Abraum, schilfern

It was spawning season, and the moor frogs were blue and shone against the black water like copper slag in the dark drawers of my grandfather's mineral collection. Mining has been taking place in what is now Thuringia for over 1,000 years. The man-made landscape has long since returned to nature. The old works are decaying, trenches are opening up in the earth, and grass and forests are growing over the spoil. But not only rock quarries or dams are collapsing; societies are also undergoing upheavals. Who owns the mine, and what is being extracted? Leo Micklitz, the head miner of the former river and baryte mine in the Schobsetal near Ilmenau, lost his job during the winding down of mining in the region after 1990. His granddaughter, Linn Penelope Micklitz, begins her literary cartography of this Thuringian mining landscape from here.