The Grube Dr. Geier above Waldalgesheim is not a ruin in the picturesque sense. It is an abandoned baroque palace that happened to be a manganese mine, and I spent this afternoon walking around it. Two symmetrical wings, a gate house, a court of honour, an octagonal basin in front of the machine hall that was really a cooling pond. Weeds in the joints, a burnt-out section from a fire in 2003, corrugated iron over windows. What is most conspicuous is what is missing: the 50-metre steel headframe that stood at the centre of every photograph of this place until January 2014 …