Coal, Coke and Miners The earlier development of the steel & iron industry

Why here? Due to the large coal deposits in the Ruhr area (“Ruhrgebiet“) it was easy to win coal. Thanks to navigable waterways and the steam engine the coal could be sold throughout Germany.

For what? You need coal to produce steel. Because of this, the big corporations of the steel industry (for example, Thyssen, Krupp and Klöckner) are based in the Ruhr area near the rivers Rhine and Ruhr.

More on the Ruhr area‘s history There was so much work that the steel industry needed more workers from Germany and from other countries. The cities grew and they built working class quarters for the new workers. The Ruhr area provided the whole nation with weapons. After the destructions during World War II, the cities needed even more workers from other countries to rebuild this region.

Crisis In 1950, imported oil was cheaper and caused an economic crisis. The same happened to the steel industry because the production of steel in Germany had become too expensive compared to the production abroad in 1970.