Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in Essen
The Zollverein industrial complex in Land Nordrhein-Westfalen consists of the complete infrastructure of a historical coal-mining site, with some 20th-century buildings of outstanding architectural merit. It constitutes remarkable material evidence of the evolution and decline of an essential industry over the past 150 years.
The Zollverein industrial complex in Land Nordrhein-Westfalen consists of the complete infrastructure of a historical coal-mining site, with some 20th-century buildings of outstanding architectural merit. It constitutes remarkable material evidence of the evolution and decline of an essential industry over the past 150 years.
Outstanding Universal Value
Brief synthesis
The Zollverein XII Coal Mine Industrial Complex is an important example of a European primary industry of great economic significance in the 19th and 20th centuries. It consists of the complete installations of a historical coal-mining site: the pits, coking plants, railway lines, pit heaps, miner’s housing and consumer and welfare facilities. The mine is especially noteworthy of the high architectural quality of its buildings of the Modern Movement.
Zollverein XII was created at the end of a phase of political and economic upheaval and change in Germany, which was represented aesthetically in the transition from Expressionism to Cubism and Functionalism. At the same time, Zollverein XII embodies this short economic boom between the two World Wars, which has gone down in history as the “Roaring Twenties.” Zollverein is also, and by no means least, a monument of industrial history reflecting an era, in which, for the first time, globalisation and the worldwide interdependence of economic factors played a vital part.
The architects Fritz Schupp and Martin Kemmer developed Zollverein XII in the graphic language of the Bauhaus as a group of buildings which combined form and function in a masterly way.
Criterion (ii): The Zollverein XII Coal Mine Industrial Complex is an exceptional industrial monument by virtue of the fact that its buildings are outstanding examples of the application of the design concepts of the Modern Movement in architecture in a wholly industrial context.
Criterion (iii): The technological and other structures of Zollverein XII are representative of a crucial period in the development of traditional heavy industries in Europe, which were reinforced through the parallel development and application of Modern Movement architectural designs of outstanding quality.
Integrity
The Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex in Essen comprises all the elements of intensive 19th and 20th century industrial exploitation – the complete complex of buildings and equipment necessary for the extraction and treatment of coal and the production of coke, the required transportation network (in the case of railways) as well as the vast heaps of pit waste.
Authenticity
The Zollverein XII Coal Mine Industrial Complex has a high level of authenticity. The individual industrial components have inevitably lost their functional authenticity. However, a policy of sensitive and imaginative adaptive reuse has ensured that their forms survive intact, with significant items of the industrial plant preserved, and that their interrelationships remain visible in a clear and logical manner. In particular, the authenticity of the important group of industrial buildings designed for Zollverein XII by Fritz Schupp has been carefully conserved.
Protection and management requirements
The Zollverein XII Coal Mine Industrial Complex is a listed industrial monument according to paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Act on the Protection and Conservation of Monuments of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, dated 11 March 1980 (Protection Law). Building activities within the property and its buffer zone are regulated by paragraph 9 (2) of the Protection Law and through Local Building Plans.
The Zollverein Foundation, established and financed by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, is the owner of essential parts of the property and responsible for the management and the sustainable development of the World Heritage property. The Foundation acts in concertation with the regional and local historic monument conservation authorities. The management system consists of a set of maintenance and conservation measures. The strategy for the mine’s preservation focuses on a responsible redevelopment of the buildings for the purpose of culture and design, entertainment and tourism, implemented by the Zollverein Foundation.
Long Description
The technological and other structures of the Zollverein XII Coal Mine Industrial Complex are representative of a crucial period in the development of traditional heavy industries in Europe, when sympathetic and positive use was made of architectural designs of outstanding quality. Zollverein is an exceptional industrial monument by virtue of the fact that its buildings are outstanding examples of the application of the design concepts of the Modern Movement in architecture in a wholly industrial context.
