basin which are directly controlled by the variation in the environment of deposition, weathering and groundwater movements may be directly correlated to changes in the saprock due to the immediate contact between coal and bedrock.