Industrial Culture

Until the 1920s, it was customary for the bride to wear her best festive dress to the wedding. It was often black, combined with a white veil. The white wedding dress only became popular in the early 20^th century and was only worn for weddings, not in everyday life. In the case of the black dress, the record indicates that two women were married in it: Fernandine Zwiehoff and her daughter Berta Karoline.

Hot running water was not yet common around 1900. Only gas and water connections in urban households enabled the breakthrough of a technology newly developed in 1894: a gas burner heats water continuously to up to 35 °C in the boiler above. The closed system and a well-designed combination fitting ensured safety, cleanliness and ease of operation.

Hayboxes were often used in the past to prepare hot meals. Their interior is padded with a heat-insulating material so that one or more pots can be placed inside. First, the food must be cooked for a short time on a conventional cooker. The pot is then placed in the haybox, where it remains for several hours. The food now cooks without the need to add heat from the outside.

The tableware set, produced during World War I, depicts four scenes of children playing war. The children wear suggested German uniforms, the stuffed animals wear clothes of Germany’s wartime enemies. The tableware set is a typical mass product with patriotic motifs of the time. The decorations were applied to prepared white ware exclusively at women’s workplaces using the transfer technique and fused with the glaze underneath during firing.

The exterior of the kitchen buffet in the style of the “Gelsenkirchen Baroque” corresponds to the ideas of a representative living room cabinet of the time. Inside, however, it is a functional piece of kitchen furniture. Kitchen buffets were very popular among the working class. They gave the eat-in kitchen, where family life took place, a homely atmosphere. Moreover, they were considered a status symbol.

At the end of 1952, the broadcasting of a regular television programme began in Germany. In the early years, the television sets were offered either as table-top sets or as television furniture. Combination chests contained other consumer electronics devices in addition to the TV set. The combination chest “Bodensee” features a television set, a radio set and a record player. It cost DM 2,449. A tape recorder could also be integrated.

The flag comes from one of the oldest workers’ associations in the Ruhr area. The “Bergmann-Verein Überruhr”, founded in 1861, became the “Katholischer Arbeiter- und Knappen-Verein” and then the “Katholische Arbeitnehmer-Bewegung”, which dissolved in 2011. The flag was made for the 40^th anniversary of the foundation in 1901 and restored in 1986. The profound religiosity becomes clear in the motif of the praying miner.

On the occasion of his 50^th birthday, members of the Altenessen rabbit breeders’ club gave their honorary chairman Leo Bachus this coffee set. Like many in the Ruhr area, the coke oven master bred rabbits in his garden after his 12-hour shifts as an inexpensive supplement to the family’s meat supply. In the mid-1920s, Essen's clubs alone kept about 4.000 animals.

The bandoneon is an inexpensive, compact musical instrument that can be learned without the ability to read sheet music. It is played according to special numbers and characters that describe the pressure on certain keys. Bandoneon music in Germany was club music and part of the everyday culture of the Ruhr area. Its widespread use in miners’ circles earned the instrument the name “miners’ piano”. 

The focus of Märklin’s successful railway models was on station buildings that were based on real-life structures. The Leipzig station was without dispute the company’s most elaborate model in terms of scale and production and is still considered the top offering in their station range today. Its proud price of up to 250 marks made it unaffordable for the majority of the population.

For a long time, the coal mined underground was extracted using iron mine carts. Supported by horses, miners manually moved the carts, which weighed up to 850 kilograms, from the mining site to the filling site, where they were transported through the shaft to the surface. Increasing mechanisation largely replaced the carts in the 1950s with more efficient skip conveying.

Entering a mine and reaching the workplace underground is very time-consuming. A miner cannot leave his workplace for breaks. He must therefore take his provisions with him at the beginning of the shift. Drinks used to be transported in drinking bottles of this kind made of robust tinplate. Since the miners preferred coffee, the bottles in the Ruhr Area were often called “Kaffeepullen” (coffee bottles). These drinking bottles come from the Nordstern mine in Gelsenkirchen.

An employee with a stand-up collar used to signal his profession as a white-collar worker, distinguishing himself from the proletarians, the workers. Unlike their physical work, activities in offices were clean, which was reflected in suits and white stand-up collars. The term “Stehkragen-Proletarier”, which corresponds to “white collar worker” in English, has become vernacularised for these office workers.

In 1887, the city of Essen built a new city hall. On the facade of the building, mainly the members of the building commission had themselves depicted in the form of stone portraits. One of them was architect Peter Zindel (1841-1902). Alongside a partner, he had been awarded the contract for the construction of the city hall under the motto “industry”. The coats of arms of the German federal states were placed next to the heads.

In September 1988, the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament moved into its new home on the banks of the Rhine in Düsseldorf. For the furnishing of the plenary hall, the Lübke company produced 300 identical chairs at a unit price of over DM 1.000. In 2012, a fundamental reconstruction of the plenary hall took place. The seating was also replaced as part of the barrier-free redesign. Chairs designed according to ergonomic criteria now replaced the armchair.

Children of wealthy families were often taught at home by private tutors around 1900. Homeschool desks served as workstations for the pupils. As with common school desks, the seat and writing desk formed one unit. However, they only offered space for one person. The seat and writing desk were height-adjustable. This way, the homeschool desk could be adapted to the increasing height of a pupil and used for several years.

In 1943, a Catholic woman in Essen sewed the baptismal gown for the first of her five children from the fabric of her wedding dress. She wove in a cross, a dove and a wave pattern, which stands for water and the moment of baptism. The saying, which translates to “Thanks be to the LORD / who has called me to His CHURCH out of GRACE” comes from the hymn “Fest soll mein Taufbund immer stehn” (“May my baptismal bond remain ever firm”) by Christoph Bernard Verspoell.

The Gnadenkirche in the northern city centre of Essen, consecrated in 1959, was planned as a place of worship for miners and industrial workers. Its architecture as well as its interior were intended to point out Essen’s character as an industrial city. To emphasise this, it was decided to have a steel altar built. The church was demolished in 2008 except for the bell tower. The altar went into the museum.

In 1923, French and Belgian troops invaded the Ruhr area because of the lack of German reparations payments. The occupation lasted until the summer of 1925. At the end of their service, many occupation soldiers had souvenir pictures made. They were produced in large numbers and show city views from the Ruhr area. In addition, a personal photo of the soldier was inserted and the period of service was indicated.

The statuettes of a miner and a metallurgist are modelled on larger-than-life statues that stood at the Sieg bridge near Siegen. Art professor Johann Friedrich Reusch (1843-1906) created them for his home town in 1902. They are popularly known as “Henner and Frieder” and are symbols for the two central economic factors in the Siegerland region: ore mining and steel production.