The sad last Days of a German Ghost Town
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 พ.ย. 2024
- Have you ever thought about, how it would be to lose your hometown? For some residents of Germany's rhine area, this imagination is brutal reality. Since the 1960's dozens of village have been razed to the ground, because they unfortunately stand on lignite - a type of brown coal, that is mined in this area. In this video I will tell you the sad story of an abandoned ghost town that is more than 1,000 years old - and that will be torn down this year.
A film by Matthias Schwarzer.
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Intro song:
MÆT - Start Again
Music:
The Darkest Path - Jeremy Korpas
Violet Vape - Cheel
Thinking Back - Max Surla_Media Right Productions
#LostPlaces #Ghosttown #AbandonedTown #Abandoned #Garzweiler #Hambach #LigniteMine #Germany #ClimateChange
Thanks for watching! Here‘s more you might like:
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▪ Weird Border: Is this Germany or the Netherlands? th-cam.com/video/jATA_9A-fWE/w-d-xo.html
It's very sad that a village that used to have people can just be destroyed like that, hundreds of years of history just gone :(
Plus the trees, animals etc. right down to the actual topsoil ! Imagine (or don't) what the ground is like in mid summer.
without the irrational fear of nuclear energy in Germany the village would probably still exist...
@@umba2231 Godzilla checks under his bed for Fukushima!
Thats when Companies own the Government. Viva Capitalism.
Every so often I tend to come back to videos like these. I live about 30 minutes away from the Garzweiler mine, just across the border in the Netherlands. It saddens me deeply to see villages just like the one I live in be destroyed, and the lives of people which such a similar culture to my own be ruined. Let's hope this idiocy stops soon.
Great work bringing the topic to the world through TH-cam. Hope this gains a lot of views down the line. In northern Germany this is not an issue because we don't have any coal here, but we hear a lot about it. To me it's incredible and sad that these things happen in the same country that I grew up in.
Seeing those villages, they feel similar to the one I was born in. Especially the churches remind me a lot of the church in my home village near Kiel. Only that my own village is safe just because there's no coal in the ground. Makes you sad about all these people fighting these big companies for the places they grew up in, only to lose eventually, because they don't stand a chance.
Y'all shouldn't have shut down your nuclear plants man. It drives up the demand for coal and lignite, to the point the provision of energy trumps the lives of people in these villages.
I’ve driven through that area many times in the 80s while living in Bitburg. As a Bronx boy, I loved it, the gardens outside the houses, the cleanliness and just the old look.
Interesting video, cheers .
Incredible devastation of the village Borschemich with its iconic and not so frequent historical buildings! It must feel surreal to stand in the devastation of the sites you geolocated a few years ago. Krass. Du machst eine großartige und wichtige Arbeit!
I find it quite ironic that renewable energy opponents say that a landscape is destroyed when windturbines are added to the landscape, when lignite and coal mining really and irreversibly destroy the landscape.
Reminds me a bit of the village of Doel in Belgium. Almost all the residents left that place. It was supposed to get completely demolished, but after many, many years they decided not to demolish it. There were plans to extend the Port of Antwerp into Doel, but since the 30th of March 2022 the government decided that the village is allowed to remain. It looks like a ghost village. Lots of urban explorers have visited that place. Rave parties have been organised there as well. Worth a visit.
I have a Gemran friend who grew up resenting Germany for stuff like this, the bad infrastructure, the way people have to pay so much into it when sewer maintenance gets done, the bureaucracy, I could go on and on.
I used to think she was just venting, but after I drove her to her family (in Saksen-Anhalt) I saw it all for myself.
How do people put up wth this, I wonder?
They keep on voting that parties wich make their life more miserable step by step. While complaining they or at least the most repeat saying that thank to god, the right Wing of Parliament is Not in Power! Thema indeed would leed all of us to WW3! They keep on complaining while the government they voted, send weapons and Money to a Country very Close wich is in war with Russia. ...
you are doing a fantastic job of capturing interesting stories. I'd love to see more of these in the near future.
