The people of Röcken are looking to late German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to save them. The eastern German town has for 108 years been the proud resting place of Nietzsche and it has now turned his grave into its strongest argument to halt a coal mining project that would wipe it off the map.

“Nietzsche is our only hope,” says Dorothee Berthold, who heads an association founded to spare the town of 600 people the fate of several others along a brown coal deposit stretching south of Leipzig. Last October, all 59 residents of nearby Heuersdorf were forced to pack up and leave after exhausting all legal means to stop excavations by US-owned mining house Mibrag.