Bitterfeld.

“Bitteres aus Bitterfeld” (“Bitter stuff from Bitterfeld”) announces the title of a documentary film from 1988 about the outrageous level of pollution and environmental destruction caused by chemical industry and coal mining around Bitterfeld, a town in the then German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and always under a layer of black carbon dust. Once icon for the ignorance and irresponsibility on the part of the East German government and administration concerning the environment, Bitterfeld has been cleansed of pollutants and its reputation since the 1990s. Within three decades, the area surrounding the town of 37000 inhabitants transformed from the “most polluted place in Europe” to a pretty destination for recreation and tourism, offering beaches, holiday homes, wildlife, and nature reserves.

This is the significantly shortened success story of Bitterfeld that the fleetingly interested visitor reads about in brochures promoting tourist activities. Naturally, a closer look reveals a more ambivalent story; many stories, in fact, that both complicate the idyllic present and add some color to the sooty past.

Colors of dust

Over a hundred years of mining and chemical production did both, providing livelihoods and destroying them. The overall record is very uneven for different species. But, to some extent, affected were all, including the human, by habitat destruction, pollution and displacement. Forests were logged, wetlands dried out, villages devastated, and riverbeds relocated – roads, railways, humans, and animals, too. The soil was dug up thirty to forty meters deep, in some places up to seventy meters; one hundred and eighty tons of fly ash drizzled down on Bitterfeld, daily.

The handling of toxic fumes, substances, and waste of the chemical industries was at large inadequate, hazardous for workers and residents and not seldom disastrous for the general environment and its future.

In the face of these indisputably grave consequences, other aspects of life, living, and livelihoods substantially shaped and afforded by coal mining and the chemical industry often get out of sight for those that have not lived that life. There was work and a stable income, there was solid social cohesion (the opposite, too, of course). And there was, and is, humble pride – pride in contributing to the national economy, in providing medicines, pesticides and electricity, in developing state-of-the-art technology in few niches, and in keeping the business running against all odds of the planned economy.

People losing their house and property to an expanding coal field were relocated in mostly newly built apartment houses, several stories high. Some inhabitants lost everything – their house and gardens, sites of memories, their anchor in life; for them devastation was existential. Others again moved out of social or material misery, or both, and into better circumstances. Apartments in multi-story houses came equipped with central heating and connected to water supply; they manifested progress, being modern and were consequently heavily sought after.

Finally, concerns about pollution and environmental destruction were central motives at the beginning of the formation of the civil movement that eventually lead to the Peaceful Revolution and political collapse of the GDR in 1989/90. The above mentioned documentary "Bitteres aus Bitterfeld" was produced together by West and East German activists, also from Bitterfeld - at a high personal risk for the East German collaborators.

The restoration of nature and capitalism

In October 1990, the first chancellor of reunited Germany, Helmut Kohl, described his vision for the East of the country as “flowering landscapes” (“Blühende Landschaften”), thereby invoking a current state of total ruination that, by implication, needs and justifies profound restoration. Consequently, in the early 1990ies, the mines and large parts of the chemical plants in Bitterfeld shut down. Fumes and fly ash swiftly vanished together with employment. While plants of the chemical industry were assessed and consequently either dismantled, liquidated, restructured, or sold or given away for free, the (former) mine fields were restored. Within ten years, the vast Bitterfeld mining area transformed into several lakes surrounded by generous areas of bush, marshland, and planted forest, parts of which are designated a nature reserve. The feral environment got furnished with land art, bike lanes, fire places, picknick spots and learning stations for environmental education. Since 2010, ospreys return annually to breed on top of a girder mast that once belonged to the mine's railroad; many other animal and flora species, some of them rare and endangered, have returned or found a new habitat in the indeed “flowering landscapes” surrounding Bitterfeld. For many, however, the bitter irony is that, while “flowering landscapes” were meant to call metaphorically for the revitalization of the economy in East Germany, significant parts of its former industrial infrastructure have literally turned into meadows.

And still, residents do not only appreciate the transformation their surroundings have undergone but actively engage with it. Local volunteers systematically monitor wildlife, report their data to the environemntal NGO BUND, promote environmental education, organize bike, hiking and bird watching tours and cultural events to reach out. Former employees of the mine on their part take particular pride in the impressive trajectory from mine to curated wilderness and their central role in the process. Today, the miners’ association does not only observe customs and celebrations unique to the guild, but works hard to publicize and archive the post-/mining history of Bitterfeld.

From the beginning, renaturation was closely linked to the promotion of tourism as a post-mining economic strategy and, indeed, the area has grown into a popular local recreational destination. First explorative fieldwork suggests, however, that the collective, labor intense, and mostly publicly funded efforts invested into restoration effected more than a marketable scenery; they created an entire living space beyond mine reclamation. One of the central research interests of this project, then, is to understand the ways in which this living environment continues to be made and unmade as well as the contentions that accompany this process. For instance, while some contest the acquisition of restored land by private investors, others emphasize the potential contribution private investment will make to the economic development of the wider region, a core political concern since the declaration of ruin.

This research project seeks to explore livelihoods in landscapes that emerged, and ceased, together. In doing so, the project aims to trace the numerous and contradictory ways in which processes and practices of extraction and ruination, restoration and (re)appropriation of landscapes and livelihoods are related to one another.