37 degrees: "Dredged – life without coal" about the tragic end of the opencast mine

With “Abgebaggert” the ZDF shows a 37-degree documentary about the effects of the coal phase-out for jobs, villages and fates in the area.

Marianne is 81 years old and has a clear idea of what she needs to live: “If you don’t have any chickens, there is no longer any reason to get up in the morning.” On the other hand, she knows that her right to chickens is limited: “If that Excavator is in front of the door, then there is no other choice. “

That’s how it is in Lusatia. The village of Jänschwalde near Cottbus will one day disappear, its residents have known that for years. Many have already sold their land and houses and have moved away. Marianne doesn’t.

37 degrees: “Dredged – Life without Coal” (ZDF) – A district shaped by the extraction of raw materials

Then there are also people who sit on the excavator as if in a dream come true. Friendly people who are sad that their time in the coal is running out. That is understandable. They live from, with and for the lignite opencast mining. They say “Glückauf” when they get on the excavator and look proudly at the forever destroyed landscapes that the excavators have left behind. You sigh sentimentally and want and cannot imagine that this will soon all be over.

Perhaps it should be noted that what is called “excavator” here is not one of those machines that we know from motorway construction sites, for example, where they load trucks with their grab shovel. The excavators in the open-cast lignite mine are huge paddle wheel monsters, several hundred meters long and weighing over 10,000 tons, which do not dig holes in the landscape, but make the landscape itself disappear. They are among the largest vehicles that move in the country. But their time will come to an end when the coal phase-out issue is finally put into practice.

37 degrees: “Dredged – life without coal” (ZDF): Work, prosperity and normalcy are disappearing

Of course it is an enormously dramatic process when an entire region is left – from paid work, from wealth and normalcy, from most of the younger people. At least no villages will be dredged here in the future. And as an aside, one can once again note that the enormous emissions of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by lignite as an energy carrier is a huge problem, the solution of which is being tackled far too late.

“Abgebaggert” is a film from the “37 °” series and is therefore less concerned with technology and the environment than with people. Fates are traced and accompanied to a certain extent: a machinist, a villager, a long-term unemployed, a Vietnamese family, a single mother with three children, a Steiger. They are not played off against each other. No know-it-all comment mingles with the excavator sentimentality of the Steiger. The Vietnamese are well integrated, run a tea shop and drink their after-work beer with bio-German colleagues. Abim, who originally came from Cameroon, and her children do not want to leave Lusatia. A brief look back at older events in Hoyerswerda shows that the integration of people who look different has not always gone so smoothly there.

And yes, it is a tragedy that so many people like those in Lusatia and elsewhere are losing their jobs and no one can conjure up new ones. That’s capitalism. But are the villages that disappear when the excavators arrive more minor dramas than lost jobs? At least Jänschwalde can be considered saved at the end of the report. But we don’t want to start with the climate now. (Hans-Jürgen Linke)