Anthropology of Global Climate Urgency
Doctoral Network
Urgent Repair
The Making of Industrial Heritage in the Late Industrialism
Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Fieldwork Updates by Helena Böhmová - March 2025
The area of the Middle German Coal District located in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt has been historically one of the epicentres of German heavy industry (predominantly typical for lignite mining and chemical industry), and it remains to be an important contributor to German energy production still today. In the early 90s a tendency has emerged to move away from the industrial past towards a more sustainable future. New industrial approaches are pushed into the foreground, open-pit mines are being flooded or otherwise recultivated, and factories and other former industrial operational sites are being closed down or reused and reimagined as industrial heritage sites. The ever-present transformations in the regions are now entering yet another phase – one towards sustainability, recultivation, and heritization of the industrial past.
The project dwells into the questions of industrial heritage and its connotations in the after-coal present and future of the region, mainly asking how is the industrial heritage imagined, made, and developed by the industrial heritage social actors in the context of late industrialism. The industry in the region is being reimagined as a representation of the culturally and economically significant past, while simultaneously presenting a way of bringing the industrial past into a sustainable future. A number of industrial heritage institutions, networks, and other working groups are being instated, either by state Saxony-Anhalt itself or as a result of initiatives of specific individuals, that are focusing on preservation and reimaginations of both material and immaterial industrial legacies of industrial past and present of the region. The project at hand is asking how the institutions, networks and/or social actors imagine, make and develop industrial heritage in the time when old industrial structures are becoming increasingly obsolete and industrialism is becoming late industrialism (Fortun 2012; Ahmann, Kenner 2020 etc.).
Fieldnote, September 2023,
"The horizon glows with heat. Blurred edges of water blend with greenish shores overgrown with birches and blackthorns. The wind is scarce and hot and brings no relief. The magnificent view, that opened up in front of me just a few minutes before, while overlooking the Gremmin lake area with the gigantic excavators on the peninsula in the middle, is suddenly gone - it evaporated into the omnipresent heat that beams upwards, from the asphalt pavement. My attempt to reach “Ferropolis” on foot seems harder than I originally thought. This landscape is not meant to be walked - the thought hits me multiple times, while I am being overtaken by cyclists, who glance down at me with a mixture of pity and astonishment. The attempt to recultivate the Gremmin mining area seems to be successful – the former open-pit mine has been turned into a large lake, but its mining past is also remembered, preserved, and in a way “reused” by the Ferropolis – the City of Iron, which has emerged in the very middle of it. (…) What a strange late industrial landscape. It seems as though I won’t be able to reach it on my first attempt. The heat, the distance, and the industrial landscape which is not graceful towards pedestrians have gotten the better of me."
The project is centred around three core theoretical themes: industrial sentiment, temporality and landscape.
The sentiment touches on material and immaterial traces of industrial heritage and their presence in collective consciousness of the region (Wicke, Berger, Golombek 2018 etc.). These are not uniformly perceived; they carry pride in past achievements, as well as regret over environmental and landscape degradation, and hope for regeneration in the future. Industrial heritage institutions play an important role in shaping these perceptions, mediating a sense of continuity between the region’s industrial past and its future.
Late industrialism as a theoretical concept captures this dualism and tension, as well as the temporal dimension in which industrial heritage takes place. Temporal frame of late industrialism suggests that one era hasn’t fully ended and another fully started; rather it conveys the idea of experienced “lateness” of the industrial past that is being reimagined and transformed, yet still persists. The “late” carries both exhaustion and radical potential (Ahmann, Kenner 2020). Late industrialism describe places marked by deteriorating systems and aging infrastructure (Fortun 2012), while other works suggest modes and arts of dealing with these legacies (Tsing, Swanson, Gan, Bubandt 2017 etc.), describing the flourishing and perishing of beings and ecologies, as well as reimagination of already existing industrial structures.
The (late) industrial landscape, defined by this paradoxical nature becomes a space where narratives of decline and possibilities for renewal coexist. “Landscapes are always more than terrains” (Rissing, Jones 2022), they are “a way in which people – all people – understand and engage with the material world around them” (Bender 2020). The late industrial “bodies tumbled into bodies“ (Tsing, Swanson, Gan, Bubandt 2017), can be also seen as industrial structures tumbled into the land itself. This project approaches the late industrial landscape as a field upon which material and immaterial interplay of competing systems intertwine (Rissing, Jones 2022).
Participative observation, social connections, networking
Visiting, observing, and connecting to different social actors within the industrial heritage sector, both institutions and individuals has been the dominant form of accessing the field locations in this project. By approaching social actors within the industrial heritage sector, entering their places of work, taking part in social and/or cultural events they organize and trying to gain access and navigate their social networks and groups I wanted to better understand the processes behind the heritization and reimagination of the late industrial spaces and/or places. From dozens of such covered field locations, three specific have been selected for closer case studies (Netzwerk für Industriekultur, Ferropolis: The City of Iron and Deutches Chemie Museum Merseburg). Selection of these three different field locations illustrate different strategies and modes of making of industrial heritage in Saxony-Anhalt and the social and environmental effects (such as new working places or future visions of the industries).
In addition to the above mentioned research methods and collection of visual, audio and written materials, the project have further employed the footwork method - a concept theoretically rooted in the work of Tim Ingold and/or Ivan Foletti (Foletti 2018, Ingold 2016 etc.) The method of physically walking the landscape serves as an unorthodox approach towards deeper understanding of the studied spaces and/or places. Footwork forces slowness (as oppose to the urgency); a mental shift from transport through the landscape to wayfaring (Ingold 2010) and presents alternative ways of observation – ones that are rarely done in the fast and rapidly changing world. A trail through the region have been developed and attempted, featuring many of the important industrial heritage sites. The idea of heritage walk as well as the choosing of the sites was inspired by European Route of Industrial Heritage and local initiatives.
