The New Village Morschenich-Neu: A Soundwalk

Since the early days of brown coal mining in the Rhineland large areas of the landscape between Aachen and Cologne have been transformed. Brown coal is extracted in open cast mining, which means that enormous mechanical diggers dig out the coal from underneath the surface layers of the earth. All that is left afterwards is a large hole in the ground that will be backfilled after the excavation has been finished. For the supply of the surrounding power plants the mining area has been extended constantly. Entire forests and many villages have disappeared due to open cast mining.

One of the villages that will disappear soon is Morschenich-Alt (old Morschenich). By 2024 the diggers of the Hambach mining district will have reached the old village. Many of its inhabitants have already moved to Morschenich-Neu (new Morschenich), where the village has been rebuilt. The RWE AG, the energy cooperation that executes the mining, reimburses the former inhabitants and reserves building plots for them. Morschenich New is not an exact copy of the old village. It is a developing area on the outskirts of the town of Merzenich. Everything is new except for the names of the streets and most of the inhabitants. The streets are named after the streets in Morschenich-Alt.

The recording is a soundwalk through Morschenich-Neu. It starts at the eastern entrance to the village at Ellener Allee, where currently new houses are being built, and follows Untere Straße towards the other end of the new village. The first section of the recording is marked by the sounds of a construction side. You can hear a bicycle drive by, people chatting and birdsong before a rather quiet section of the recording starts. Later on the sounds of a riding mower, an electric drill and a man chopping wood can be heard among the slightly older buildings towards the end of the village. The recordists footsteps accompany the entire recording.

Recordist: Kathinka Engels
Photographer: Konrad Gutkowski