Ruhr coal house

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With Ruhrkohle House or House of Ruhrkohle one building that served the sale or management of Ruhr coal called. Later it was understood to be the structural branches of Ruhrkohle AG , regardless of their purpose.

The article describes the function and historical significance of the former Ruhr coal house in Essen's southern district in the former Berthastraße (today: Frau-Bertha-Krupp-Straße). It emerged from the administrative headquarters of a large cartel , was after the Second World War the sales point of a mining group controlled by the Allies and the young Federal Republic and, between 1969 and until the demolition in 1997, the seat of Ruhrkohle AG . The so-called Relling Houses, where Evonik is based today, were then built at this point .

General

The most important and defining of these economic functional buildings was the Ruhr coal house in Essen, which existed between 1949/52 and 1997. Further Ruhrkohle houses are located in:

  • Berlin : the "Ruhrkohle-Haus Charlottenburg", Bismarckstrasse 107, from 1958/59. "The house is the seat of RAG Aktiengesellschaft (formerly Ruhrkohleverband) [...]",
  • Essen: the " Ruhrkohle-Haus II ", built 1956–60 by Egon Eiermann
  • Hagen : the " Haus der Ruhrkohle ", Rechtsstrasse 2, built in 1925/26 for the coal trading company Mark, built before the Second World War and built for a medium-sized company
  • Winterberg : "Ruhrkohlehaus", seminar center and leisure home of Ruhrkohle AG

Historical background

In the 19th century, the Ruhr coal was a cartel. The Rheinisch-Westfälische Kohlen-Syndikat (RWKS), founded in 1893, comprised most of the mines in the Ruhr area and sold all types of coal for its members. The seat of the cartel and its central sales point was Essen. In 1945 the RWKS was officially dissolved, but remained under different names (Deutscher Kohlenverkauf, Ruhrkohle joint organization, sales companies President, Geitling, Mausegatt) as a politically controlled sales cartel until 1969. After that, the cartel structures were finally lifted by the formation of the Ruhrkohle group. For many decades, the coal produced in the district was sold in the Syndikatshaus, and then in the Ruhrkohlehaus Essen, which was completed in 1952.

As the organizational center of the largest coal mining area on the European continent, the RWKS was also politically important. In the Weimar Republic , the RWKS stood for a newly created category of public-law cartels with the participation of workers and other interest groups. The syndicate building itself was of strategic importance: During the occupation of the Ruhr , it was preferred by French troops. During the Second World War, the entire Western European coal production and most of the continental coal supply were controlled from there. In 1943 the building served as a target for Allied air raids.

Predecessor building: the syndicate building

Business building of the Rheinisch-Westfälischen Kohlen-Syndikat around 1900 (former Berthastraße from the east)

In 1893, competition broke out between the cities of Bochum , Dortmund and Essen for the headquarters of the newly founded RWKS . Essen won this competition. According to the syndicate's wishes, the city fathers had a representative building built by 1894 (former Berthastraße), which received an extension in 1905 (Syndikatstraße, later: Gärtnerstraße). At the turn of the century in 1900 more than a hundred people worked there; In 1935 the RWKS had 895 employees. The building was twice the target of Allied air raids in 1943 and was completely destroyed except for the extension from 1905.

In the extension of the original syndicate building was the splendidly designed, art-historically valuable conference room of the RWKS and the equally designed anteroom (hallway / stairwell area). With this, representative parts of the old syndicate building had survived the Second World War and became part of the Ruhrkohlehaus completed in 1952.

  • Syndicate boardroom

  • Vestibule to the syndicate boardroom

New construction as Ruhrkohlehaus

New office space was needed to handle the sale of Ruhrkohle. After the syndicate building had been destroyed, the sales department at the grammar school in Bredeney had found a temporary home. However, a permanent solution had to be created, and this was to be a new building at the previous location in Essen. The successor building for the syndicate building could not be called the "syndicate building" again, since the coal syndicate had been officially dissolved by the allies and cartelism was to remain generally prohibited. So the replacement name "Ruhrkohlehaus" came up.

The new building was rebuilt between 1949 and 1952 according to plans from 1936 that were still in existence and were not realized at the time. By using these existing plans, the building, now known as the “Ruhrkohlehaus”, received the functionality and aesthetics of a syndicate building, that is, an ideal-typical late cartel building.

The wing of the syndicate building from 1905 that has been preserved was integrated into the new building. The new "Ruhrkohlehaus" kept exactly the same function as a central sales point for Ruhrkohle for decades - as it did during the syndicate's time. Renaming or splitting had a mainly cosmetic character. In 1952, the German coal sales department was renamed the Ruhrkohle community organization . In 1957 the building was divided up by a large number of improvised partition walls for at least optical “unbundling” of three formally independent sales companies, which, however, actually remained continuous through secret intermediate doors.

Art in construction: references to mining

Saint Barbara with miner at the Evonik house, once at the Ruhr coal house

On the old brick facade of the Ruhr coal house, which was laid down in 1997, Saint Barbara was attached as the patron saint of mining with a miner in the form of a natural stone sculpture. This sculpture can be seen today in the inner courtyard on the facade of the Evonik corporate headquarters.

