In 1961 Willy Brandt promised to the Ruhr inhabitants that one day they would have their blue sky back. Life was tough here, you can feel it. The photos of the coal minersblack faces. Those not renovated detached houses, still gray with coal. The diseases. And then steel, blast furnaces.
I must have been 10 when I visited for the first time La Ferriera. Perched upon the Servola hill above Triest, I remember the heat, the magic of the running steel, the heavy bling-bling coats of the steel workers, walls incrusted of asbesto in their refuge next to the melting iron.
Today’s safety regulations would probably inhibit visits of such plants to children. But the factory visits of my school years left a mark. When I read about the health problems of those workers still fighting to get not only a portion of their health going but even their diseases recognized by insurance companies at least I know what they are talking about. I have an idea of the blasting noise that one has to endure in a diesel engine testing unit, of the claustrophoby of a welder in the guts of a ship hull.
At Zollverein, at Duisburg-Nord coal is the new cool. Und das ist auch gut so. Factory life is a facet of culture. Not surprisingly the German pavillion in Shanghai recreates a town, complete with factory. Not sure the Italian one remembers to visitors where the Ferraris come from. They don’t grow on trees, even the green ones. It would be good if children had a feel of what an assembly line is.
Recognizing cultural heritage dignity to the factory is something special in Germany. Industriekultur. In Rome we worship stone counters where people used to trade, and streets for their carriages. Why shouldn’t it be the same with blasting furnaces and autobahns? During these days I told myself many times what a careful message to young citizen the whole Ruhr 2010 region is giving.
So this European Capital of Culture thing has definitely the flavour of “giving back”. A green environment and blue skyes to the community, spaces that would be littered with industrial dinosaurs to citizens, and possibly new kinds of jobs derived from this transformation. If mankind can so powerfully transform land, like it did in the late 1800, in the 30s and then after WWII, the process can be repeated having different goals in mind. Reversed, re-naturalizing sewer rivers like the Emscher. Evolved, morphing plants into museums or swimmingpools. Rome and even more Triest should be inspired by this process.
This week the EU ruled the closure of coal mines in Europe within 2014. One can only wish that more Zollvereins be created, capturing tourism and culture where mining jobs will be no longer available. Not a zero-sum game, still, better transformation than plain decadence. But education has to be at the center of it.
Photo: informatrieste.eu
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