This Mine Turned Mountains Into Roofs!

Deep beneath the Volcanic Eifel, in the town of Mayen, the Margareta mine has produced roofing slate the same way for generations. This film follows the miners 220 meters underground, where teams of three to five men still split slate by hand using the pointed pick, the splitting wedge, and the stone saw — tools and techniques largely unchanged since the mid-twentieth century. Every shift begins with prayer to Saint Barbara, patron saint of miners, before the descent by cage into a mountain where humidity reaches 96 percent and the seam runs undisturbed from the surface down into depth. Alongside the older hand methods, the film documents the wire saw introduced in 1956, the loading and blasting of the working face, and the daily rhythm of hauling, splitting, and hoisting that turns raw rock into the deep blue slate once destined for roofs across the Rhineland. Mayen's history as a center of slate roofing runs through the town itself, from the spiral-twisted spire of St. Clemens to the roofers' vocational school founded in 1925. Of all the rock brought up from Margareta, only about a tenth is usable as finished roofing slate, the rest lost to waste underground and during splitting above ground — a ratio the film traces from blast to finished plate. Shot as a record of mining methods already vanishing by the time of filming, this is a close look at a trade defined by patience, risk, and an inherited feel for the stone. Original source material: Schieferbergbau in der Eifel Teil 1- Abbau unter Tage Published by Alltagskulturen im Rheinland © LVR-Institut für Landeskunde und Regionalgeschichte CC BY 4.0