Teuchern, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Lying half-hidden in the undergrowth along the B 91 federal highway between the two east German cities Weißenfels and Zeitz are the remains of the Paul II lignite mine shaft. Underground mining in the region came to an end here 60 years ago. Now, plans are underway to save what remains.
A trampled fence, waist-high hedges, a pile of freshly dumped trash, and—right in the middle—a towering headframe: this is the site where Central Germany’s phase-out of lignite mining began. It was here, just a few meters from the B 91 federal highway between Weißenfels and Zeitz, that the history of underground lignite mining concluded 70 years ago.
The Paul II shaft complex—now a ruin jutting out of the flat landscape like an outstretched finger—was the last place in the region where miners descended into a shaft to bring lignite to the surface. A shaft had been sunk 60 meters into the ground in 1904, allowing miners to extract the surrounding seams. However, the process proved too costly and could not compete with extraction in the large open-cast mines.
Just two decades later, the original access point was used solely for transporting materials down and coal up. The extracted coal was transported via cable car to the "Paul I" briquette factory near Luckenau, on the outskirts of Zeitz. From 1950 onwards, Paul II served a water management function. Finally, in 1964, the facility was abandoned.
Since then, the shaft buildings on the 130-by-100-meter site have stood empty. The administrative building next door—inhabited until just a few years ago—has also been left to decay. A storm tore off the roof, walls have collapsed, and the upper floor has completely caved in along more than half the building's length.
Trash piles up in the rooms that remain intact. Polystyrene insulation, installed only after the fall of the GDR, is peeling away, and traces of soot bear witness to several fires—though none caused major structural damage. The building, its façade still bearing the historic name "Paul II," is a ruin—and by no means a picturesque one. An entire floor has collapsed.
Yet Paul II—granted heritage-protected status as early as 1962—remains a site of historical significance, not only for the early era of lignite mining in Central Germany but also for how that legacy is handled. Located just a few kilometers from Weißenfels and Zeitz, the three brick structures eke out an existence in a kind of no-man's-land, largely unnoticed by the public.
Even "urban explorers"—enthusiasts who seek out the vanishing sites of former human activity—rarely find their way here, armed as they might be with SLR cameras, tripods, and video drones.
The architecture holds little visual appeal, and the remnants of the century-old machinery are hardly spectacular; only a few iron wheels, rusty linkages, and guide pulleys have survived. The barracks and garages surrounding the former winding tower stand upright only out of habit, propped up by thorny thickets and colonized internally by a veritable forest.
The tower—featuring an iron strut headframe dating back to 1915, from which mined coal was once transported to "Paul I" via a wire-ropeway and later a chain conveyor—is in danger of collapse. The shaft column inside is exposed—as are sections of the underground workings—apparently unsecured.
The very mining operations that the Paul II technical monument represents are also the ruin’s curse. "The Paul II"—as experts call it, since a shaft complex is grammatically feminine in German—stands on unstable ground.
The more coal was extracted from the depths, the more "subsidence zones" formed in the surrounding area. After nearly a century of production, the last surviving headframe of an entire era now rises from an artificial mound—at once impossible to miss and yet invisible.
This situation has long been a source of bitter frustration for Rüdiger Erben. The SPD state parliament member from Weißenfels believes that the region's last physical remnants of deep-shaft mining ought to be preserved for future generations. It should go without saying; after all, "if a federally owned monument in Berlin were in such a state..." Yet, just as little was done to save the Paul II during the GDR era, the situation has hardly changed in the last thirty years.
Only now—almost exactly sixty years after it was listed as a heritage site—is there finally a potential future for the crumbling brickwork, rusting steel, and walls being forced apart by encroaching brush. According to people from the town, the federally owned company LMBV has just presented a schedule for renovation over the next five years, funded by the budget allocated for remediating legacy GDR mining sites.
Following underground stabilization measures, the plan would from 2027 onwards, the "transition of the heritage-listed structures to a subsequent use" will be possible.
