The last remaining working coal mine in the Ruhr region is located in the town of Bottrop, and it is set to close by the end of 2018, when hard coal mining will end altogether in Germany (though lignite mining is likely to continue for another two decades). [...]
At the height of the coal industry in the 1950s, there were half a million mine workers in the Ruhr region. At the turn of the twentieth century, people from Polish lands came to work in the Ruhr mines (in 1907, a third of the population were migrants); in the 1960s, migrants arrived from south-eastern Europe, especially Yugoslavia, and Turkey. [...]
Like in other places in Europe, the first signs of the coal industry’s demise emerged as early as the 1950s with the arrival of cheaper and cleaner oil from abroad, rendering Ruhr coal uncompetitive (later there would also be cheaper coal from abroad). At the time, the main response was to prop up the industry with subsidies. [...]
Massive funds were necessary to ensure the transition of the labour force, a large part of which was forced into early retirement, while others required retraining. If the coal and steel industries created about 720 000 jobs together in 1957, they amounted to just 60 000 in 2005. [...]
The most successful new businesses created in the Ruhr were the ones relying on the expertise found around it or grown from the opportunities provided by the economic transition itself for example, the logistics business was developed on the back of decades of experience with transporting coal and steel, and environmental cleanup and remediation design emerged in response to the need to return the old toxic sites to daily use.
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