Germany shuts down its coal mine

Stressing to keep down tears, their once-white head protectors and overalls spread with residue, seven excavators in Germany ventured out of a metal confine bearing the last piece of dark coal that they would pull up from in excess of 3,000 feet beneath.

The men, at the Prosper-Haniel mine on Friday, gave the football-estimate lump of coal to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier with the words "Glueck Auf." This old excavators' welcome generally deciphers as "good fortunes," mirroring the vulnerability of an actual existence spent prospecting profound underground.

The service spoke as far as possible of an industry that established the frameworks for Germany's modern insurgency and its after war monetary recuperation.

"A bit of German history is arriving at an end here," Mr. Steinmeier told the diggers. "Without it, our whole nation and its improvement in the course of recent years would have been incomprehensible."

• [Editor:janita]