Friedrich Nietzsche declared famously that “God is dead!” so it is probably safe to assume that he did not much care what happened to his skeleton.

Which may be just as well as bulldozers prepare to turn over the philosopher's grave and his birthplace in search of brown coal.

The village of Röcken, south of Leipzig, is plastered with posters bearing quotes from Nietzsche's masterpiece, Thus Spake Zarathustra, announcing “Be true to the soil!” in a desperate attempt to prevent an energy company from turning the region into a lunar landscape.

Ralf Eichberg, head of the Nietzsche Society, said: “We have Nietzsche's birthplace, the church where he was baptised and where his father preached, the orchard where he played, the school where he learnt to read and write, and the graves; his, that of his sister Elisabeth, his parents.”

Digging the village up — as has happened to 25 east German communities targeted by mining companies since the Second World War — would destroy most of the physical traces of the 19th-century thinker. Röcken, with barely 600 inhabitants, used to be in East Germany and the Communist authorities considered Nietzsche dangerous; a supplier of ideas to the Nazis because his concept of a “Super-man” could be applied to Nordic German heroes.

In fact, Nietzsche thought the idea of a pure Teutonic race to be “a mendacious swindle”. But, no matter, he was put on the Communists' blacklist and Röcken was earmarked for stripmining in the 1980s.

With the end of communism there was a revival of interest in Nietzsche and suspicions about the merits of brown coal, or lignite. It is dirtier than hard coal and mining it involves ripping up the landscape. But the pendulum has swung again.

“Brown coal makes us less dependent on others for electricity generation,” said Johannes Heithoff, of the RWE Power energy group.

Any attempt to resume a nuclear power programme has been blocked by the Social Democrats. And there is anxiety about gas and oil deliveries from Russia — Germany's main supplier. So mining for brown coal, though making a nonsense of Germany's pledge to cut greenhouse gases, is on the rise. And Röcken is standing in the way.

But transferring the bodily remains of one of Germany's most famous philosophers is, say Nietzsche fans, an act of sacrilege. “The parish is unanimously against this,” said the local priest, Joachim Salomon. Unfortunately for villagers, most of the surrounding region is in favour of brown coal mining. There is 20 per cent unemployment locally and some towns have lost more than a third of their population since German unification. The mining companies employ 2,000 people directly and create work for another 3,000.

“Ultimately this will have to be decided at the political level,” said Andreas Günther, of Mibrag, the main mining company.

And politics is pitted against Nietzsche — and for the bulldozers.

All three leading parties in the region — the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats and the Left party — are in favour of job-creating strip mining, whatever it may do to the environment. Only the Green party is siding with the villagers and the champions of Friedrich Nietzsche.

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