The municipality of Eisenschmitt served the writer Clara Viebig (1860-1952) as a model for her novel "Das Weiberdorf" (“The Women’s Village” or “The Village of Women”), which describes life in the small community of “Eifelschmitt”. The novel's background is a peculiarity of the village community: Owing to the increasing dearth of the raw material, iron ore, in the area around Eisenschmitt, those men capable of working became guestworkers in the Ruhr area towards the end of the 19th century. They earned a living for themselves and their families in the emerging steelworks. The women stayed back, and during their husbands’ long absence, they had to do all the work in the house and in the fields, hence the novel's name. The description of these conditions was perceived by many of the writer's contemporaries as scandalous, the women taking on a rôle that then was not commonly customary.