In 1984, Peter Stripp (writer),[4] and Klaus Emmerich,[1] received an honorable mention for the series at the Adolf Grimme Award ceremony The farmer Bruno Kruska comes, attracted by advertisers, at 17 years of Pomerania in the Ruhr area to work there as a miner on the pit Siegfried.

First as a tug, later as a hawker, Bruno finds the work hoped for and witnesses the events surrounding the Siegfried colliery before the turn of the century.

But Max's doubts come from National Socialist Germany; When his uncle Karl and his brother-in-law Richard are imprisoned, he turns away from the formerly supported policy.

After all, Max, together with his brother-in-law Richard, who has since been released from custody, prevents the Siegfried colliery from being destroyed by the Wehrmacht at the end of the war.

Together with Fränzi, Sofie, Jupp and Richard, Max witnessed the demolition of the winding tower of the Siegfried colliery in the late 1950s.

Since the Ruhr area only half belonged to Westphalia administratively (as the title 'Rote Erde' indicates), the Siegfried colliery must be located in the northeastern district.

In episode 2, on the occasion of the election of the strike delegates, instead of fictional mines ("Hermine II", "Cäcilie", "Karl August", etc.)

Later, a sister of the Caritas Hattingen office (as it says on her coach) delivers laundry and hidden communist leaflets to the Kruska family from.

Together with Rewandowski's statement that the Siegfried colliery is already more than 100 years old (at the beginning of the 19th century the Ruhr mining industry concentrated on the last mentioned cities), the area of today's Ennepe-Ruhr district appears to be the most likely place of action.

The conveyor tower in the first season has a clear similarity to an early photograph of the Hibernia colliery from the 1850s, as it is printed in the WAZ Chronicle of the Ruhr (1987).