History of the Zollern Colliery
Castle of Work, family colliery and icon of industrial culture
The name of this West-Dortmund mine pays tribute to the Hohenzollern royal family and its lineage of Prussian kings and German emperors. Patriotic mine names were common in the Ruhr region, especially after the founding of the German Empire in 1871. Examples include ‘Friedrich der Große’ (Frederick the Great) in Herne and ‘Unser Fritz’ (Our Fritz) in Wanne-Eickel, ‘Graf Bismarck’ (Count Bismarck) in Gelsenkirchen and ‘Deutscher Kaiser’ (German Emperor) in Duisburg.
The beginnings
As early as 1873, the first Zollern Colliery had begun coal production in Kirchlinde, just west of Dortmund. The modern-day Zollern II/IV Colliery owes its existence to the so-called ‘Westfeld’ section of the Kirchlinde mine. Due to a geological fault, developing this field from the existing Zollern I shaft would have been arduous. Consequently, in 1897, Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG (GBAG) decided to sink a second shaft near the village of Bövinghausen and purchased the necessary land.
Due to unexpectedly rich coal deposits, the company built more than just another shaft built; starting in 1898, they constructed a completely new colliery with all the necessary facilities: an additional ventilation shaft (Zollern IV), a dedicated administration building, with payroll hall (Lohnhalle) and washhouse (Kaue), a warehouse, workshops, a coking plant and an ammonia factory. Coal production began on a modest scale in 1902 and reached full capacity in 1903. By 1904, the surface buildings were essentially complete. A year later, a travel guide praised the ‘majestic structure’ of the Zollern II/IV Colliery, noting that it ‘resembles a feudal castle courtyard more than an industrial site,’ and praised its machine hall, ‘whose size and beauty surpasses that of most state rooms’.
The model colliery
Following a period of rapid economic growth, Germany experienced an industrial boom. In the 1890s alone, more than 70 new shafts were sunk in the Ruhr region. Competing for dominance, the major mining companies sought to signify their leadership by building high-quality ‘model collieries’ (Musterzechen) that would serve as exemplars. Many of these new mines were designed as complete works of art, architectural ensembles from a single mould. The individual buildings were carefully arranged in relation to each other, with harmonious designs and elaborately decorated façades.
Zollern II/IV was built as a model colliery for what was then Germany's largest mining company. In the planning phase, GBAG hired the renowned architect Paul Knobbe, who adorned the main facades with magnificent Neogothic stepped gables. In the administration building, management’s headquarters, ‘prestige architecture’ served to project the company's status to national and international businesses. In the case of the monumental payroll hall, it asserted the authority of management over the workforce.
In April 1902, Knobbe also submitted a design for the machine hall of the new Zollern Colliery. He decorated the exterior walls with brick friezes, ornamental gables and battlements that were much more elaborate than was customary for such halls. Clearly, he intended to emphasise the building’s central importance to a modern, high-performance colliery operation.
Art Nouveau
The decision to build a steel-frame machine hall was likely driven by the need for a short construction period, as GBAG was obligated to start regular production within a few months. However, the mining company then delayed its own schedule by demanding an exceptionally elaborate design for the machine hall. An initial, plain design by GHH had to be revised several times. Berlin architect, Bruno Möhring, was eventually brought in; he focused primarily on the prestigious transept, decorating it with colourful mosaic strips on stained glass windows and an ornate Art Nouveau portal. There is no other portal like it in European industrial architecture!
Inside, the central line of sight leads from this magnificent portal directly to the marble electrical switchboard, which stands on a multi-level platform in front of the transept wall, dominated by a beautifully designed Art Nouveau clock. The entire technical operation of the colliery was controlled from here. This arrangement glorifies electrical energy, as Zollern II/IV was the first fully electrified colliery in the Ruhr mining industry. During the technical planning stage, GBAG gradually phased out steam power machinery in favour of electricity. This modernisation was expected to significantly reduce operating costs.
Machine hall
Central halls housing several machines with different functions appeared in the Ruhr mining industry primarily between 1895 and 1914. Previously, individual steam engines were housed in separate buildings near corresponding shafts. The new model collieries centralized this machinery, which now also included steam-powered ventilation fans for the underground areas and compressors for generating compressed air. This made maintenance and supervision easier and allowed for short steam pipes, which greatly reduced energy loss.
