“From the remaining pits, people are trying to recreate a sense of home.”

Jörg Hertel: Lauchhammer had a kind of “career”, in inverted commas, in the 1950s – through the coking plant, into a highly specialised energy-production sector – and then, after reunification, after all of that came to an end, it dropped back down to the bottom again. And we – meaning the traditional club – are trying to preserve the whole thing as a positive memory.

Eric Recknagel: We’re in Brandenburg – more precisely, in the district of Oberspreewald-Lausitz. In a town that was once made up of four separate places. A town that, at the height of its prosperity, had up to 30,000 inhabitants – fewer than half of whom remain today. In 1993, the remaining lignite industry here was shut down. The town’s former importance as an industrial centre is no longer comparable to what it once was. But what was this town like during its industrial heyday? And what does the future hold? What is Lauchhammer? I’m Eric Recknagel, and I’m working on this project for the Department of Political and Communication Studies at the University of Greifswald. For this podcast, I travelled to Lauchhammer – a town shaped by industrial change like few others. This episode focuses on the rise – and above all the deindustrialisation – of Lauchhammer, and on the consequences this profound transformation has had for the town’s people, its identity, and everyday life. To explore this, I spoke with Jörg Hertel, a long-standing member of the traditional association Braunkohle-Lauchhammer e.V. Together, we look at how an industrial town loses its foundations – and what comes after.

Jörg Hertel: The town of Lauchhammer is something special – and I don’t mean that ironically, but because two major industries have coexisted there for centuries. One is steel construction, including art casting, and the other is lignite mining and processing. These two pillars shaped the town, at least until reunification.

Eric Recknagel: It is 25 August 1725. “Baroness von Löwendal has a blast furnace built at the Lauchmühle mill near Naundorf – today Lauchhammer-Ost – to smelt bog iron ore using charcoal. It was one of the first blast furnaces in Germany and marked the beginning of industrialisation in Lauchhammer” [Source: Stadt Lauchhammer]. But this raises an obvious question: where is the coal?

Jörg Hertel: The first lignite deposit in the Lauchhammer area was discovered on Butterberg in 1789. At that time, of course, there was hardly any energy use to speak of. It was really in the 1880s and 1890s, and around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, that industry began to flourish here: small pits developed into larger open-cast mines, and steam power was gradually replaced by electricity in its various forms. Lauchhammer, for example, had the first 110-kV high-voltage transmission line, running from here to Riesa, which made it possible to transport energy efficiently from Lauchhammer. As a result, small pits became large open-cast mines. This development was, of course, interrupted by the Second World War, and was followed by a phase of deliberate deindustrialisation – I’m referring here to reparations to the Soviet Union. Relatively modern industrial facilities were dismantled and rebuilt there, and we struggled to rebuild our own industry. But miners and industrial workers are often resourceful, and things really took off again in the 1950s, for instance with the construction of a large coking plant in Lauchhammer. Because trade relations had collapsed with the founding of the FRG and the GDR, and there were too few smelters for the available coke, we were forced to produce our own. That, of course, gave Lauchhammer a major boost. In 1951 the order came from Berlin, and in 1952 the first coke oven batteries went into operation, which naturally went hand in hand with the recruitment of workers. On the coking plant construction site alone, around 11,000 additional workers were employed to build the new large-scale facility, which at the time was the largest youth project in the GDR. At the same time, the briquette factories also had to be retooled and rebuilt, especially the fine-grain briquette plants producing F4 briquettes, which supplied coal to the coking plant via conveyor belts running through the entire town of Lauchhammer in order to feed the coke ovens and produce coke suitable for smelting. This, in turn, meant that in the 1950s – in 1952, 1955 and 1957 – Neustadt I [Residential Town I] was built, because workers from the surrounding area no longer wanted to commute back home. In the early 1960s, Residential Town II was built for the same reason, and in the 1980s Residential Town III followed, so that the population eventually reached just under 30,000. That was the industrial heyday here. It must also be said that it was a heyday of pollution and environmental damage, because production was the priority, while clean air and water were only of secondary importance. People lived with this, they accepted it as normal, and there was appropriate financial compensation: higher wages, miners’ pay, end-of-year bonuses and various departmental supplements, as well as allowances for noise, dust and other burdens designed to keep people in the industry. There was also a coal allowance – briquettes for heating at home – with 100 hundredweight being the average for a full-time worker, which represented a considerable saving over the year. And we shouldn’t forget that the companies operated within plans and regulations that provided for the population not only through housing, but also through what was known as the ‘second wage packet’: state subsidies for basic foodstuffs, rent, water and electricity, which meant that by GDR standards people lived relatively cheaply and fairly well at that time.

Eric Recknagel: Before we take a closer look at the history and the developments surrounding deindustrialisation, it’s important for me to share something personal. An anecdote you rarely hear. So here is a short personal story. What exactly is the Kumpeltod – the death of a comrade?

