Heuersdorf was a village in the Leipzig lowlands, Saxony, Germany. The area of the village belongs to the city of Leipzig since 2004. After a long but ultimately futile resistance of the inhabitants since 1935 the village was evacuated and devastated. See bellow the description, taken from www.heuersdorf.de, illustrates the struggle:
The villagers were forced to accept financial assistance offered by MIBRAG to move from Heuersdorf, since they did not have the monetary resources for resisting the evacuation by legal means. For many years, younger adults refused such enticements to leave their homeland. They were raising families and wanted to preserve the village and its community values. However, any further refusal to give up their homes would now lead to forced eviction and unendurable financial losses. Contrary to the declared intention of the state government of Saxony to keep the village community intact, people from Heuersdorf have been resettled at more than a dozen different locations. The singular interest of MIBRAG over the years was directed at coercing individual families out of the village, eroding human bonds and heightening the insecurity of those inhabitants remaining
In 2007 the regional legislature approved plans to dig up the remaining town to get at some 50 million tons of lignite, or brown coal, to supply a nearby power station. Village authorities fought the plan for years but lost their appeal in Germany’s Constitutional Court in 2005. Most of Heuersdorf’s 320 residents were resettled, most of them farmers and/or retirees. In addition to individual compensation, one important fact deserve to be remarked. An important element of the local cultural heritage was also relocated: a 700-year-old Romanesque-style stone church. As part of the negotiations, the Mibrag mining company spent $4.2 million to move the church from their original location in Heuersdorf to the near town of Borna.
This operation represents a good example of engineering masterpiece, but also of cultural heritage conservation. It is also an example of how social cohesion is linked to such heritage. Any threat to this heritage is, therefore, a threat to the community itself:
Reference
Die große Reise einer kleinen Kirche; The long journey of a little church” (2007). Leipziger Universitätsverlag. Leipzig.
A Holy Journey: Church Moved to Make Way for Coal Mine. (2007, October 24). Spiegel. Retrieved August 24, 2015, from http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-holy-journey-church-moved-to-make-way-for-coal-mine-a-513286.html
Conversation with Prof. Dr. Sigrun Kabisch, Head of the Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung (UFZ).
Heuersdorf. Geschichte und Abschied eines mitteldeutschen Dorfes. Pro Leipzig Verlag, Leipzig 2009, ISBN 978-3-936508-36-9
Xaquín S. Pérez-Sindín López 