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With the last shift at the Prosper Haniel colliery in Bottrop, an era comes to an end in December: the age of Western European coal mining.
DIE STEINKOHLE brings to life the challenges that people have had to overcome over the last 250 years in the extraction of black gold.
And it shows in an emotional and surprising way how German and European history is reflected in coal mining.
The first part of the documentary goes back to the Middle Ages and shows how people used coal back then.
But it was the invention of the steam engine in the
18th century made underground mining possible.
The intensification of coal mining marked the birth of modern Europe: the industrial revolution transformed agrarian states such as Germany, France and England into powerful industrial nations in just a few decades, and previously rural regions grew rapidly into cities and industrial centers.
Inventions such as the railroad bring people together and allow the economy to flourish.
Society changes and the middle classes experience unprecedented prosperity at the end of the
At the end of the 19th century, the middle classes experienced unprecedented prosperity and freedoms, while workers struggled with the downsides of industrialization and the social question became ever more pressing.
And while at the beginning of the
20th century, the first migrant workers from Eastern Europe gain a foothold in the coal industry, which becomes the forge of weapons in a heated society.
Until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the first industrialized war - also made possible by hard coal.
