The Fall of the Wall meant the end of many things

In the last two days there has been a great deal of interest in the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin and the consequent reunification of Germany months later (typically reported as the reunification of Berlin!). We have been very interested in all this as Jane and I were in Germany in August-September.

I keep thinking of Chemnitz where they have 30,000 empty houses (symbolic of the population migration and decline)and apartments and a large head of Marx.

I think of the Bio Towers of Lauchammer. These are the few remnants of a truly remarkable endeavour the production of coke from brown coal

In 1952 with supplies of quality coking coal from the Ruhr region (in West Germany) the former GDR needed another source of coke for its industry (coke is critical in iron production). The world’s first large-scale lignite (Brown coal) coking plant came into service at Lauchhammer. This technological breakthrough enabled the GDR to replace imported coke with it own supplies.

The process involved briquetting the coal to achieve an even grain size and a reduction of moisture content to about 1%. The briquettes are then coked.

Lauchhammer laid the foundations for the expansion of the East German metallurgy industry. Briquetting plants and power stations started springing up in the industrial haze surrounding the town.

The bio-tower are called tower-type trickling filters they were trickling installation for the biological purification of coking plant wastewater containing harmful substances from the coke works

But of this break-through plant nothing much remains except for the bio-towers. The post-reunification era demolition fever did more than flatten factories: it damaged the identity of Lauchhammer and its people by basically throwing them out of work and devaluing their achievements.

We visited the bio-towers and were greeted by members of the Traditional Brown Coal Association who were keen to show use around. One of their publications Die BraunKohlenengrosskokerei Lauchhammer. Lauchhammer: Traditionsverein Braunkohle (written by an editors cooperative) proudly details the works and the hours and awards its staff were given.

All this is not to say that the GDR was a happy place, clearly it was a most totalitarian and repressive regime and its replacement is a huge step forward for the people of East Germany but and there is always a but, there was a human cost to the people at Lauchhammer that the restoration of the bio-towers can only go some way to heal.

Industrial Nature at the Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin

Industrial Nature is a concept that originated in Germany – particularly with the deindustrialisation of the Ruhr (Zollverein for example is a good example of such a site). The term refers to three things – the revegetation of industrial sites by native species, the colonisation of industrial sites (working or abandoned) by species adapted to the new environment created by industry and the deliberate plantings on industrialised sites.

The Deutsches Technikmuseum (German Technical Museum) at the former locomotive workshops and goods yard (Anhalter Güterbahnhof) of Berlin-Anhalt Railway Company. The workshops were closed in 1952 but it is not clear when the goods yard was closed. The Museum began using the site in 1987 – naturally it houses a display of railway locomotives and associated items.

There are two roundhouses around two turntables and if you look at Google Maps you can see gaps in one of the roundhouses which are described as follows

“A group of three overgrown tracks in the first engine shed provide a reminder that the site lay abandoned for thirty years. The plants growing here include the Mahaleb cherry (normally a Mediterranean plant), giant knotweed (a native of Siberia) and the medicinal herbs evening primrose and lady’s mantle.”

This is what they were talking about - the abandoned tracks have been colonised.

Below is another example of a ruined building next to the roundhouse simply being left for nature to colonise.

This is a interesting management technique one that could meet both industrial and nature conservation goals without the “prettying up” of sites that often occurs.

The Museum also preserves trains – this is an example of the V-200 class of diesel hydraulic locomotives in service from 1957 to 1984 and cosmetically restored.