THE LONG DARK COAL FULL

These days, the Zollverein coking plant is a spectacular illuminated attraction at nightДЄrtists and curators that have utilized post-industrial sites across the region have cleverly interacted with the existing coal and steel heritage. Zollverein also anchors the European Route of Industrial Culture.В AsВ such post-industrial sites have beenВ transformed into sustainable places of creativity and learning, itВ has generated more money for the region thanВ dying coal mines. In operation for 135 years, it became anВ architectural monument when it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001. The massive Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial ComplexВ in Essen that was shuttered in 1986, for instance,В soon after becameВ theВ home for major cultural institutions such as parts of the Folkwang University of the Arts.

When Angela Merkel declared back in 2007 that the hard coal industry would be shut down by 2018, the race has been on to build on the cultural transformation that had been seeded in the Ruhr as early as the 1970s,В when artists began to utilizeВ abandoned industrial sites. That is where the culture and tourism industries have stepped in. While nearly half a million people once worked in the Ruhr coal and steel industry, a slow process of deindustrialization has caused major unemployment and hardship across mining towns in theВ western part of Germany.

THE LONG DARK COAL FULL

When the Prosper-Haniel mine closes on Friday, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier will be on hand to strike the death knell of a hardВ coal mining industry that was once the backbone of a resurgent postwar Germany.Д«ut as a 200-year eraВ of industrial coal mining in Germany comesВ to an end, the promise of a cultural transformation that began decades agoВ is set to take full shape.

The long dark coal