The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
Essen / DPA
When the victors of World War II announced the creation of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NTW) – by merging two former Prussian states – in 1946 in London, most of its inhabitants were going hungry.
And as the bitter winter of 1946-47 got underway they began to freeze too. But the state, which encompasses the industrial Ruhr region, was the main supplier of coal and steel for Germany’s reconstruction after the war and was lauded as the motor behind the country’s “Wirtschaftswunder,†or “economic miracle,†during the 1950s.
Despite some who warned against limiting itself, the region concentrated on developing heavy industry, as it had previously before the war. When at the end of the 1950s oil began to dominate energy markets and cheap coal was increasingly imported from abroad, the region found itself unable to compete.
Tens of thousands of jobs were lost. But mining companies still refused to relinquish freed-up land to businesses from other industries. NRW, Germany’s most populous state with around 18 million people, only got its first university, Ruhr University Bochum in 1965.
The region only began setting its course out of the crisis in 1968, more than ten years after it began, with a “Ruhr Development Programme.†By then the coal-mining district had already lost a lot of time.
Parochialism, a slow start in adjusting to technological change, a certain dependency on external support and a focus on the biggest employers are still criticisms thrown at the region today by people such as Michael Bahrke, an expert at the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW).
The Ruhr region has missed great opportunities to link up the now numerous universities in the region with research institutions and the many young people in the 5.3 million-strong population, he says.
If you look out over the former coal-mining district from the top of one of the old slag heaps, there’s hardly a chimney in sight. The days of washing hung out to dry turning black in the polluted air are long gone – nature has returned and the landscape has bloomed green again.
But the once wealthy region, the splendour of which is still reflected in the magnificent town halls built across the region, is now so poor that even critics like Bahrke are urging the state to provide more aid. Roads and public institutions are ramshackle and dilapidated – in some schools in the city of Essen, it has been claimed, children avoid using the toilets because they’re so dirty.
One citizen recently challenged Essen’s Lord Mayor to a game of mini golf on one of the city’s busiest roads. Soon after, it was resurfaced and its potholes filled in.
In the city of Gelsenkirchen a nursery school place costs up to 770 euros (860 dollars) per month – the few high earning families have to subsidize the poor ones, with the parents of two thirds of the children paying nothing because their income is too low.
Meanwhile in Oberhausen, citizens complain about the poor bus network. “If I’ve got an early shift there’s no question about what time [the bus goes]. I have to walk,†wrote one woman on a Facebook forum.
In June NRW’s unemployment figure stood at 7.6 per cent, the lowest it’s been in 23 years – but in the Ruhr former coal mining district that figure stood at 10.7 per cent. The cost of benefits for the long-term unemployed means local councils are stuck in a vicious circle because they then lack the means to invest in the future, says Karola Geiss-Netthoefel, head of the Ruhr Regional Association.
There are some glimmers of hope, in particular in the Ruhr region’s very successful universities, which have almost 300,000 students and the Duisburg Harbour, an industrial hub during the city’s heyday which was recently redeveloped to include housing, museums and restaurants.
Around 100,000 people are also now employed in the environmental industry, according to Geiss-Netthoefel. However, big Ruhr employers such as energy companies RWE, Eon and Steag have been struggling under the country’s ambitious plans to transition to renewable energy supplies.
In a recent IW ranking of 402 German regions, five of the ten worst were in the Ruhr, with the once-prosperous Duisburg coming in bottom. Geiss-Netthoefel says an economic stimulus programme worth billions of euros is essential to jumpstart the region again. She points out however that local authorities can’t be tapped – they don’t have the funds.
