THE POTT

Coal and steel determined his career. "The pot boils" admittedly now no longer, at least not in the sense in which the Ruhr region did from the beginning of the industrial revolution until the 1950s, 1960s. But the old collieries and machine halls, the gasometers and blast furnaces, the broadly developed railways and waterways convey an impressive picture of the era in which the region, as the notorious "coal pot," provided work and a home for hundreds of thousands of miners and steelworkers.
On 640 richly illustrated pages spreads before the reader an opulently designed, fascinating tribute to the Ruhr region and its industrial-cultural history - indeed, almost a brick of a coffee-table book that traces the numerous testimonies that the almost 200 years of coal and steel industry left in the Ruhr region, one of the largest urban centers in Europe.

From the massive brick building to the filigree steel structure, from Gothic touches to Art Nouveau, from the slag heap to the river and lake: architectural photographer Achim Bednorz captures the former industrial plants and areas in all their silent dignity. In the course of structural change, they have long since been given a new purpose as social or cultural centers, as official or corporate headquarters, as soil-rehabilitated residential areas or renaturalized recreational areas, but they still bear impressive witness to the history of the region. Bednorz shoots deserted images of the sites and thus brings out their almost cathedral-like character in a remarkable way. The Waltrop colliery, now the headquarters of Manufactum, is also honored in this illustrated book - including a view of the wage hall (now Manufactum Gastronomie) and the former coop that houses our Waltrop department store.
Art historian Walter Buschmann provides expert accompanying texts for the photographs, gives an insight into technology and modes of operation, and supplements the monuments of the present with historical maps and drawings. All this succeeds vividly and understandably, so that even the mining layman and Ruhr newcomer to the unique history and aesthetics of industrial culture in the former coal pot is revealed by simply leafing through.