Consolidation of the Zollverein mining claim area was completed in December 1847, when it was the northernmost mine in the region. It belongs to the Gelsenkirchen anticline, in which the coal seams are deeply stratified. Mining began in the mid-19th century at a depth of some 120 m and finished at 1,200 m. By the end of mining the underground roadways extended over 120 km; they were accessed by 12 shafts, opened up progressively between 1847 and 1932. When Zollverein XII was opened, the earlier shafts were used solely for the movement of men and supplies; all the extracted coal was handled by the new shaft until the mine closed in 1986. The methods of mining evolved as technology developed from hand picks to mechanized coal cutting. The coals being extracted at Zollverein were especially suitable for coking. Consequently, the first stack-type coke-ovens were built there in 1857. The coking plant expanded considerably over the decades that followed.
However, when the Zollverein mine was taken over by the steel company Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG in 1926, a new coking plant was built to process all the coal from its pits in the region. Coke production returned to Zollverein in the late 1950s, when the then holding company for the mines in the region, Gelsenkirchen Bergwerks AG, decided to build a new coking plant to supplement the Nordstern plant. This plant closed down in 1993 because of the fall in the demand for coke. Coal mining produces enormous quantities of waste material, which is deposited in the characteristic pit heaps. The earliest of these was planted with trees in 1895 and used as a recreational area for the mine officials. Intensive mining resulted in a number of subsidences, which necessitated clearance of damaged housing and other facilities. Subsidence exacerbated the water problems in the so-called Emscher Zone, where mining adversely affected the gravitational flow and created large areas of swamp. The workforce steadily increased.
The pits : only the foundations of the Malakow towers of the original pit survive; they are built over by the present headgear, both designed by Fritz Schupp in Bauhaus style. The 1922 main store has a reinforced-concrete frame. The pithead baths are in the form of a brick hall, capable of providing facilities for 3,000 miners. The ensemble is completed by the imposing administrative building (1906), the director's villa (1898), and the mine officials' residence (1878).
The coking plants at the individual Zollverein pits have all been demolished, but the central plant has been conserved since it closed down in 1993. The ovens extend over a distance of about 1km, parallel to the former Cologne-Minden railway line. Their equipment (pushers, quenching station, screening plant, and loading stations) are all intact, as are the gas-treatment and by-products installations, and ancillary buildings.
Railway lines : the original main railway lines (Cologne-Minden and the Bergische-Märkische line) are still in use, as part of the Bahn AG network. The railway connection between the Cologne-Minden lines via the mine to the Rhein-Herne Canal is also preserved.
Pit heaps : most of the mine-refuse heaps are still visible, several having been planted with trees and used as local recreational areas.
Miners' housing : a considerable number of houses survive in the former Hegemannshof and Ottekampshof colonies. These are for the most part four-dwelling buildings on a cross-shaped ground plan. They are built from brick, with large gardens attached.
Consumer and welfare facilities : two of the consumer facilities survive, although one had to be undergo extensive rebuilding after wartime damage.
Source: UNESCO/CLT/WHC
Historical Description
Consolidation of the mining claim area was completed in December 1847: the area concerned covered 13.2km2. At that time it was the northernmost mine in the region. It belongs to the Gelsenkirchen anticline, in which the coal seams, averaging 1.17m thick, are deeply stratified. Mining began in the mid 19th century at a depth of c 120m and finished at the fourteenth level (1200m). By the end of mining the underground roadways extended over 120km; they were accessed by twelve shafts, opened up progressively between 1847 and 1932. When Zollverein XII was opened, the earlier shafts were used solely for the movement of men and supplies; all the extracted coal was handled by the new shaft until the mine closed in 1986. The methods of mining evolved as technology developed from hand picks to mechanized coal cutting.
