South Yorkshire Times September 3, 1949

Manvers Main Impressed German Mine Students

Staying at the Travellers’ Rest Hotel, Swinton, this week, as guests of the National Coal Board, are three German milning students, Herr Hermann Findell and Herr Bernhard Juneman, of the Mining Academy, Clausthal (Harz) and Herr Hans Rufus, of the Technical University, Aachen.

Some of the party of 20 mining students visiting England on an exchange system, whereby an equal number of English students will visit Germany, the three students are visiting local collieries as part of their training as mining engineers, studying the English mining system. They will stay in Yorkshire for 12 days before moving to the Northumbrian coalfield.

Visiting Manvers Main Colliery on Wednesday, the students were impressed by the pithead bath and sun-ray treatment systems. Down the mine, they think that coal is won more easily than in Germany, because all seams here run horizontally. in German seams run at an angle of almost 70 degrees in most places. Equipment is very similar.

Before completing his training and taking a mining degree, the German student has to do practical work in iron, salt, copper, zinc and lead mines.

Before coming to Yorkshire the trio went sight-seeing in London as guests of the London County Council and attended a garden party for all the German students, sponsored by the N.C.B.. at Richmond, Surrey.

Of England they think well, and would like to stay and work in our mines. Compared with the average wage of an underground worker in Germany, the English miner gets almost twice as much, and owing to high priced essentials in Germany is much better off.