"Your coal has brought us back up" - with this line, Herbert Grönemeyer expressed in 1984 to whom the Ruhr area owed its significance as an industrial region: coal. In 2018, the last hard coal mines in Germany closed. On this occasion, Franz-Josef Brüggemeier tells the story of the raw material that shaped an entire era. For a long time, coal represented progress and prosperity. It enabled an unprecedented surge in productivity and provided the energy to break free from pre-modern production methods. Without coal, the industrial revolution would not have been possible. With its help, European societies reached an unprecedented level of development well into the 20th century. However, this coal-driven leap into modernity also had its dark sides: coal provided the energy for two disastrous world wars.