Jörg Hertel: “Kumpeltod” was the Deputat miners’ schnapps that we also received, among other things. It was introduced after the war on Soviet orders, initially at Wismut, to increase labour productivity, and a resourceful minister later devised it for us as well. People working in mining – especially those outdoors, whether in factories or in open-cast mines – were entitled to a ration. One litre in the summer months, two litres in winter; some even received two litres in summer and four in winter. It was simply called “Kumpeltod”, literally “the death of a comrade”. In reality, it was an ordinary grain spirit with about 32 per cent alcohol, which you could drink neat or use to fortify egg liqueur, rum pot, or whatever you liked. For us, it functioned as a kind of currency, because you paid 80 pfennigs for half a litre, whereas in GDR times a bottle or half-litre in the Konsum or the HO might cost 10, 12 or 15 marks. That was a huge difference. So if someone wanted a service – a craftsman’s job or a favour – what did you give in return? Very often you’d hear, “Just give me a bottle of Kumpeltod,” and that settled it. It really was a sort of informal parallel currency. The name itself is actually nonsense, of course, because it makes outsiders think it must have been something incredibly poisonous. It wasn’t – it was simply what the miners called it. It was handed out once a month. In our department, people would turn up with a crate and be asked, “Have you got your bottle?” – the deposit bottle, which cost 30 pfennigs at the time. On top of that, you paid another 30 pfennigs, and for many this was the best day of the month, because the distribution of the miners’ schnapps put smiles on a lot of faces. That said, there were no more – and no fewer – alcoholics than in the rest of industry, and miners didn’t die any earlier as a result. Our oldest member today is 96, the second-oldest 94. So we have very old miners who worked extremely hard all their lives.

Eric Recknagel: When we talk about Lauchhammer, we also have to talk about the 1980s. Those were the last years in which industry here really gathered momentum again. For many people, it was clear that the company lay at the centre of everyday life – both professionally and privately. It was a period when Lauchhammer once again embodied what it had stood for for decades: work, production, community, and the feeling of being part of a large industrial engine. But looking back today, we know that this was not only a high point; it was also, in many ways, the last one.

Jörg Hertel: Production was running at full capacity in the 1980s, that’s true, and production was the main priority. I’m not saying that everything was good, but under the socialist conditions we had here, the residential towns and housing estates functioned. Commuter traffic and transport worked. Supplies worked. And it has to be said that people weren’t used to anything else.

Eric Recknagel: The 1990s were a hard blow for Lauchhammer. With political change, the conditions under which people worked here shifted almost overnight. Structures that had been taken for granted for decades began to falter, and decisions that had once been made centrally were now questioned or overturned entirely. For the people of Lauchhammer, this meant uncertainty, upheaval and, for many, the loss of their jobs.

Jörg Hertel: The collapse of communism brought major upheaval, particularly in economic terms, because at the time we had a planned economy – a socialist planned economy, with all its advantages and disadvantages. As a result of the transition to the market and the integration of these sectors into it, both branches of industry underwent profound changes. I’ll focus on coal here. The many small open-cast mines in Lower Lusatia were shut down for a variety of reasons: inefficiency, and in some cases a massive backlog in maintenance. Today, only four large open-cast mines are still operating in our region. In Lauchhammer itself, there has been no activity for a long time, because the Klettwitz-Nord open-cast mine located here was never fully developed. It was opened up, but only operated for just under a year. The nearby Klettwitz and Meuro open-cast mines were then closed as planned. One reason for this was that their main purpose – the processing and refinement of raw lignite – was no longer required. That purpose had existed because the energy supply itself had suffered major cuts. In the past, energy policy meant doing everything possible to ensure that the so-called Cottbus energy and coal district supplied the GDR, especially its highly energy-intensive industries. After reunification, however, large parts of industry were dismantled – in part as a result of the actions of the Treuhand – and entire industrial sectors were scrapped. That was the decision of the market and of the Treuhand. As a result, the energy supply became largely superfluous. Added to this was domestic fuel: briquettes were no longer needed, because almost everyone converted their heating systems to modern energy sources. That was the situation in the 1990s.

Eric Recknagel: In 1993, the entire lignite industry in Lauchhammer was shut down. It marked the collapse of an entire industrial sector, and the consequences are still visible today.

Jörg Hertel: Let me say a few words about the population and the workforce. At the end of the 1980s, Lauchhammer had just under 30,000 inhabitants. Of these, around 15,000 worked in the coal industry and about 5,000 at TAKRAF in heavy machinery manufacturing. Very little of that remains today. I don’t believe TAKRAF even employs more than 200 people now, and the coal industry itself has disappeared entirely; only a small amount of remediation work is still being carried out. In effect, nothing is left. The unfortunate aspect of this development is that when this mono-industry vanished – when it was dismantled – too little was done to create new jobs and to give the many unemployed a chance to earn a living again. And this process did little to improve the mood or atmosphere in Lauchhammer.

Eric Recknagel: The closure of the plants did not only affect the industrial facilities themselves; above all, it affected the people. Suddenly, many workers were confronted with a reality none of them could have imagined. The work that had shaped their lives for decades was suddenly gone.

