Martina

The 2023 documentary "Once We Were Pitmen" follows miners as they enter a Ruhrkohle AG colliery one last time. The film tells of the end of a working world and of the people whose lives were shaped by mining. Martina occupies a special place in the film: she is the only woman known to have worked openly underground in Germany’s hard coal industry. Today she works in salt mining and, at the end of the film, calls it the job of her life.

Martina is a trans woman and began her transition while she was still working in hard coal mining. “I was actually always a woman,” she says. She had originally wanted to become a hairdresser, but at the time she was not allowed to. Mining nevertheless became part of her life. Her fellow miners, she says, responded well to her transition. Did she still eat Mettbrötchen, they asked, the raw minced pork rolls that are a familiar miners’ snack in the Ruhr. Of course she still does. Well, then everything is fine. She is still the same person.