Cultural Capital Essen

In 2010, the city of Essen, one of Germany's former coal and steel centers, will take up the mantle of European Capital of Culture. While the city's dusty image may seem to make it an unlikely choice, the city was able to mine a rich industrial tradition to forge a new identity as a cultural center.

: Enlarge image; Essen's Zollverein, a former cokery transformed into a cultural center, is illuminated during a festival.; (© Peter Prengel, Stadtbildstelle Essen)

When some people hear the name Essen, they generally think about smoke stacks and industrialization, coal-mining, steel and the run-down communities that crop up when those industries shut down.

But those people haven't been to Essen recently. Today, the city of Essen in northwest Germany is proof that culture doesn't have to be separate from everyday life. And while it may surprise some that this industrial behemoth has been chosen as one of the European Cultural Capitals for 2010, a closer look at the city's revival reveals an understanding of culture very in tune with our times. The city has revitalized itself by transforming fallow industrial sites into homes for progressive culture.

From coal to culture

Over the past decade, Essen has found its cultural voice by embracing the very characteristics that gave it a dirty name in the past — its history as a coal-mining center.

Today, visitors find the city surprisingly green — without the layer of dust from outlying coal mines. Yet Essen still embraces what many citizens call the "rough beauty" of the city.

One of those mines, known as the Zeche Carl, has been converted into an entire campus that is home to a youth center, a children's theater workshop, a fine-dining restaurant, and several suites of offices.

Another former industrial site, called the Zollverein, similarly focuses on "the culture of industry," offering guided tours into a complex of rusted industrial buildings that is today home to fine dining, a design museum, and a casino.

Since 2005, the city has boasted one of the most acoustically perfect symphony halls in the world, one closely associated with the world-renowned Folkwang School of Music, also located in Essen.

Floating art islands planned for Ruhr river

: Enlarge image; 1:10 scale models of floating art exhibits that will be set afloat on the Ruhr River to form the "Folkwang Atoll" in 2010; (© picture-alliance/dpa)

Essen labeled its bid for cultural capital "Essen for the Ruhrgebiet," singling itself out as a city whose course over the last half century is emblematic of Germany's largest industrial region. Its motto, "change through culture — culture through change" speaks of the entire region's transition to a thriving cultural center.

One of the city's most prominent projects encapsulating this idea is the "Folkwang Atoll," an exhibition of floating art exhibits that will be launched on the Ruhr river in 2010. Organized by the city's Folkwang Museum of Contemporary Art, the islands deal with the relationship between energy and art, with many of them exploring the possibilities of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Visitors will be able to view the 1000 square-foot islands from boats and walk on many of them.

Another set of projects focus on Essen as a city of immigration. By the year 2010, officials estimate that half of the young people growing up in the city will have a non-German ethnic background, many of them Turkish. In this realm, Essen hopes to represent a city that embraces demographic changes and explores them through its art and culture.

With all this, and a brand new symphony hall that is drawing orchestras from around the world, Essen has proven that it has a cultural scene to rival even the most charming of cobblestoned burghs.