Zollern II/IV Colliery

Interesting facts

Zollern was the first colliery where all the essential machinery, the winding engines included, ran on electricity, at a time when many mines still had none.

The machine hall was modelled on the Gutehoffnungshütte pavilion at the 1902 Düsseldorf industrial exhibition, where Zollern's electric winding engine was itself first displayed.

The demolition of the machine hall was stopped in 1969 thanks largely to the initiative of Hans P. Koellmann, an early champion of industrial heritage.

The headframe over shaft 2 came from the Wilhelmine Victoria colliery in Gelsenkirchen and the one over shaft 4 from Friedrich der Große in Herne, moved here in 1986–1988.

In 1899 shaft 2 struck the coal seam named "Präsident" at 139 metres; it was later deepened in stages to 490 metres.

A coking plant was built on the site in 1904 but worked only until 1918.

Coal winding at Zollern II/IV actually ended in 1955, more than a decade before the colliery was formally shut down.

Paul Knobbe also designed the adjoining Landwehr colony: a director's villa, eight houses for overseers and 23 for miners, all listed with the colliery.

Forced labourers were made to work in the mine until 1945.

In 1987 the Deutsche Bundespost issued an 80-pfennig stamp showing the Art Nouveau portal of the machine hall.

Why it is worth it

Zollern II/IV in the Dortmund suburb of Bövinghausen was built as a showpiece. The Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG planned it in 1898 and completed it in 1904, and its architect Paul Knobbe arranged the red-brick surface buildings like a three-winged Baroque palace, with gables, towers and decorative brickwork meant to announce the company's wealth and modernity. Administration offices, workshops, a fire station with stables, a first-aid room and the pithead baths all face a formal courtyard, so that the colliery looks less like a mine than a manor, and it is often called a palace of work.

The jewel is the machine hall. For speed Knobbe designed it not in solid masonry but as a steel frame filled in with brick, and the Berlin architect Bruno Möhring gave it an Art Nouveau entrance: a portal of coloured leaded glass under a sweeping canopy, reminiscent of Hector Guimard's Paris Métro entrances. Inside, amid the great machines, stands a polished marble switchboard fitted with brass instruments. It is one of the most elegant industrial interiors in Europe and the unlikely proof that a coal mine could be designed as a work of art.

The colliery closed in 1966, and the hall was scheduled for demolition. A campaign in 1969 saved it, and it became the first industrial building in Germany to be placed under heritage protection, a turning point for how the whole Ruhr came to see its mines and steelworks. Since 1981 Zollern has been the headquarters of the Westphalian regional industrial museum (LWL-Industriemuseum), with the permanent exhibition on the social and cultural history of Ruhr mining. The original headframes had been scrapped before protection came; the two now standing over the shafts were brought from other collieries in the 1980s, and one can be climbed for a view over the site. Zollern is an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage.

Getting there

The museum is at Grubenweg 5 in Dortmund-Bövinghausen, on the western edge of Dortmund, about 2 km from the Lütgendortmund district and connected to Dortmund's main station by local buses. Dortmund Airport (DTM) is about 19 km away.

Zollern II/IV Colliery

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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