COFFEETABLE-BOOK OF LWL CULTURE

'Westphalia is the heart in the right place and the LWL-Culture ensures that it beats audibly for the people in the region as well as for every visitor.'

FIRST INDUSTRIAL MONUMEN IN NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA

AGED WITH STYLE – AS VIBRANT AS NEVER

The machine hall of the Zollern Coal Mine is an expression and symbol of a success story. Here the deep bond of the people with their region and its history manifests itself. Here the future is shaped by keeping the memory alive.

Solely civic involvement in the 1960s led to the unparalleled coal mine’s group of buildings, with its Cathedral of Work as the focal point, being saved from demolition. As a monument of industrial heritage and LWL-Industrial Museum it was able to become a centre and starting point of a new debate about the living and working worlds and the structural transformation within the area. Today the LWL-Industrial Museum comprises 8 sites. Especially the high construction of the machine hall, flooded with light, its large window surfaces and the impressive art nouveau portal stand symbolically for the desire, not only to document this transformation and change, but also to live and breathe it.

Today choral singing and orchestral sounds fill the space, there are readings, cinema shows, symposiums and the latest, when during guided tours the old machines are again brought into action, one experiences the visitors’ amazement. Zollern Coal Mine is such a vibrant historic place of work and a place of pleasure.

Romans in Westphalia

A STRONGHOLD DEEP IN ENEMY TERRITORY

An impressive wall of timber and earth provides the breastwork of the former main camp in Haltern. Once this location was the springboard for numerous – and finally futile – conquest attempts by the Roman military. In all these years the camp provided billeting and protection for up to 5,000 legionaries.

That today 156 metres of the breastwork defence installation are able to testify to a turbulent history, was an incentive and the task of a team of LWL archaeologists. Where they found only discolourations in the earth of the erstwhile mighty timber construction, today, thanks to their meticulous and scientific work, the Roman building site Aliso is coming into existence, in which the Roman construction and cultural history comes alive. The LWL-Roman Museum and LWL-Archaeology work here hand in hand and make the Roman construction site first and foremost a place of participation for visitors as well. In the future, with their help and old techniques, work will be carried out on the reconstruction of a unique piece of history.

Photos inside the book: Roland Borgmann, Julia Cawley, Franz-Josef Freiherr von und zu Brenken, Peter Hübbe, Rainer Vogel, weownyou.agency, Robin Jähne, Stephan Kube

BOK+ Gärtner GmbH

BOK+ Gärtner GmbH