The Landmark Art and Industrial Heritage Trail
This trail begins at the Nordsternpark, one of 19 "anchor points" along the Route of Industrial Heritage, which is also an important element in the regional Route of Industrial Heritage. The focus along the way is on the scenic experience, interesting leisure offerings and the significance of landmark art. So come with us on the Landmark Art and Industrial Heritage Trail and see just how enchanting 'man-made heritage' can be.
Nordsternpark anchor point (www.nordsternpark.de)
Together with the (Emscher-) Landschaftspark Hessler, the Nordsternpark forms an open tract of countryside, the like of which is seldom found in the central Ruhr area. It is an impressive mix of austere linear structures (waterways), open country and stark industrial architecture. The steel-framed buildings here bear the mark of the prominent German architects Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer. Architectural legacies of the industrial age flank the park, serving as reminders of the region's history. Nordstern Colliery (the name means North Star) first shone in 1858 as the northernmost coal mine in the Ruhr. When it closed in 1993, it was the region's southernmost pit. But the lights weren't out for long, as in 1997 the Federal Garden Show was held here.
Following its transformation from a derelict industrial site to a sweeping landscape park with fields and water features, you can now cast your gaze far into the distance. You see the Schurenbach spoil heap with its famous Serra monument. From artistically designed bridges you can watch the barges on the Rhine-Herne canal. Or you can go down to the landing stage and step on board a passenger cruiser (for more information please see www.nordsternpark.de / attractions/ships jetty).
A further highlight is the climbing garden in the spoil-heap park. Here, you can watch climbers scaling the three 18 m high rockfaces or have a go yourself. (Tel.: +49 209/ 586486 - evenings only.)
During the open-air season, a modern, 6,100 capacity amphitheatre provides a stage for concerts, plays and shows (www.amphitheater-gelsenkirchen.de).
For children there is a spacious water play area with round tub boats, slides, seesaws, sandpits and climbing frames. Between 10 am and 6 pm, toys, volleyball nets, footballs and much more besides are lent out to children and juveniles aged between 3 and 14 (groups by prior appointment: +49 209/3616490).
It's hard to believe that the site was once earmarked for a power station and a waste incinerator in the face of hefty resistance from the local population. The tug-of-war between nature and industry is now over. After years of inquiries, both have blossomed anew in a common alliance that has transformed relics of history into a garden of memories.
The history of Nordstern Colliery and the mining industry in general is being kept alive by former coal miners in a mine tunnel created for the Federal Garden Show in 1997. Between April and October, schools, kindergartens and adult groups can arrange a tour of the 63 m long visitor tunnel by prior appointment (Tel.: 0209/ 57042).
On the northern edge of the park, model railway enthusiasts can admire the Deutschland Express, a layout boasting more than 500 Märklin trains. The exhibition takes you on a journey through beautifully replicated landscapes - from the Swiss Alps to the North Sea. A host of details, including a fairground with illuminated and rotating carousels, will soon leave you engrossed.
Thee Nordsternpark restaurant is pleasant place to stay awhile, and there's also a function room available for hire.
www.nordsternpark.de
Panorama image: Nordsternpark - canal stage
Panorama image: Nordsternpark - amphitheatre
Addresses:
Deutschland-Express Modelleisenbahnanlage GmbH
Am Bugapark 1 C
45899 Gelsenkirchen
Tel.: +49 209/508 36 60
Fax: +49 209/508 36 61
www.deutschland-express.de
Bus:
Lines 383 and CE 56, alight at Nordsternpark
Amphitheater Gelsenkirchen
Grothusstrasse
45899 Gelsenkirchen
Tel.: +49 209/5083405
www.amphitheater-gelsenkirchen.de
Bus:
Lines 383 and CE 56, alight at Krokuswinkel
Schurenbach spoil heap and the "Slab for the Ruhr"
This lookout point lies to the southwest of the Nordsternpark, some 25-30 minutes away on foot. Several serpentine bends take you up to the plateau on top of the spoil heap, either from Rhine-Herne canal or, coming from the opposite direction, from the A42 autobahn. After climbing up through a harmonious landscape you are greeted by an unadulterated slice of the Ruhr, as a labyrinth of roads, housing, green spaces, spoil heaps and industrial buildings comes into view.
The impressive, elevated location is accentuated by the very dark, elliptical surface of the heap. A steel slab almost 15 m high serves as a reminder to the era of coal and steel, and adds a sense of scale to what is otherwise a sweeping setting.
