Heinrich Gross, La rouge myne de Sainct Nicolas de la Croix (c. 1529)
This essay first appeared in the European Review of Books, issue 4 (22 November 2023)
A fresh batch of aspirant miners are trudging up a wooded slope in the Vosges mountains of Alsace-Lorraine. They are heading towards the Eisenthür silver mine, opened in 1549 by permission of Charles III, Duke of Lorraine. En route, they stop at a small village to register with a mining judge, a ducal appointee, and swear an oath to obey the miners’ code of conduct, so help them God. In exchange, miners receive a bundle of benefits beyond the reach of most rural dwell- ers in preindustrial Europe, which is to say the vast majority of the population. A modest salary, free access to pasture, game, fish, water and timber, as well as tax breaks, safe passage and legal autonomy in many civic matters — these were handsome rewards for a hazardous job, as the era’s magnates knew. In fact, these privileges could garner the envy of contemporaries, as well as suspicion and resentment (not least when the miners were foreign migrants) — or fear, given miners’ reputed contact with the Netherworld.
After a brief ceremony, they gather by a shed at the mine’s entrance, near several workers crushing and washing ores. They collect lamps fueled by lard, hammers, picks and protective gear; some tuck clumps of leaves into their hoods and tunics for protection. Though they have come from different places and speak different languages, according to the official’s register, they all join in singing a Catholic hymn, in German, and exchange the miner’s traditional salute, Glück auf! (Good luck!), before filing into the mine’s Saint-Louis lode. Solidarity, good gear and god’s grace made mining a risk worth taking.
Two hours later, outside the mine, I turned off my LED lamp and imagined what it would be like to pass a long soggy shift punching into a seam while listening for timber going creak, then crack, all in the company of bats, spiders and possibly demons. Squinting in the natural light, I slipped out of my rubber boots and handed back my poncho and plastic helmet to the volunteers of ASEPAM (Association Spéléologique pour l'Étude et la Protection des Anciennes Mines), the organization behind the day’s re-enactment.[1]
Miners’ work, much like armies’ work, en- tailed many dangers, which miners developed preventative measures to address. Take, for instance, the risky fire-setting technique used to wear down the rock’s resistance, the record of which was still visible, centuries later, in the charred surface of the gallery we visited. Less visible was a passive ventilation system that harnessed differences in temperature between the mine and the outside world, so that neither smoke nor dust impeded the air flow. Wooden rails fixed to the damp path — foreshadowing industrial iron railways — would help stabilize earlier miners’ gait, while a drainage pump, operated somewhere in the distance, kept the water level low. Timber supports punctuated the gallery, and their silence was itself a safety signal; they creak when they bend, which is why they were chosen for the task.
That was all very reassuring, I thought. But would it help me find serenity in the rhythm of satisfying work, or would the fear get to me anyway? I mean, Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs whistled through their diamond-mining toil, but let’s face it: if I lost my glasses, I’d definitely die.
The Eisenthür mine we traversed that day is a well-documented fixture of local history. It was one of 268 sites developed by the local dukes between 1512 and 1638, giving the region’s main hubs their present-day names: Sainte-Marie-aux-mines, Sainte-Croix-aux-mines, La Croix-aux-mines. Eisenthür was abandoned in the seventeenth century, reoccupied for a while in the eighteenth and then forgotten once more. The rise of post-industrial tourism has put it, along with many similar sites, back on the map.
The mine is real; the village below is entirely fictive. The inevitably-named Glückaufdorf (Good Luck Village) has rebooted every summer for the past decade or so, and serves as the weekend home of volunteer actors, artisans, cooks, dancers and musicians. After exchanging Euros for pretend-silver Thalers (the origin of the word dollar), you can order food (charcuterie platter: 8 Thalers; cheesecake: 4 Thalers), buy a ticket for the guided tour or purchase artisanal products (a wooden miner at work: 38 Thalers). Pet the goats and bunnies for free; approach the geese at your peril. The village also stages some well-studied reconstructions, including the miners’ oath ceremony before each group’s ascent. A gaggle of smiths were forging hammerheads with traditional tools, while carpenters nearby built carts for transporting ores and a water pump, working from a sixteenth-century design by the mining engineer, physician, mayor and Humanist Georg Agricola.
