Bucket-wheel Excavator 1452

Lignite or brown coal was mined in south-east German for 250 years until around 2000. At Hagenwerder, south of Görlitz, the last large-scale opencast mining machine for the industry is now a landmark. ‘Excavator 1452’ was preserved in 2001. This 33.5m-tall giant is the star exhibit in the museum. It has long steel booms and moves on caterpillar tracks. One boom holds the rotating excavator buckets and another supports conveyors that carried the lignite to railway wagons. The excavator was made in 1961 by VEB Schwermaschinenbau Lauchhammerwerk and worked in the Phönix opencast mine in Altenburg. Visitors can climb up it to a height of 24m. A control room the size of a house stands at the base. Other exhibits include railway locomotives and wagons, bulldozers, cranes and smaller excavators. There is a walking trail around the lake, Berzdorfer See, where opencast mining once took place.