As a part of the IBA Emscher Park project that ran from 1989 to 1999, the American artist Richard Serra was commissioned to set the site in scene in a manner befitting its significance for the industrial age. In his younger days Serra, born in 1939, financed his university education by working in steelworks. While on a visit to a church in Rome whose footprint had the shape of an ellipse, he conceived the idea of creating elliptical works of art. This geometrical form also provided Serra with guidance in a region whose history has been dominated by coal and steel.
Serra was initially at a loss as to what to do. In an interview published in the Tageszeitung on 22 June 1999, he said: "I was absolutely fascinated by the power and the mystery of this place - it was like a lunar landscape. It's impossible to walk around without thinking about the significance of the slave labour that lies beneath you. I had no idea what more I as a sculptor could say about it." Until he noticed that you involuntarily walk up from the edge of the ellipse to the middle. "OK, I thought, keep to what you know. Take a giant piece of steel and stick it in the middle..."
Bus:
Line 383, alight at the 'Rhein-Herne-Kanal' stop (the walk from the bus stop to the spoil heap takes about 25-30 minutes at a leisurely pace).
Rungenberg spoil heap plus Schüngelberg housing estate
Situated on A2 autobahn on the southern edge of the Gelsenkirchen district of Buer, this 70 m high landmark is a unique artistic feature that takes the form of a twin-peaked pyramid. After dusk, two floodlights project intersecting beams of light to create a 'night signal' in the sky, serving as a reminder of the 'city of a thousand fires', as Gelsenkirchen was once known.
The Schienenplateau (rail plateau) is a 33 x 41 m ellipse that was hewn in the side of the gently sloping spoil heap and crammed with 5,500 m of rails from a disused mining railway line. The rails symbolise the transport system that shaped the industrial development of the entire region.
We also recommend a walk around the garden settlement of Schüngelberg, which dates back to 1903. This area of housing (cf. the Workers' Housing Trail), which was built for mineworkers from Hugo Colliery, was carefully restored and extended as part of the IBA Emscher Park regeneration project which ran from 1989 to 1999. Along a sight line towards the spoil heap, the trail leads through the new section of the estate to the 'Gatehouse'. You then climb a long series of steps to a path that takes you between the imposing twin peaks of the heap, offering some bizarre views along the way. The descent via normal paths is rather more leisurely.
Tram:
Line 301, alight at Emil-Zimmermann-Allee (5 minutes' walk from the housing estate, and approximately 25 minutes to the spoil heap when walking at a leisurely pace).
Panorama image: Rungenberg spoil heap
Rhine-Elbe Sculpture Park - a derelict industrial site is transformed into an art and nature sanctuary
Coal was mined at Rhine-Elbe Colliery from 1861 to 1928. Production then moved to the northeast (Alma Colliery) and the south (Holland Colliery). Today, the beautifully restored colliery buildings have been brought back to life and now serve as a home to a training academy and an enterprise centre for new businesses. It is hard to imagine that the scene was once dominated by coal-blackened miners. You are rewarded, however, by views that are hard to fins anywhere else.
We particularly recommend the walk or bicycle ride from Gelsenkirchen railway station through the pedestrian zone on Bochumer Strasse, with its Wilhelminian-style buildings dating back to the late nineteenth century. Cross Neustadtplatz, and after about 150 metres a gap appears in the formerly impenetrable row of houses, leading to the Wissenschaftspark Gelsenkirchen, or Gelsenkirchen Science Park (cf. Solar Trail).
A broad grassed area with a lake offers a pleasant contrast to the urban setting. Behind it, the 300 metre long glass arcade of the representative Science Park building rises into the sky. After crossing the main road (B227), go through the inviting green space to the right, maintaining a respectful distance from the glass arcade. Keep straight on and cross Virchowstrasse before passing a car park, behind which the trail reaches the Rhine-Elbe Sculpture Park (Skulpturenwald Rhein-Elbe) off to the left. On the right-hand side you can see the imposing brick colliery buildings, whose functional transformation makes them well worth a look inside. The atrium in the training academy run by the State Ministry of Building is particularly worthy of mention in this respect.
The first sculpture, featuring relics of foundations from former Ruhr collieries propped up on tree trunks, appears totally unexpectedly in front of a spoil heap. This is the northern entrance to the sculpture park created by Hermann Prigrann. To the left, a bizarrely illuminated mine entrance - dubbed the 'blue grotto' by the artist - offers an unexpected sight. You are now at the foot of a spoil heap that was once used to store the waste material (refuse) extracted with the coal.
