Pitch-Black – The Bat of the “Einheit” Mine

One hundred years ago, the heirs of the Halle-based industrialist Carl Adolph Riebeck began exploiting the coal reserves near Hohenmölsen. The abandoned remnants of the “Einheit” mine stand today on the site where the village of Köttichau once existed.

A few barrels containing unidentifiable substances still sit in a dark chamber; a couple of chairs remain; an archaic computer monitor lies in the undergrowth; and nearby stand transformer cabinets from which scrap collectors have ripped out all the cables.

The rest of the “Einheit” mine—originally founded as the “Otto Scharf” mine—consists of empty halls, brick buildings with looted offices, and loading docks where decades of swirling coal dust have coated the walls in a thick, black patina. It is a classic “lost place.”

There is little else to see on the site near Hohenmölsen, which most recently housed a company manufacturing agricultural machinery. It marked—at least for the time being—the final chapter of a history spanning nearly 150 years, a story that began with the Halle entrepreneur Carl Adolf Riebeck.

Following the industrialist’s death, his heirs founded A. Riebeck’sche Montanwerke AG, a company later acquired by the chemical giant BASF. Expropriated by the Soviet Military Administration as part of IG Farben AG, the firm was transformed into a Soviet joint-stock company after World War II.

Just days after the area—liberated by the US Army—was handed over to Soviet troops, the dismantling of machinery and facilities began, along with the removal of conveyor bridges, locomotives, and pumps.

Seven engineers who resisted this stripping of assets were arrested. The men were sent to Special Camp No. 2 at Buchenwald, where they were shot for alleged war crimes.

One of the new halls at the Einheit mine near Hohenmölsen.

The world's largest bucket-chain excavator was also dismantled: a behemoth with a cutting height of 55 meters that moved 44,000 cubic meters of material a day—enough to fill a hole 90 meters long, 50 meters wide, and ten meters deep.

The giant was transported to the Black Sea and eventually relocated in 1970 to the Morozovsky open-cast mine in Ukraine, where the "dinosaur" reportedly remained in operation until May 2003.

Here, the legacy of coal mining clings to the walls in layers centimeters thick.

Coal mining: Villages forced to make way

Meanwhile, the "Otto Scharf" mine—renamed "Grube Einheit" (Unity Mine) in 1946—had been idle due to a lack of equipment. It was not until 1949 that the VEB Braunkohlenwerk "Erich Weinert"—a state-owned enterprise—took over.

In the years that followed, it satisfied the resource-poor GDR’s hunger for fuel using extraction methods that had previously been considered unimaginable. The villages of Pirkau, Streckau, and Mutschau were the first to be cleared.

From 1960 onwards, the resettlement of Köttichau also began; at the time, the village had around a thousand inhabitants, and its history of settlement may have dated back as far as the era of the Hermunduri tribe, 2,000 years ago. The church was demolished by explosives in 1961. By the end of 1962, all the buildings had been torn down.

By early 1963, the village of Köttichau no longer existed, and the name was removed from the municipal register. The coal mine near Köttichau had effectively become a coal mine in place of Köttichau.

In total, around 2,800 people had to leave their homes in the area of what was then the Pirkau open-cast mine. The Profen open-cast mine—now less than a kilometer as the crow flies from the site where Köttichau once stood—is an unmistakable witness to an era when massive excavators devoured the landscape and people's homes to reach the lignite.

Without that coal, neither Germany’s industrialization nor the socialism of the GDR—painted in the hues of lignite-based chemistry—would have been conceivable.

Endless industrial halls stand empty—yet the "Einheit" mine site is considered an attractive location for new businesses.

An old coal mine near Höhenmölsen as a business location?

Many wounds have now healed, at least on the surface. Open-cast mines have become swimming lakes; spoil heaps have turned into gentle, green hills. Amidst this, the "Einheit" mine complex stands like a forgotten industrial island:

The coat of arms featuring a bat on the administration building’s façade still looks brand new; aside from a few broken windows, forced-open doors, and leaking roofs, the buildings—dating from various eras of the mine's operation—appear remarkably well-preserved.

Only here and there have graffiti artists decorated the walls, and nature is only slowly encroaching upon the access roads...