In fact there is some motorsports trivia about Kerpen-Manheim: This is the place where German racing driver Michael Schumacher started his career. His parents were the tenants of the local Kart club's racing track ("Erftlandring") in Manheim, and young Michael (as well as his brother Ralf) were taking round after round which finally led to Formula 1 contracts for both and seven World Championships for Michael. Also for other German Formula 1 drivers like Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Sebastian Vettel and Nick Heidfeld it was the home track in their teenage karting years.
Initially the "Erftlandring" was also part of the area that was assigned for crapping and exploitation by the coal mine, but when the Hambach Forest was saved it was also kept alive until today.
In Scotland too....... Glenbuck was a coal mining village that was completely destroyed for open-cast excavation. It was famous for the birthplace of a number of well known professional footballers... Bill Shankley came from here.....
Unbelievable that still happens in a civilized country....
Good video👍👍. Intriguing thought that a village completely disappears. Not deserted or died out, but really deleted.
Talking about the bad influence of burning coal on the climate, let's not forget that the coal mined is mostly exported. I often have to wait at a traincrossing when a train with 40+ wagons of coal are on their way to Rotterdam. Then it goes al over the world, mostly to China. The transport creates its own pollution. The deep hole that they dig also makes the ground-water seep into it, and they then pump it into the Rhein. Thus the nature in a large area gets dryer and dryer. After they have mined everything they can, they want to turn it into a gaint lake. i wonder how someone living in 100 years, sailing on the lake, will feel when they know how it became to be.
There are quite a few towns that were wiped out for dam construction, but one of them stood out to me specifically, the one at Reschensee. It's a popular tourist destination because lake is beautiful now, but it has the peculiarity of the entire town still being there, submerged. Only the church tower still raising above the water
7:55, they do destroy lives tho
Impressive video and a sad story. In the netherlands this is not possible. It s so sad that people living in a Village with a lot of history and where some people live the whole live have to leave, I can imagine their sorrow.
In NL zijn er in het verleden ook dorpen, polders en boerderijen gesloopt, niet zo massaal als hier, maar toch. Voor Vlissingen-Oost bijvoorbeeld, en rondom Delfzijl.
The port of Antwerp destroyed 4 villages in the past: Oosterweel, Oorderen, Wilmarsdonk and Lillo. And for years there was a bit of destroying in Doel. In Zeeland (Netherlands) they demolished a lot of polders and farms for the port of Vlissingen-East. And around Delfzijl (NL) a few villages are demolished. Greetings from NL.
Nice video keep it up
Shocking that this happens in Germany in this era. I'm sad for the previous owners and the landscape. Heartbreaking.
This is so tragic. At least they could re-build the church. Brick by brick. It can be done. I'm not religious, I just think it's the least that can be done to preserve the culture of the community.
I remember the cries in the 1980s of "Atomkraft, nein danke." protests.
Now it's not so much of a good idea.
Germany is burning more coal than ever.
Germany is delusional with its unrealistic energy policy.
You should stand together and fight this
Visited two of these ghost towns in 2015; Borschemich and Immerayn, when they were still mostly up. It is a ridiculous and sad thing that these villages were wiped off the map. Shocking back then, more shocking in 2023 when we we prefer coals over gas.
Us Europeans like better to have ourselves dragged into conflicts that could very well have been prevented than protecting what is truly important.
You deserve more attention! The actual world is not honest....😒 Keep up your valuable work.
sometimes its nessery to relocate entire villages for the betterment of a greater whole. but this is not the case here. this is not a high speed rail line, no air/seaport. this is an open pit mine for the most poluting and one of the least efficient forms of energy currently in use. Germany made a huge mistake in shutting down its nucliar reactors and keeps making that mistake every day this mine and its cuisins are allowed to remain opperational.
People and history count for very little these days, it`s sad.
Very nice report of what is going on, thank you.
So, even though mining of brown coal is prohibited from 2030 on, the mining companies still expand their territories. People are relocated but there are no real alternatives for the houses they were forced to leave. The behaviour of these mining companies reminds me, in a frightening way, of the German "Government" in the 1930's and 1940's, only this time it's not the government, but companies chasing people away from their home ground. I wonder how their employees salute each other and the management. I hope and pray history doesn't repeat itself!
