Qualla: Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier

Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photographer unknown / anonymous, Public domain. Otzenrath is gone. The village in the Juchen district was finally demolished in 2006 to reach the coal under it, and the residents - about eighty percent of them, anyway - were resettled together to a new Otzenrath built a few kilometers away. Holz is gone. Pesch is being emptied. So is much of the original Garzweiler. The Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier, the Rhenish brown coal district, is Europe's largest lignite mining area, and the way it has worked for a hundred years is by removing what stands in the way of the seam. Sometimes that is forest. Sometimes that is your kitchen.

Image: Photographer unknown / anonymous | Public domain

Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier: What Lies Beneath

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain. The geology under the Cologne Bay made this inevitable. Starting about 30 million years ago, the Lower Rhine Bay subsided into a shallow sedimentation basin. During the early Miocene, between 20 and 23 million years ago, conditions favored peat bogs, which were then sealed under ...

Image: AnonymousUnknown author | Public domain

Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier: From Klutten to Bucket Wheels

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martinroell, CC BY-SA 2.5. Until the late seventeenth century, the wet brown layer above the clay used in Brühl and Frechen ceramics was just waste to be cleared. Then someone noticed it burned. Small farmers and day laborers began digging it out with spades, pressing it into lumps called Klutten - from th...

Image: Martinroell | CC BY-SA 2.5

Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier: RWE and the Power Plants

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bodoklecksel, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first lignite power plant came online in 1899 at the Berggeist mine near Brühl, at about one megawatt. By 1932 the Goldenberg plant at Knapsack alone could produce 500 megawatts. Rheinisch-Westfalisches Elektrizitatswerk - RWE - took over Berggeist in 1906, and the alliance b...

Image: Bodoklecksel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier: Villages and the Hambach Forest

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NASA / User:Chrissy85. Chrissy85 at German Wikipedia, Public domain. The pits move on a fan principle, rotating around a pivot point with the mining front followed by the tipping front. As they move, they consume villages. Resettlement is supposed to keep communities intact - RWE tries to relocate residents to a single new settlement so the social...

Image: NASA / User:Chrissy85. Chrissy85 at German Wikipedia | Public domain

Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier: The Long Goodbye

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Coal production in the Rhenish district peaked in 1984 at 120.6 million tons and has hovered around 100 million tons annually since 2002. Three open pits are still active - Garzweiler, Hambach, and Inden, the last of which exists solely to feed the Weisweiler power plant. The ori...

Image: Public domain