The steep storage , erected in 1989 in front of the building on the Freiheit square, is a memorial with the following dedication:

"To honor the miners and their difficult work underground by citizens, companies in the district and the city of Essen."

demolition

In 1997 the Ruhrkohlehaus was torn down to make way for a representative new building for the headquarters of RAG Aktiengesellschaft . The demolition was controversial at the time. The responsible monument preservation office of the Rhineland Regional Association had spoken out in favor of preserving the building in a report from 1990. This statement was justified with the historical significance of the city, not with the special economic culture of a highly developed cartel or the earlier world reputation of the RWKS. The city of Essen gave in to the demolition request from Ruhrkohle AG, including a change in street layouts and names.

Monument value of the Ruhr coal house (1949–1997)

In the 1990s, the monument value of the Ruhrkohlehaus was measured primarily by its urban historical and architectural importance: on the one hand, handsome and solid and on the other hand, a gloomy-looking clinker brick building, a functional building like others. As it opposed the redesign of the southern quarter, it was demolished.

Other points of view reveal a monument value that clearly exceeds the city of Essen:

  • The function desk of the Ruhr area , i.e. coal administration for the entire area, was symbolized by the Ruhr coal house.
  • In its capacity as a syndicate building planned as early as 1936, the Ruhrkohlehaus was an ideal, late cartel building. It would have been comparable to the Stahlhof in Düsseldorf , which had the same purpose.
  • The “largest industrial cartel of all time” (1893) or “ideal cartel in the world” (1939) has a unique historical position and could deserve to be commemorated because of its uniqueness.

The cartel theorist H. A. Leonhardt explained in 2013 how important the syndicate centers for coal and steel had been for the regional economic development of the Ruhr area, for its rise to a region with a uniquely dense and well-thought-out infrastructure. Because of this, he pleaded for the special "regional economic organization art" of the syndicates to be understood as an intangible cultural asset and to be placed under UNESCO world heritage protection before it is completely forgotten. Suitable places of remembrance are Düsseldorf and Essen. In Essen, a commemorative plaque should be set up as a minimum at the former location of the Ruhr coal house.

Successor buildings: Relling skyscrapers

Evonik headquarters (today Frau-Bertha-Krupp-Strasse from the west)

Ruhrkohle AG was in the high-rise buildings with their striking blue silhouette until 2007 and Evonik has been based since then .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.luise-berlin.de/lexikon/chawi/r/ruhrkohle_haus.htm
  2. ↑ http://www.lurvely.com/photo/4942445504/deessenruhrkohlehaus02/
  3. ↑ http://cms.hagenschule.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/110514-WP-Hagen-Seite_21-extr.pdf
  4. ↑ http://web2.cylex.de/firma-home/rag-aktiengesellschaft-5524947.html
  5. ^ Günter Streich: The exchange of black diamonds. Ruhr coal in Essen - history and stories , Essen 1996, pp. 44, 49.
  6. ^ Günter Streich: The exchange of black diamonds. Ruhr coal in Essen - history and stories , Essen 1996, p. 17.
  7. ^ Günter Streich: The exchange of black diamonds. Ruhrkohle in Essen - history and stories , Essen 1996, p. 22.
  8. ^ Günter Streich: The exchange of black diamonds. Ruhr coal in Essen - history and stories , Essen 1996, p. 83.
  9. ^ Günter Streich: The exchange of black diamonds. Ruhr coal in Essen - history and stories , Essen 1996, pp. 44, 49.
  10. ^ Günter Streich: The exchange of black diamonds. Ruhr coal in Essen - history and stories , Essen 1996, p. 55.
  11. ^ Günter Streich: The exchange of black diamonds. Ruhr coal in Essen - history and stories , Essen 1996, p. 53.
  12. ^ German Architecture Forum, article by Fabio April 8, 2008, [1]
  13. ^ Günter Streich: The exchange of black diamonds. Ruhr coal in Essen - history and stories , Essen 1996, p. 49.
  14. ^ Holm Arno Leonhardt: Regional economic organizational art. Proposal to supplement NRW's application for UNESCO World Heritage, in: Forum Geschichtskultur Ruhr 2013 (2013), pp. 41–42.
  15. ^ Holm Arno Leonhardt: Regional economic organizational art. Proposal to supplement NRW's application for UNESCO World Heritage, in: Forum Geschichtskultur Ruhr 2013 (2013), pp. 41–42.

literature

  • Matthias Kitschenberg: House of the Ruhr coal. In: Preservation of monuments in the Rhineland. No. 3, 1996, ISSN  0177-2619 , pp. 115-119.
  • Holm Arno Leonhardt: Regional economic organization art. Proposal to supplement NRW's application for UNESCO World Heritage, in: Forum Geschichtskultur Ruhr 2013 (2013), pp. 41–42
  • Günter Streich: The exchange of black diamonds. Ruhr coal in Essen - history and stories, Essen 1996.

Coordinates: 51 ° 26 '58  .4 " N , 7 ° 0' 52.4"  E