After the Shift

With the cessation of hard coal mining in the Saar on June 30, 2012, an era ended that shaped the Saarland economically, socially, and culturally for more than two centuries. Since then, it has been a statewide concern to keep the remembrance culture and the history of mining alive for future generations. Many museum institutions and exhibitions focus on “work underground.” 

The municipality of Illingen wants to put the lives of miners and their families in the spotlight with the experience path “After the Shift” – at times when the miner earned his living during the shift underground and, in the limited time after the shift, as a so-called miner-farmer, cultivated a small piece of land for self-sufficiency. Through information boards and interactive stations, visitors gain insight into the not always easy, often also deprived everyday life of the Penth miner family. The family, who might have lived in Welschbach about 100 years ago, is fictitious, but their life story and the circumstances of that time are not.