The coals being extracted at Zollverein were especially suitable for coking. Consequently, the first stack-type cokeovens were built there in 1857. The coking plant expanded considerably over the decades that followed. However, when the Zollverein mine was taken over by the steel company, Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG, in 1926, a new coking plant (the Nordstern plant) was built to process all the coal from its pits in the region. Coke production returned to Zollverein in the late 1950s, when the then holding company for the mines in the region, Gelsenkirchen Bergwerks AG, decided to build a new coking plant to supplement the Nordstern plant. It began production in 1961 from eight batteries, each of 24 ovens, producing 8600t per day; there were also facilities for processing by-products such as tar, sulphuric acid, benzene, ammonium compounds, and gas. This plant closed down in 1993 because of the fall in the demand for coke.
The construction of the stretch of the Cologne-Minden railway between Oberhausen and Hamm in 1847 was decisive for the location of the early Zollverein shafts, which were sunk 500m from the new line so as to facilitate transport of the coal and coke produced. The first passenger station did not open until forty years later. There were also links with the Emscher Valley line, also opened in 1847, which cut the north-western corner of the Zollverein concession. There followed a series of internal link lines during the next eighty years. It was connected with that of the neighbouring Bonifacius mine after Zollverein was taken over by Vereinigte Stahlwerke in 1926.
Coal mining produces enormous quantities of waste material, which is deposited in the characteristic pit heaps. The earliest of these, to the east of shaft 1/2, was planted with trees in 1895 and used as a recreational area for the mine officials. A second grew to the west of shaft 1/2 from that time, and in 1932 was used for pond management, to dry out the boiler-ash and coal slurries from Zollverein XII. A heap begun in 1880 was partially cleared in 1958 to provide land for miners' housing. Other heaps were used for filling areas where coal had been removed from a steeply dipping seam and on an abandoned airfield.
Intensive mining resulted in a number of subsidences, in some places as deep as 25m. This necessitated clearance of irretrievably damaged housing and other facilities. Subsidence exacerbated the water problems in the so-called Emscher Zone, where mining adversely affected the gravitational flow and created large areas of swamp. Local industries and municipalities created the Emscher Association, which carried out a number of projects using pumping stations and creating polders.
The workforce steadily increased to c 5000 by the end of the 19th century. During the 20th century it fluctuated between 5000 and 8000. Because there were no alternative property developers when work began in 1847, Zollverein began to construct housing for its workers. Building projects were integrated with the mine operating programmes.
Large building sites were purchased and by 1860 146 flats were ready for occupancy; at that time the mine employed 710 workers. This "Hegemannshof Colony" expanded steadily (by the turn of the century it covered around 90ha), and subsequently two more colonies, "Ottekampshof" and "Beisen," were added. By World War I the property owned by the mine had grown to over 720ha. However, this was by no means adequate for a workforce that numbered some 5000 at that time. Between the two World Wars new workers' housing developed, notably the housing estate built by the Trust Agency for Miners' Housing. In the late 1920s the mine could provide each of its salaried employees and officials with an apartment, but only some 3000 were available for the 8000 workers. After World War II new estates consisting of apartment blocks were built by the housing association established by Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG, such as the Kaldekirche, Westerbruch, and Kapitlacker estates from the 1950s. The Glückauf estate was built by the miners themselves working in collaboration. The houses were owned by private individuals. Two Pestalozzi villages were also built for apprentices. In 1958 there were 7061 dwellings available for a workforce of 8000.
From the start the mine provided consumer services for its employees, selling food and manufactured goods at low prices. They began on a "cooperative" basis, profits being returned to consumers in the form of an annual dividend. This scheme, with its six outlets, was taken over as a company enterprise by Vereinigte Stahlwerke. The system gradually declined after World War II because of competition from commercial stores, and the remaining outlets were bought out in the 1970s.
From the mid-1920s the mine provided welfare services for its employees. The first welfare centre was set up in 1928 (it was rehoused in 1938) and the second in 1934. A large modern welfare centre designed by Fritz Schupp was built in 1953. However, Zollverein closed its welfare facilities in the early 1960s, in line with the current trend in the Ruhr.
Source: UNESCO/CLT/WHC
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