The played-out steelworks and coalmines of the Ruhr region in Germany’s north-west are witnessing a cultural transformation, says Andrew Eames.
Photos: www.tomparkerphotography.com / www.thewideangle.com
On Sunday 20 June motorists scything along the A40 autobahn towards Essen will find their progress impeded by a giant open-air picnic. A vast table, 60km long, will stretch all the way from the towns of Dortmund to Duisburg, and there will be music, food and dancing. All in all, it would probably be better to avoid the area. Mind you, there is plenty of time to find an alternative route; the Sunday in question is in 2010.
For Germany – the only Western nation that does not impose speed limits on its motorways – the very idea that a street party should have precedence over the mighty motor car is highly unlikely. But then so is turning an industrial area into a centre of culture and recreation, which is exactly what is happening north and south of this length of autobahn.
The A40 strikes through the heart of the Ruhr, a heavily industrialised region that grew up around coal mines, steel mills and the chemical industry. It is a smog- and slag-ridden urban sprawl that is nevertheless being resurrected as the European Capital of Culture for 2010. It will be quite a transformation.
The Germans have long been at the forefront of recycling. The rest of Europe may slowly be catching up in the bottles-and-newspapers department, but Germany has raised the bar again in the Ruhr. It has recycled defunct blast furnaces, machine houses and giant gasometers, and turned them into leisure centres, concert halls and art galleries.
The land certainly needed a makeover. The hills were black, the rivers fetid, the sky occasionally livid with the reflected flare of vomiting molten steel. Some 53 townships merge into each other in an concrete mesh, with big fish such as Essen, Dortmund and Duisburg tangled in a net of motorways and railway lines. This was Germany’s hairy armpit.
Downtown, these places have little architectural distinction thanks to the attentions of the RAF and USAF during World War II. The massive post-war redevelopment soaked up immigrants and refugees, though, and the Ruhr was cast as the engine for Germany’s giant leap forward.
It is still a major manufacturing zone, but these days it hums as much as it belches. Now coal is running out (only a handful of the 140 coal mines operating in the 1960s are still working), the region is turning more to technology and information sciences. With a lot of its industrial monoliths having fallen idle, the choice was either to dismantle them or to find some other use.
The most high profile and dramatic of these transformations is the Zollverein mine complex. Recognised as a World Heritage site by Unesco in 2001, the brick Bauhaus-inspired mine now hosts a collection of museums, galleries, restaurants, venue halls and its own design and business management school.
A walkway across a wasteland of cinders leads to the colliery, where coal dust was fire-blasted into industrial carbon (coke) that burns hot enough to melt metal. Here a big dipper and a swimming pool have been set among the ovens and you can wander down evacuated smoke chambers to stare up the huge chimney to the orb of daylight a giddy 90m overhead.
Zollverein has been a big success, breathing life back into a district that was ready to die. It welcomes 200,000 visitors a year, and its various enterprises provides employment for the region. Among the employees is 75-year-old Günter Stoppa, a miner who now works as an enthusiastic tour guide.
‘In the beginning, nobody was happy with the idea of redeveloping Zollverein. The miners wanted to tear it down, so it could be all over and done with, finished. But the buildings were listed, so it had to be preserved. In the end, the miners had to be realistic – there simply wasn’t any more coal available, the 5,000 to 6,000 old jobs were gone, so something else had to be done. Now 1,000 new jobs have been created, and there’s been a domino effect all over the region with other mines and steel mills. Zollverein has been a great example for others to follow. I believe that it will become a magnet for people from abroad, especially in 2010.’
