If you want to feel the power of the old industry in Germany, it is best to drive on a motorway in Duisburg. Over the Berlin bridge, for example, the A 59. The chimneys are still smoking around here and the blast furnaces are burning. And the world’s largest inland port shows its full dimensions. It’s the leftovers of industries that once made us rich. Today, the brown signs pointing to disused mines such as the Zeche Zollern predominate on the motorways in the Ruhr area. There is the route of the industrial culture, the “most important and touristic most attractive” industrial monuments.
Daniel Mohr
Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
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No wonder that Winfried Kretschmann (Greens), Prime Minister of the Autoland Baden-Württemberg, chooses the Ruhr area as an example when he urges you to hurry. “I don’t want us to become the new Ruhr area,” says Kretschmann. The economic success of his state depends on the success of the auto industry, as clearly as in the south-west this is at most the case in the VW state of Lower Saxony. Just as coal and steel once came from North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland, the cars are from the factories of Daimler and Porsche in Baden-Württemberg. But not only that. Important parts for all car manufacturers in the world also come from suppliers in Swabia and Baden.