Workers outside changing facilities at RWE AG’s Hambach lignite mine in Niederzier, Germany, on Nov. 27.
Photographer: Ben Kilb/BloombergElections
Germany’s Political Frontlines Shift to Downtrodden Rust Belt
Anxious working class is putting once-affluent areas in play for next month’s snap election.
At the Hambach open-pit mine on the edge of Germany’s former industrial heartland, the ground shakes as a giant wheel excavator that’s heavier than the Eiffel Tower chews through the landscape, digging up brown coal to power factories like a cluster of paper mills in nearby Düren.
In this small city of 90,000, 40 kilometers west of Cologne, Germany’s challenges collide and it’s in once-thriving places like Düren where the battle for Germany’s future is being fought.