Dale Freudenberger poked around the Tamaqua Historical Society Museum, hoping to find the most perfect chunk of anthracite coal.

He wanted it to be shiny and lustrous - after all, this coal was going somewhere important.

“We will be sending it to Germany,” said Freudenberger, society president.

The lump of coal will become part of a permanent display at Reutlingen University. It was requested by university professor Eugen Wendler, the world’s foremost authority on the late Friedrich List, who is considered the father of German railroads.

Freudenberger said the German-born List spent time in the United States helping to engineer and build the Little Schuylkill Railroad with the aid of Moncure Robinson.

That railroad opened in 1831 and ran 21 miles between Tamaqua and Port Clinton, Freudenberger noted.

To research a book he was writing on List, Wendler visited Tamaqua a few years ago.

“He wanted to see what Tamaqua was and where these sites were with the Little Schuylkill Railroad,” Freudenberger explained. “We took him around.”

Wendler published “Friedrich List as a Railway Pioneer in the USA: The Little Schuylkill Railroad in Pennsylvania - a German-American Pioneering Achievement.” With the construction of the railroad, the book notes that List “contributed significantly to the development of the coal deposits there and thus to the development of heavy industry in the USA.”

The coal will likely be displayed in a case at the university museum.

“I just talked to Germany yesterday. They’re excited and asking, ‘When is this chunk of coal coming?’ ” Freudenberger said. “I’ll pick something nice out here.”