Jörg Hertel: It was only when the major wave of redundancies hit, when the plants were shut down, that we really began to see our people. The prevailing view had been that as long as you worked, you would earn money. Yes – but where were you supposed to work? The jobs were gone. We had destroyed them ourselves; we had dismantled them ourselves. That was when the first real sense of disappointment set in.

Eric Recknagel: But it wasn’t only the world of work that collapsed in Lauchhammer; private life, too, was deeply affected by the consequences of reunification.

Jörg Hertel: There was a rich cultural life, and it was beautiful, and it was funded by the company and the cultural association. There were orchestras. Every large company had its own cultural highlights. We had the miners’ orchestra of the BKK Lauchhammer Braunkohlekombinat, as well as a choir, a dance group and a painting circle. And that was how it was meant to be, because it was laid down in the plan: every large company was obliged to do this in order to make people’s leisure time a little better. Not to mention the sports clubs. So you can imagine what happened after reunification, when the companies suddenly disappeared. What happened to leisure time? What happened to our children? What happened to our young people? Everyone was shaken – at least those who still remember, who may have played football or been part of a cultural association. 1990 and 1991 were disastrous years.

Eric Recknagel: This raises the question of what actually happened to the former open-cast mines after mining came to an end here. How were these vast areas used, reshaped – or perhaps simply left to their own devices?

Jörg Hertel: Attempts are being made to recreate a sense of home to the scorched voids left behind – the open-cast mining pits. “Home” here means recognising that when an open-cast mine is developed, the area is devastated: it is cleared, including the people who once lived there. All of this was regulated by law. The earth was removed, the mineral resources were extracted, and once those resources were exhausted, the remaining pit was filled in as far as possible or even recultivated, with the aim of restoring the landscape. In this way, as in central Germany – around Halle-Leipzig region I mean – and also in western Germany in the lignite districts operated by Rheinbraun, recreational landscapes were created. If you look back at what these areas were like before mining – especially here in Lower Lusatia – they were often swamps, moorland and dense forests. That was around 200 years ago. The idea now is that they should become something similar again: no longer impenetrable, of course, but liveable landscapes. And local recreation always has something to offer. A good example is Lake Senftenberg, one of the flagship projects in the region, which was once the Niemtsch open-cast mine and has since been transformed into a local recreation area according to plan.

Eric Recknagel: After all these upheavals and changes, the central question naturally arises: what ideas are there today for the future of Lauchhammer? Where is the town placing its economic and social focus? And how do people here imagine finding a way out of deindustrialisation and towards a new perspective? Is there a plan for this?

Jörg Hertel: No – there is no real plan for Lauchhammer. For twenty years, we had Vestas, the blade manufacturer, which then moved further east, using flimsy excuses after having made full use of all the tax incentives available here. Then S-Volt was supposed to come, but that didn’t happen either. All of these projects were meant to replace the major employers and create jobs. And here – specifically in the Lauchhammer urban area – I should add that there are other places where industry has settled. Schwarze Pumpe industrial park, for example, is doing very well. But directly in Lauchhammer itself, which is a vast area with many people waiting for work, there are no such opportunities. These are jobs people can only take up locally, because they cannot simply move away – they have their homes and farms here, their parents and relatives, whom they cannot leave behind. These are people who are tied to the land, tied to their roots. And there are simply no suitable jobs for them in and around Lauchhammer. Of course, people say: yes, there is the leisure industry, there is Lake Senftenberg and the recreational areas, and somehow we’ll manage. But not everyone can become a boat rental operator or an ice-cream seller. There also have to be solid, long-term jobs in basic industry – jobs that are stable and down-to-earth. And there are fewer and fewer of them – as I think I mentioned earlier, there used to be more than forty open-cast mines. Now there are four left. Is that right? Four? Welzow-Süd, Nochten, Reichwalde – Jänschwalde is no longer operating, it’s closed. So in reality, there are only three left. And they, too, are supposed to be phased out over the next ten to fifteen years. Yes – and what happens in the meantime? Coal strategies, rebuilding the east, creating jobs – it all sounds good in the newspapers and on television. But here in Lauchhammer, we don’t see any of it. And the population sees even less.

Eric Recknagel: The bottom line is that Lauchhammer is a town that has experienced the profound effects of deindustrialisation first-hand – from a once vibrant industrial centre with thousands of jobs to a place that has had to reinvent itself and is still searching for viable prospects today. Lauchhammer now stands between memory and a new beginning. And the big question that remains is: what comes next? Finally, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all of you, and especially to Jörg Hertel, whose knowledge and time have helped make Lauchhammer’s past and present more understandable. Thank you for listening, and see you next time.

Jörg Hertel: But generally speaking, no one can tell you that this or that is planned and that this or that will actually happen, because Lauchhammer has suffered so many setbacks in recent years. Things that were planned – firmly planned – and then fell through anyway, unfortunately.