Keeping the 'hill' to your left, follow the footpath until you come to the 'jungle', an area that has been left to evolve over many decades, having been deserted by the working man a long, long time ago. Various hardy trees, such as acacias and planes, were planted here at a time when it was still clouded in smoke and soot. To the left, the terrain opens up and a set of steps leads to a 'tree area'. The exhibits consist of relics from the former headquarters of the Ruhrkohle mining company in Essen. Railway sleepers from nearby bridges also find their way into Prigrann's works.
In front of the aforementioned steps, the path continues straight on in a southerly direction. In this section the wood is unusually wild and gradually becomes denser. The contrast to the urban scene on Bochumer Strasse of just a few minutes earlier could not be greater.
The wood is clearly being allowed to 'take over'. Newness abounds, without a forester in sight. Anything falling from the trees is left to lie and rot! It is a wood straight from a fairy-tale; there are no orderly planted rows of trees here. It is simply tremendous and so close to the city centre!
To the right, a substation makes itself heard, behind which a forestry centre is located in what used to be an electrical distribution station. This is also the departure point for nature expeditions organised for schools and the general public. Soon you are learning about the plants that were brought here from all over the world among the ores and other materials. Narrow-leaved ragwort, Canada goldenrod and butterfly bush today enhance the nature experience in the middle of Europe's largest conurbation.
The highlight, in the truest sense of the word, is the climb up the 110 metre high Spiralberg (Spiral Mountain) to the south. The path takes you to the foot of this artificial elevation before climbing sharp left along an avenue of birch trees enclosed by embankments. At the end turn sharp right uphill through the wood, behind which the 'peak', formed by contrastingly dark ballast material, comes into view. Concrete relics of a Dortmund coal mine rise imposingly over the site. Many visitors are reminded of Aztec art when they see this sight. From the south a 'stairway to heaven' leads to this impressive formation. At the top, the reward is a sweeping panoramic view stretching from the Ruhr heights in the South via Bochum and Herne, past Scholven power station in the north and a number of other landmarks as far as the relatively small Mechtenberg hill in the southwest. Afterwards you can follow the same route back to Gelsenkirchen city centre.
This is a place where the artist has succeeded in creating a symbiosis. Like a mirror of time, this art and country park is a symbol for the transformation from the exploitation of nature to an era of reconciliation between man, technology and nature. It is a thought that points the way into the future whilst at the same time sounding a note of caution. And it is a thought to accompany you on the remainder of the Landmark Art and Industrial Heritage Trail in Gelsenkirchen. Flourishing nature on man-made terrain - a pleasant interaction, not necessarily a contradiction in terms!
Location: approx. 2 km south of the railway station, 2 km north of the A40 autobahn turn-off to Gelsenkirchen.
Tram:
Line 302, alight at Wissenschaftspark (a ten-minute walk to the entrance to the sculpture park, and a further 30 minutes to the 'Spiral Mountain' in the south of the park).
Bus:
Line 389, alight at Humboldtstrasse (a 20-minute leisurely walk to the 'Spiral Mountain') or Virchowstrasse (entrance to the sculpture park).
Nature information and guided tours
Forststation Rhein-Elbe
Tel.: +49 209/147 48 44
Mechtenberg
Should you wish, you can continue your tour along the B227 (Hattinger Strasse) to the natural monument in Essen known as Mechtenberg. From the 'Spiral Mountain' this will take about 45 60 minutes on foot. This 'mountain', formed by pre-Ice Age gravel deposits from the Ruhr (which used to flow further north than it does today), was long in the minds of local people as the highest hill to the south of the city. But as a result of mining subsidence the Mechtenberg, complete with its Bismarck memorial, has shrunk by about 15 m!
The agriculturally influenced hill may appear quite ordinary at first glance, but with its idyllic setting and the green stretches in the Emscher Landscape Park that have been extended in recent years, it is an attractive destination for walkers and cyclists. Here, too, artists have been requested to embellish the landscape under the motto of 'countryside art'. In contrast to the locations mentioned above, however, these projects were of a temporary or fleeting nature. To the east, you can admire Prigrann's 'Spiral Mountain'.
Bus:
Line 194, alight at Bromberger Strasse (approx. 20 minute walk)
Responsible for the contents: Stadtmarketing Gesellschaft Gelsenkirchen mbH
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