The transformation of Zollverein has been a hugely costly exercise, however, with much of the bill footed by the EU. Not every resurgent building is a burden on the taxpayer, though. In downtown Essen, opposite a new shopping mall due to open next year, is the Colosseum Theatre. Housed in the huge rectangular brick building, the renovated theatre has retained all of the original structure, right down (or up) to the gantry cranes that run across the roof. Meanwhile, encased inside it is a lavish new auditorium where top-end musicals – such as Mamma Mia – are staged. Even if musicals are not to your taste, it is worth visiting. ssen is the lead city in the culture capital project, principally because it is better provided for in terms of transport access and purpose-built theatres and auditoriums. It also has Margaretenhöhe, a suburb built in the style of an English garden city by enlightened industrialists for their employees. Rows of pretty cottages are reminiscent of the terraces in English mining towns, complete with lovingly tended gardens. And, as with those mining communities, pigeon racing, growing giant vegetables and an idiosyncratic sense of humour are the order of the day.
Many of the Capital of Culture’s big attractions lie beyond Essen’s boundaries, with 25 of them packaged together in the Industrial Heritage Trail, a post-industrial safari into what was once forbidden territory.
Highlights are the gasometer at Oberhausen, now a giant 118m-tall art gallery whose exhibitions have to be tailor-made to fit. It seems that artists are queuing up to have a go at creating something that makes use of such a huge vertical space.
ven more impressive diversification has taken place at the landscape park in Duisburg-Nord, a former ironworks with towers, gasometers, bunkers, silos, crucibles, power plants and compressor rooms, all on an immense scale.
Since its closure in 1985, parts of the ironworks have been redeveloped – the gasometer has been filled with water for the biggest artificial diving centre in Europe, the concrete bunkers have been turned into climbing walls, number five furnace has been dedicated to mountaineers, and an open-air cinema with a rolling roof has been inserted into furnace number one. The Compressor Room is endlessly booked up for dinners and dances, and the giant Power Station hosts opera and trade fairs. And when darkness falls the whole tangled mass turns into a light installation thanks to British lighting designer Jonathan Park.
What has been achieved in the Landschaftspark and the Zeche Zollverein is impressive for anyone interested in architecture and community restructuring, but the Ruhr wants to spread its message to a wider audience, and that is where the Capital of Culture comes in.
Petra Hedorfer, chief executive officer of the German National Tourist Board, says: ‘Disused coal mines and majestic blast furnaces provide incredible backdrops for concerts and theatre shows. And topical themes such as structural change and multiculturalism are at the heart of the region’s cultural life.
‘The city of Essen and the Ruhr area provide a wonderful illustration of Germany’s multi-faceted cultural landscape. In few other regions has the landscape had such a dramatic impact on cultural change and transformation – both the Ruhr landscape and the architectural legacy of its industrial heyday offer enormous potential both as cultural spaces and for elements of individual creativity.’
Ruhr 2010’s Nadja Grizzo adds: ‘The first step in the process was to make locals feel positive about their environment, which has been done. Now we can show the Ruhr to the world. We want people to stand in astonishment, and say, ‘‘Look at what’s happened here.’”
So if you are on that stretch of the A40 in June 2010, do not expect to get anywhere fast. But come prepared for enlightenment. And a 60km picnic.
Getting there
Easyjet, Lufthansa and Air Berlin all fly to Dusseldorf, Essen’s nearest airport. From here, you can take a train to Essen’s central station, but be careful to get a direct one – rather than the S-bahn suburban lines that stop everywhere.
Where to eat
The Casino restaurant in Zollverein’s compressor room is the trendy place to eat, and you can even try some traditional miner’s food – venison with sauerkraut and dumplings.
Find out more
Where to stay
The Mintrops Stadt Hotel is in Margaretenhöhe, the garden city suburb, where it overlooks a pretty square; ask for a balcony room. Doubles from €164 ($230).
Tel: (+49) 201 438 60 www.margaretenhoehe.com
Alternatively there is the Alte Lohnhalle, a hotel converted from a coal mine’s wages hall in the suburb of Essen-Kray. Idiosyncratic and small, the hotel has just 17 rooms distributed around a galleried hall. Doubles from €68.
Tel: (+49) 201 384 570 www.Alte-Lohnhalle.de
For a more conventional stay, try the Mövenpick Hoel Essen near the main railway station. www.moevenpick-hotels.com
Comments are closed.