Ruhr Museum

Former coal washing plant, now the location of the Ruhr Museum, in May 2011

Lettering on the facade of the Ruhr Museum in April 2016

The Ruhr Museum , formerly the Ruhrland Museum , is a natural and cultural history museum for the Ruhr area in Essen with a wide range of holdings and departments . The Ruhr Museum Foundation is the sponsor . Historian Heinrich Theodor Grütter has been the director since 2012.

New location, new permanent exhibition

The museum, which sees itself as the memory and showcase of the Ruhr area , documents nature, culture and history of the region and thus the development of the largest conurbation in Europe in its permanent exhibition.

The new permanent exhibition in the coal washing plant of the Zeche Zollverein (A 14, shaft XII) was designed by the Stuttgart office HG Merz and is divided into four levels. On the 24-meter level, which is reached via the large outdoor escalator, there is a cash desk and information desk, a café and the museum shop. Myths, phenomena and structures of the current Ruhr area are presented on the 17-meter level. The 12-meter level shows the pre-industrial development and also contains the museum's collections on archeology , ethnology and natural history . The history of the Ruhr area in the industrial age is presented on the 6-meter level.

On the 12 meter level there is an area for temporary exhibitions. Likewise in the gallery on the 21-meter level on a mezzanine.

The former Ruhrland Museum was closed in April 2007 to make way for the new Folkwang Museum . The new Ruhr Museum went into operation on October 20, 2008 in the coal washing plant of the Zollverein Coal Mine World Heritage Site , which was rebuilt according to plans by Rem Koolhaas , with a presentation of the Essen cathedral treasure.

On January 9, 2010 the Ruhr Museum was officially opened in the presence of the then Federal President Horst Köhler together with the cultural capital RUHR.2010 .

Escalator to the 24-meter level of the Ruhr Museum
Escalator from below
Mine car at the museum entrance
Zollverein panorama picture

History of the Ruhrland Museum

Ruhrland Museum at Goethestrasse 41, Essen

The former director (2008 - end of 2011) of the Ruhr Museum Ulrich Borsdorf thanks all supporters in 2010

The Ruhr Museum is one of the oldest museums in the Ruhr area and looks back on more than a hundred years of history.

The Krupp Education Association and the Historical Association for the City and Monastery of Essen were the main operators and donors of the Essen Museum Association, founded in 1901, and the Essen City Museum, which opened on December 4, 1904 and initially dealt with art, local history, natural history and ethnology included.

From 1914 to 1945 Ernst Kahrs (1876–1948) was director of the Ruhrland Museum and during this time contributed significantly to its thematic orientation.

After the spin-off of the city's art collection, which formed the core of what would later become the Folkwang Museum, the “Essen City Museum for Local History and Ethnology” was founded in 1911. It was initially located in downtown Essen on Burgplatz in the Alte Post.

By 1927, the holdings in the departments of zoology , botany , geology , mineralogy , prehistory and early history as well as technology and ethnology had grown to such an extent that the museum moved to the former single home of the Krupp company at Essen-West train station, today's West office building. where the collections were shown on an exhibition area of 7000 m² until 1939.

In 1934 the museum was named Ruhrlandmuseum . The fatal decision of a separate presentation of the local history collections in the "Haus Heimat" created by the National Socialists in 1937 in the Waldthausen Villa led to the extensive destruction of the historical holdings in bombing raids. During the Second World War, most of the holdings of African objects were lost.

On December 4, 1954, the museum was able to reopen in the representative Knaudt villa on Bismarckstrasse , which was not destroyed by the war . In 1964 the house was extensively expanded with a two-storey, light-flooded exhibition wing and a new entrance area on Goethestrasse. These buildings were all demolished in 1981 because of the new construction described below.

In 1984 the museum moved to a new building on Goethestrasse, which was designed by the Essen architects Allerkamp, Niehaus, Skornia. It was integrated into a building complex that also included the Museum Folkwang's domicile, which was built from 1956 to 1960 and completely renovated in 1998/99 . The Ruhrland Museum had around 4500 m² of exhibition space and a room for special exhibitions of 600 m².