More than 80 machine halls were built in the collieries of the Ruhr region at that time. However, equipment was by no means uniform. At Zollern II/IV, there were originally three types of machinery in the hall: two steam engines connected to generators for electricity production in the eastern wing, two air compressors in the central transept, and two hoisting engines (Fördermaschinen) in the western wing. Today, the two hoisting engines and one compressor from 1902 remain in their original form.
Knobbes' original plan for a solid brickwork structure was never realised. Instead, GBAG opted for a modern hall made of exposed steel trusses. The inspiration for this was the Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH) pavilion at the Düsseldorf Industrial Exhibition in 1902 – a building that caused a sensation at the time. The pavilion’s innovative steel architecture was intended to draw attention to the steel company's products presented inside. At the time, steel was considered a hallmark of industrial progress, much more than coal. Thanks to new production processes, German steel production expanded from 2 to 17 million tonnes per year between 1880 and 1913. In the context of its Düsseldorf predecessor, the Zollern hall can be seen as a symbol of the successful coal and steel industry in the Ruhr region.
The electric hoisting machine
Special attention was paid to the1902 hoisting machine. It was the first electrically powered main shaft hoisting machine in European mining.
Small electric winches had already been used in some secondary shafts in the 1890s. In main shafts, where multi-tonne loads had to be accelerated quickly, electrically powered hoisting was considered too risky compared to traditional steam engines. The enormous amount of energy required to start up would have regularly led the low-capacity power grids to collapse.
The commissioning of the Zollern II engine solved this problem shortly after the beginning of the 20th century. The technical solution consisted of a combination of a circuit patented in 1891 by the American Harry Ward (1861–1915) and the flywheel converter developed by Karl Ilgner (1862–1921). This reduced voltage fluctuations to a tolerable level.
From mine to museum
Zollern II/IV was never one of the “mega mines” in the area, but developed into a classic family mine (Familienpütt), with a workforce fluctuating between 1,500 and 2,500.
The history of the mine was unspectacular. During daily operations, a number of technical planning flaws soon became apparent, contradicting its status as a “model colliery”. In 1930, GBAG decided to centralize coal production from several mining fields by sinking a new central shaft in West Dortmund, the Germania.
Zollern II/IV was to be “run into the ground” until the new shaft became operational. Plans for a major modernization of the Bövinghausen mine were abandoned, sparing the building's structure from significant changes. Thanks to this decision, the model colliery remained largely intact in its original form until the end of mining operations in 1955. There were nevertheless several losses: the coking plant was decommissioned in 1918 and demolished soon after and the removal of the headframe above Shaft IV in 1940 noticeably disrupted the site’s symmetrical panorama.
Its rescue was achieved thanks to the persistent commitment of a small number of individuals who were enthusiastic about the exemplary quality of the facility and refused to be deterred. Notable figures include Hans Paul Koellmann, a university lecturer and architect from Dortmund, and the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. The decisive breakthrough came on October 30, 1969, when Karl Ruhrberg and Jürgen Harten from the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf sent an urgent letter to Heinz Kühn, the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia. On December 30, 1969, Westphalian State Conservator Hermann Busen officially informed the Zollern II/IV owners that the Minister President had requested the machine hall and the 1902 hoisting engine be placed under monument protection and to refuse permission for the planned demolition.
As a direct result of this rescue operation, the regional associations of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL) and Rhineland (LVR) created dedicated departments for the preservation of technical monuments in 1973 and 1974, respectively. Compared to other German federal states, this was a pioneering achievement.
The Westphalian State Office for Monument Preservation developed the idea of repurposing selected industrial buildings as ‘museums of labour’. This led to the founding of the Westphalian Industrial Museum in 1979 (renamed the LWL Museums of Industrial Heritage in 2023). The Rhineland Regional Council followed suit in 1984 with the founding of the LVR Industrial Museum. The central mission of the museums is to research the history of labour and present it at its original location, within the historic industrial buildings and adjacent workers' houses. Following extensive restoration work, the Zollern Colliery was opened to the public as a museum in 1999.