Germany’s Last Coal Miners Get Shafted
The bitter reality for German coal country is supplies will come from Russia and the U.S. for decades to come.
Photographer: Patrik Stollarz/AFP via Getty Images
After following his father and grandfather into the pits of Germany’s Ruhr valley as a teenager, Andreas Schreiter’s family tradition will end when the country’s last hard-coal mine — the 150-year-old Prosper-Haniel site — shuts in December.
The 46-year-old — who still has the first lump of “black gold” he dug himself in 1991 — will be among some 1,400 miners to make a final trip past the gently illuminated shrine to Saint Barbara, the patron of miners, at the colliery’s entrance. The facility was the last holdout of two centuries of deep-mining history but can’t survive after the government pulled the plug on 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in annual subsidies.