A central point of the new concept in 1984 was the connection of geology with the social history of the industrialization of the Ruhr area. The historical permanent exhibition brought the research results of the modern Ruhr area history to the fore in the Medium Museum for the first time.

The innovative form of presentation with object ensembles and staged picture spaces caused a sensation in the museological discussion. In 1988/1990 the photo archive was added as an independent department of the Ruhrland Museum and since 1995 the archaeological collection, which was housed in the Museum Altenessen from 1985 to 1994, was presented in a new permanent exhibition. In 1997 the socio-historical exhibition was revised and from May 2001 the new permanent geological exhibition "terra cognita" could be seen.

On November 20, 2006, the City Council of Essen decided to establish the new Ruhr Museum in the coal washing plant of the Zollverein Coal Mine World Heritage Site . The Ruhr Museum became a foundation. Around four million exhibits were the subject of the move. During the move from 2007 to 2009, the Mineral Museum in Kupferdreh and the branches of the Ruhrland Museum remained open and took over some of the exhibits from the natural history collections and numerous activities.

The new Ruhr Museum started on October 20, 2008 in the coal washing plant of the Zeche Zollverein with its first temporary exhibition Gold vor Schwarz , the first complete presentation of the Essen cathedral treasure outside the cathedral treasury, which was shown until February 8, 2009.

Entrance to the Ruhr Museum at the coal washing plant with an exhibition poster on gold before black

The reception area of the Ruhr Museum is at a height of 24 meters and is accessed by the longest free-standing escalator in Germany. A ride on the 68-meter-long escalator takes about 90 seconds.

Permanent exhibitions on the culture, nature and history of the Ruhr area

The permanent exhibition of the Ruhr Museum on geology and history connects the history of the earth and the social history of the industrialization of the Ruhr area. Without the natural resources that have arisen over the course of millions of years, industrialization and the development of the Ruhr area would not have been possible.

The geological thematic complex deals with the dynamics of geological history and the development of life as well as human interventions in nature, for which the Ruhr area is exemplary. The origin of the coal is shown by means of an 8 × 5 × 3.6 m diorama , which shows the environment of a swamp moor forest in the Carboniferous 300 million years ago.

One exhibition area focuses on the presentation of work and everyday life around 1900 in the high phase of industrialization. A city and regional historical collection and work area is dedicated to the pre-industrial era.

The archaeological area presents remarkable collections on the prehistory and early history of the region, but also on the classical, Near Eastern and Egyptian cultures.

After the visitors have entered the museum on the 24m level, they walk down the different levels:

17m level: time signals
and structures
12m level: memory
with fossils
6m level: history as a diorama
with parts of the old fixtures

Further stocks

In addition, the museum has a number of other collections that are not shown in the permanent exhibitions. Photographs on the past and present of the Ruhr area are collected in the photo archive of the Ruhr Museum, which sees itself as the region's “photographic memory”. From around three million pictures, special exhibitions are regularly stocked, for example 2012 From A to Z. Photography in the Ruhr Museum .

The mineral museum and the Deilbachtal museum landscape in Essen-Kupferdreh, a geological hiking trail on the north bank of Lake Baldeney, the Halbachhammer in the Nachtigallental and the small studio house and a model apartment in the Margarethenhöhe settlement are branch offices of the museum, which round off the offerings "on site".

Based on the individual departments and collections, the Ruhr Museum regularly shows special exhibitions that thematically expand the range and place them in larger historical and cultural-anthropological contexts.

There are regular lectures, lecture series and other accompanying events such as film series and long museum nights. An intensive museum educational work conveys the exhibition contents to different target groups, using various forms of communication such as guided tours, museum talks in the exhibitions, excursions, teacher training courses, school projects, workshops and days of action.

