Assignment: The village that came back from the dead

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Germany some 300 villages have been destroyed since the Second World War because of the coal that lay beneath them. Villagers have grown up in the knowledge that one day their house will be torn down and generally they’ve accepted the deal on offer: the mine buys their house and they build a new one in a brand-new village. But the demands of climate change and the need to curb CO2 emissions has changed attitudes to fossil fuels. In one region west of Cologne all mining activity will cease by 2030, 15 years earlier than planned. Which means that villages designated for demolition are now going to survive. That news isn’t always welcome. Tim Mansel has visited one of them.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Tell me what you think when you look over my shoulder, this huge hole in the ground.
0:07.9	It's just impressing how huge it is.
0:10.6	You've got a big smile on your face.
0:12.4	Yeah, goosebumps as well.
0:13.6	It's got goosebumps.
0:15.5	Goose bumps because of a vast crater carved into the landscape,
0:20.0	a scene of massive environmental destruction,
0:23.3	but also a tourist attraction complete with seating and signboards.
0:28.1	I'm a little bit speechless. I hadn't think that it's so big here.
0:32.7	I had the map on Google Maps and I saw this big hole on the map and I say hey we have to go here and it's
0:39.3	incredible where are you from from thottsheim it's between strutgard and carlsruhe that's quite a long way from
0:44.0	here yes we drove i think three hours what's your name i'm yenz and yours i'm tim mansell this is the
0:52.4	hambach mine the largest open cast coal mine in, a half-hour drive from Cologne in the west of Germany.
1:00.0	Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
1:04.1	This edition of Assignment is a tale of a coal mine and a forest, and a tale of two villages.
1:13.0	Bounce. Hello.
1:15.6	Can you speak English?
1:17.6	Oh.
1:18.8	A little bit.
1:19.7	Yes.
1:20.5	Bounter's here in jeans and a jacket and a Joy Division t-shirt.
1:25.4	Yes.
	...

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