Real mining settlements began to dot Europe following the industry’s proliferation in the later twelfth century, long before European powers shifted their greedy gaze to new “resource frontiers” across the seas. Centuries before the Industrial Revolution inaugurated the Anthropocene, that is to say, miners were denuding, carving and perforating mountains across the countryside. The huge volume of rocks being hewn, hauled and heaped suggested that extraction did more than merely tinker with Creation. Unlike agriculture, the extraction of metal ores, coal and other minerals created a constant need to replenish timber supports, ventilation systems, water pumps and cabins, not to mention charcoal for fire-setting, roasting and smelting. Transporting wood from afar was prohibitively expensive, which in turn accelerated local deforestation and increased erosion and the risk of inundation.
Waterways were re-channeled to protect and service sites. Miners settled and introduced new plant and animal species. Ecosystems were reshaped quickly and often irreversibly. Sometimes in a single lifetime, the biomass replacing what miners consumed changed its entire profile, and a major factor in that transition was the new heavy metal content of local soils. No need to wait centuries for modern “forever chemicals”: low-tech but relentless activity meant that mineral-rich top-soil soon became scarce, and what was left in its acidic stead fostered, at best, pioneer growth.
The valley around Glückaufdorf seems pristine and lush today, not at all the barren landscape of nearby Saint-Nicolas depicted by Heinrich Gross in the mid-sixteenth century. But Gross’s series of drawings was, in fact, an advertisement. It sought to convince lords, investors and local communities that their risky, pioneering path was of great value. The men wear clean white hoods, tunics, leggings and shoes, and while the attire makes them look like the sperm characters in Woody Allen’s Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex, Gross has them walking tall into the gallery, passing beneath the cross of the dukes of Lorraine. Leather aprons shield their behinds; lamps rather than candles show them the way. Bundles of extra pick- and hammerheads balance on their shoulders. Our eyes are drawn to the serious men (and eventually the cute puppy) rather than to the naked slopes separating them from the nearby village.
Were these the real beginnings of the An- thropocene, however modest? Was it with these man-made tunnels—miles and miles of them perforating the earth, then feeding thousands of polluting forges—that homo sapiens unwittingly embarked on the sixth extinction? The Extractocene? Few people in Europe now dwell directly near defunct mines and former foundries. Yet mining’s non-degradable wastes — lead, arsenic, copper, silver — have moved on through animals, air, water and land in tiny toxic particles that lodged themselves in ecosystems near and far. In this sense, I and my fellow visitors to Eisenthür, like millions of Europeans today, continue to be touched by preindustrial mining.
Friendly Glückaufdorf celebrates the region’s wealth, and the proud communities that flourished here since at least the fourteenth century thanks to nature’s bounty. Lacking most visual clues of “industrial” devastation or struggle, this “preindustrial” site is quaint and reassuring. Groups descend from the defunct yet lively mine into the cozy cackle of families on vacation and the scent of stew. It all seems so... sustainable. The valley’s revegetation creates the illusion of a healthy landscape. Its fresh green mantle thus undergirds a certain logic of re-enactment, reinforcing a discontinuity between past and present, between manual medieval mining and mechanized, megalomaniacal modern extraction.
The message was well received. Hundreds of people flocked there that weekend, from France, Germany, Switzerland and even Australia. Tens of thousands of people visit Europe’s mining museums and sites every year, from Sweden to Spain, and from England to the Czech Republic.
Few of the official tours I’ve taken over the years address the social tensions that were heightened by migration and by the rise of privileged mining communities. Even fewer broach the difficult subject of mines’ long-term environmental impacts: erosion, acidification, poisoning of land and water habitats. In private, of course, many of the scholars, guides and organizers I met share an ambivalence about how such sites are being popularized. A French geologist visiting Glückaufdorf warily looked on as their three-year-old child played before the entrance to a tunnel. A historian of science arriving from Basel with their family inquired whether local soils had ever been tested. Never systematically, they were told; and one municipality nearby allegedly tried to bury a toxicological study. What’s to re-enact when the ecological drama is ongoing?
I drained my glass of anachronistic IPA (two Thalers), dumped my utensils in the recycling bin and headed down to the crowded car park. The geese were still recovering from the chil- dren’s target practice. “À la prochaine!” “Oui, Glück auf!”
[1] This text draws on field notes made during a visit to the Vosges in 27-28 May 2023. I am grateful to Joseph Gaunthier and the entire ASEPAM team for their warm hospitality