Special exhibitions

Staircase of the Ruhr Museum

2010: The big game. Archeology and Politics (February 12, 2010 to June 13, 2010)

2010/2011: Everything is different again. Photographs from the time of structural change (September 26, 2010 to February 16, 2011)

2010/2011: Black Territory. Photographs by Heinrich Hauser (September 26, 2010 to February 16, 2011)

2012: From A to Z. The Ruhr Museum's Photographic Collection, Part 1 (October 24, 2011 to June 10, 2012)

2011/2012: 200 years of Krupp. A myth is visited (in the coal washing plant, until January 6, 2013)

2012: The garden city Margarethenhöhe , in the small studio house on Margarethenhöhe

2012/2013: From A to Z. Photography in the Ruhr Museum, Part 2 (October 1, 2012 to September 8, 2013)

2013/2014: Coal.Global - A journey into each other's territory. (April 14, 2013 to March 30, 2014)

2013/2014: Selected. Premodern at the Ruhr Museum (October 14, 2013 to August 24, 2014)

2014: 1914 - in the middle of Europe. The Rhine-Ruhr region and the First World War in cooperation with the LVR industrial museum in the mixing plant of the Zollverein coking plant (April 29 to October 26, 2014)

2014/2015: Chargesheimer . The discovery of the Ruhr area (May 26, 2014 to January 18, 2015)

2014/2015: Steinreich. Mineralogy in the Ruhr Museum October 20, 2014 to August 16, 2015

2015: Future Ruhr area. Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages on the Rhine and Ruhr (March 27 to August 23, 2015)

2015/16: work & everyday life. Industrial culture in the Ruhr Museum

2016: Erich Grisar. Ruhr area photographs 1928-1933 (gallery exhibition in cooperation with the Dortmund City Archives , the Fritz Hüser Institute , the LWL Industrial Museum Zeche Zollern and the LWL Literature Commission for Westphalia )

2016/17: excavated. Archeology in the Ruhr Museum (September 28, 2016 to September 3, 2017)

2017: The divided sky. Reformation and religious diversity on the Rhine and Ruhr (April 3, 2017 to October 31, 2017)

2017/2018: Gallery exhibition Earth Stories . Geology in the Ruhr Museum (October 2, 2017 to September 2, 2018)

2018: Josef Stoffels . Bituminous coal mine - photographs from the Ruhr area

2018: the age of coal. A European History , a joint exhibition with the German Mining Museum Bochum in the mixing plant of the Zollverein coking plant (April 27 to November 11, 2018)

2018: Albert Renger-Patzsch . The Ruhr Area Photographs (October 8, 2018 to February 3, 2019)

2018: war. Power. Sense. War and violence in European memory as part of the UNREST project and in cooperation with the Ruhr University Bochum , the Institute for Social Movement, the University of Bath and Aarhus University (November 12, 2018 to June 10, 2019)

2019: departure in the west. The Margarethenhöhe artists' settlement (April 7, 2019 to January 5, 2020)

2019: The graphic artist Hermann Kätelhön in the small studio house on Margarethenhöhe (May 5, 2019 to February 9, 2020)

2019: People and animals in the area (July 8, 2019 to February 25, 2020)

Sponsorship

The museum is supported by the Ruhr Museum Foundation, which is managed as a dependent foundation in trust by the Zollverein Foundation. The Ruhr Museum Foundation was established in 2007, sponsored by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Rhineland Regional Council and the city of Essen. The latter was previously the sole sponsor of the museum.

The purpose of the foundation is to promote culture, education and science through the establishment and operation of the Ruhr Museum in the form of a legally dependent foundation. The supervisory and control body with an exclusive advisory function is a board of trustees made up of six members, two of whom are each delegated by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Rhineland Regional Council and the city of Essen. The Zollverein Foundation takes on the fiduciary management of the dependent Ruhr Museum Foundation. The assets of an dependent foundation remain separate from the other assets of the foundation owner as special assets. The foundation board of the Zollverein Foundation is responsible for the supervision and control of the Ruhr Museum Foundation, which is administered in trust.

Literature and media

Ruhrland Museum Essen (Ed.): Pictures of the Ruhr area. A virtual collection catalog , Klartext Verlag, Essen 2006, ISBN 3-89861-420-4 (CD with 1,400 photos and images from the time the Ruhr area was created)
Ulrich Borsdorf and Heinrich Theodor Grütter (eds.): Ruhr Museum - Natur.Kultur.Geschichte , Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0075-2
Grütter / Grebe (ed.): Chargesheimer. The discovery of the Ruhr area, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-86335-526-5