Eckhardt Heukamp followed the abyss all his life.
Even as a child, he knew that huge excavators were coming out there.
A few years ago, the 56-year-old had to leave his farm in Borschemich.
There are also no longer many neighboring villages.
Several thousand people have been relocated and houses and streets torn down over the past few decades.
The paddle wheels eat their way through Heukamp's homeland, leaving deep gorges in the Rhenish lignite mining area near Erkelenz. They shovel lignite so that power plants can produce electricity. The crater landscape between Cologne and Aachen is growing. "The death of the villages is part of our life here," says Heukamp.