Layer in the shaft? Of due to. The German mining Museum in Bochum, Germany, presents its new permanent exhibition of old and new exhibits and takes a look into the future.
Almost three meters high, the root stock of carbon, the receives visitors at the German mining-Museum Bochum. The proud age: 306 million years. “The shed tree is native to our collection and is now been extensively restored,” explains Museum Director Stefan brügger Hoff for the opening of the first two tours of the new permanent exhibition. “It’s sort of our ‘Mona Lisa’, we start the tour.”
Fresh, young and international, will present the German mining Museum in Bochum. In the middle of the Ruhrgebiet, the former industrial capital of Germany, dominated by coal and steel. Established in 1930, the Museum has not only a mine in a walk-in tunnels underground, but also an extensive collection of. According to its own information, it is a 350 000 objects – from rocks rest on paintings up to the pit machines – the largest mining collection in the world.
Museum Director Stefan brügger Hoff and Bärbel Bergerhoff-Wodopia in front of a 7.2-ton coal boulder at the entrance of the Museum
Less objects, more relationships
Of course, is on view in the exhibition of this collection, only a fraction. After two years of renovation less exhibits meet the visitors than in the past, you will set a better scene and in the context shown. In the first Theme tour of the history of the German coal-mining industry. The second tour deals with the relationships between people and the mining industry worldwide.
“The Museum is focused on the future, as the memory of the mining industry far beyond national borders,” says Bärbel Bergerhoff-Wodopia, member of the management Board of ruhrkohle AG Foundation. The RAG was since 1968, the responsibility of the pit closures and to shape structural change in the Ruhr area in a socially responsible manner. She also supports the Museum’s renovation financially.
The transportation of coal from the middle ages to modern times
As coal is removed in the middle ages and was transported, shows a Original cart made of wood. In addition to tools, and transportation to illustrate numerous models of modern vessels, the development of the open pit and the removal of the coal. Large panels describe the different levels of the bays and their location in the Ruhr area. Elegant cubes are made of wood, the glass display cases with smaller models and documents are inserted, give the rooms a clean, modern Design.
The Shearer loader for mining coal
“Here we also show the dark side of mining,” says Bärbel Begerhoff-Wodopia. As the topic of coal, and war in Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler took advantage of the coal for the production of weapons, but made from the waste products of the coking plants of plastics, in the hope of Germany and of other Nations independently.
A smell of machine oil in the air, if it goes on a long ramp into a lower room down. It is the machinery hall, the mine, with milling, the shaft boring or Shearer, with their large serrated wheels, the coal from the walls cockroaches. Devices, in the mine be used. The equipment of the mountain man, the worn-out helmets, and the dust-smeared Jackets.
In December, the last coal mine Prosper-Haniel mine was closed in Bottrop. A special Moment, tells Bärbel Bergerhoff-Wodopia. “The images from the 21. December 2018 as the last piece of Coal was handed over to the Federal President, Steinmeier, were very moving, and these images will eventually be seen here in the Museum.” The book, in which the invited guests could enter, to come soon in the exhibition. Before that, it is checked whether the paper and the font also the climate in the Museum.
Culture in the Ruhr area is not only since the structural change of a theme
The people should be the focus of the new permanent exhibition. You will notice, at the latest, in a room with lots of photographs, everyday objects and medical instruments. On the wall of the x-ray images of a lung disease. The work in the mining industry was and still is dangerous to life. However, many people have lived in the Ruhr from the coal-mining industry. As the end of the 60s, were the first Mines to a standstill, it came to numerous demonstrations and strikes. The banners of at the time, and many photos of the protesters are on view in the exhibition.
Mining, exploitation of nature
The people in the mining industry, it is also in the second tour of the new permanent exhibition. People working in the gold mines of Latin America to be exploited, or in mines according to the rare-earth digging and using highly toxic substances to come in contact.
The stones for the first tools of the stone age have been mined. Later, they found clay, salt and Gold and iron. In this section of the exhibition, researchers from the Archäometallogie have worked, because since the 1970s, the German mining Museum is also a Leibnitz-research Museum of Georesources and, among other things, responsible for research in the area of Archäometallogie and mining archaeology.
The images illustrate how strong the mining industry engages in the nature. Most visible during open-cast mining in the lignite districts, but also in the muddy gold mines of South America. And if the natural resources on this world are exhausted, companies are already, literally, for the stars.
The future of mining will take place somewhere else
Digital canvas for the events of Georesources. Anyone who has a cell phone in the process, learns more.
The asteroid mining is seeking concepts for the extraction of raw materials, of valuable rare earth in the world space. “Luxembourg has issued, for example, a Declaration of intent, such a removal,” says Timo Hauge, curator of the mining to the industrialization. All have political reasons. “It is hoped that wars for resources are upon the earth obsolete, if there is enough of it in the universe”.
Two more rounds, dealing with Georesources and with art around the coal, to be opened in the summer.