"The Association of Municipal RWE shareholders (VkA) mostly represents cities and municipalities in North Rhine-Westphalia," .... The biggest single shareholder in RWE
I had time to wander around a ferry port years ago while waiting for a sailing. It's right in the town so I ended up in the residential district. It is just a collecion of ugly boxes - filing cabinets for worker drones! A van with the ferry company logo came out of one of these estates and went off to start a shift at the port. It struck me that the van was a company perk, the job was to afford the box to shelter in between shifts - the time waiting in the box was spent distracted by "entertainment" and probably leading to debts and so on ad infinitum .... .. . .
I wonder what the home life and communities of the mine workers consists of.
wenn ohne grund atomkraftwerke abschaltet, muss man halt kohle fördern, grün+rot=braun
That is really really sad. Didn't know that this is how the government treats it's citizens.
This is heartbreaking. Germany is a beautiful place. All these lovely villages with centuries of history and life, snuffed out for one quick excavation of coal and then nothing 😟 Sadly, the place that had been saved from demolition is probably already beyond the point of no return. With the residents already gone it will still be wasted, as nature will reclaim it. So sad
wenn ich sowas sehe könnte ich kotzen... wie kann sowas nur legal sein 😢
That's sad. You can't get buildings like that again
Furchtbar! Dennoch Danke! Auch an alle, die sich unter widrigsten Umständen für den Erhalt einsetzen!
Very interesting. Too bad the energy companies have so much power.
Wahnsinn!!!
Why has a German TH-camr tell the world how to speak a flawless English? The potato chewing guys from overseas can take it as an example of how to speak understandable English!
Same thing happened in England. The army wanted the villages of Imber and Tyneham for training for the war in the early 40s. The villagers were told they were going to be returned but it never happened. Now those villages are ghost villages.
Happens allover. In Portugal, the Tua valley and train line was destroyed and flooded because of a Dam to increase power production by 0.2%. The people was relocated, and the money they got was vastly below the market value of the properties. The dam was recently sold to some multinational power company. Big business and Big energy always make their way regardless. A little video of "before": th-cam.com/video/bVo13zGEIqM/w-d-xo.html
I often wonder what was removed, cleared, disassembled and destroyed to build the village over a hundred years ago?
What kind of history was completely lost due to progress back then?
It is what it is.
This is not progress, though. In fact, it's the exact opposite. Germany chose to close down clean, technologically advanced nuclear power plants and go back to the crude way of burning coal to produce energy.
Ein sehr kleinen Vorteil hat das ganze ja: Die Häuser sind jetzt auf dem Stand der Zeit. Also keine gesundheitsschädlichen Bleirohre für das Leitungswasser mehr, falls welche verbaut waren. Und die Häuser sind jetzt auch Asbestfrei.
Yes Akright town Derbyshire was moved 2 miles to dig out the Coal .Open cast.
Mining is not necessarily bad for nature in the medium term. In Yorkshire, England, there are now nature reserves on some old coal mining sites. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I was watching spoonbills at the Old Moor nature reserve near Barnsley. At the St Aidans reserve near Leeds, I have seen a lot of interesting birds including osprey, glossy ibis, and bittern.
nice video hey
This feels like it would happen in China and shouldn't be happening in Germany
(Loving the channel by the way, consider me subscribed)
Actually China has relatively strong homestead protection that's why you find there Houses with a lot of new developments around it
Just emagine You old house replaced By a NEW HOUSE
I used to visit Mannheim back in 1998. This is sad news.
There is more than one Mannheim.
The new village looks cold and unwelcoming. Just modern squares. Even the church, something that used to be the eye candy of a town looks like a couple cubes stacked up.
This is horrible. Life is about creating, not being stale and coporate.
The original church would of took years to of been made, They didn't have that kind of time, so hopefully they could start working on a church that is beautiful eye candy with the windows from the old church installed. Same with other buildings. Hopefully they can now start planning for beautiful architecture more reminiscent of the past. I hope that the old toombstones was able to get relocated with the remains. I doubt the workers of the mines would care and probably just destroy the beutiful old tombstones.
I thought brown coal was very polluting and was not being used anymore in Europe.
So why in the UK are we not mining high quality Anthracite and burning it ??
Very sad to watch
Reminds me of Sudets
What a tragedy. When destroy the past, you also destroy your culture and identity. That new church looks more like a penitentiary than a place of worship. Incredibly sad...
They tore down the most beautiful masterpiece of a church, and gave them a small ugly shabby little church instead. Shameful.
Well, if you Germans hadn't gone totaly mad after Fukushima, maybe you guys wouldn't need so much coal.
RWE be playing factorio. The factory must grow. The factory must grow...
What a shame.
Germany bulliesand bribes the rest of the world to abandon coal, but carries on mining and using its own coal? Huh?
Ga zo door!
I'm sure they call it "Progress".
Spend your time on creating clean energy, instead of crying about the old/current one.
Good job germany. Making a oversized mine destroying the landscape for the absolute worst energy source. But noo nuclear power is too scary!!!
If you really want to stop it, start a campaign to double the electricity prices. That should reduce the coal mining and help the environment to boot.
Just go to ex DDR and you'll find numerous places like this. You can buy a house for couple of grand, even a train station for 1.500€.
And that is supposed to be better than the nuclear plants?
i am saddened by this as i thought more of the German government
Since the End of 2021 it really was getting worse sadly
I think, this was a very recent topic, when you posted this video, because of the demolition of Lützerath which had been blockaded by thousands of activists for several years until January, when over 10000 policemen were ordered to there to get those activists out...
I would like to have recycled the church would make a lovely home from this waste. In years to come all the town’s homes could be reused.
Lets pray Berlin is next 🙏🙏🙏
They could have stayed there if they had used Solar and wind instead of using coal
That is the problem. Solar and wind can not do the job at present and I doubt they ever will.
@@africanrover5425 They can by combining it with battery storage, much better that a massive hole in the ground .
Nuclear is the answer for a constant supply of energy
Aaa great... its really good that Germany closed down 14 nuclear power the last 12 years to save the environment. Because.. how bad would it be if they didn´t do that to save the envorment?
Might be a bit sarcastic.
Why not house the refugees in the town ..
I'm sure the people who made this video enjoy all the benefits of modern life. These things are only possible because of the power provided by this coal. Sun & wind can only provide power when they are available, battery systems are so small they are virtually pointless. Yes this is sad but it's sadly necessary.
No, Germany could have kept its nuclear power plants open.
Goodbye beautiful plaster houses of eastern europe
A very narrow and one sided view, which bears little resemblanceto reeality-
Sinnlosen zerstörung, indeed
It is a real shame. Good job on the topic and the presentation! I hope this reaches the right (amount of) people.
Please German people... please... don't follow your gouverments footsteps... not again!
Hmm, it's almost beginning to seem like you can't run a modern industrialized society with windmills and solar panels. I'm shocked! 😯
The high-consumption, comfortable lifestyle of Germans must be safeguarded. And all the migrants will want the same. Something must be sacrificed....but not lifestyles lol!
And when coal mine end, it`s usable. Next you can go to wind farms hell. All technologies come from mines. In stone age they had mines.
Yeah it would be much better if you just imported all your energy from Russia. Wait...
the new town looks more westernized yuck.
You wouldn't have to destroy your own land and gut your own history if you had simply kept and maintain your nuclear power plants!!! 🤠👍🇩🇪
Was willst du erreichen, wenn du English sprichst? You are not a nativ speeker!
Maybe you can visit Ukraïne and make a drama of all the villages that are disappearing over there...and without any compensation tot the inhabitants. That is a much worse brutal reality
I went to school there, manheim has been rebuilt somewhere else now
Sounds like Pripyat, Ukraine, or Centralia, Pennsylvania. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania