The location Essen
Present and past of a Ruhr-metropolis
 Essen is the eight largest city in Germany, situated in the heart of the federal state Northrhine-Westfalia. Now the EU jury in Brussels has chosen "Essen for the Ruhrgebiet" as "European Capital of Culture 2010". Under its motto “Change through culture – Culture through change”, the Ruhrgebiet wants to show the enormous development, present a new self – image and space for cultural exchange. A modern metropolis with more than a thousand year old history and with far-reaching, not yet finished changes during the last decades. Within this phase the structural change from an industrial past to a modern trade- and service centre has taken place. Essen was and still is an important business site. Some of the largest and well known German companies have their headquarters here, for instance RWE, Karstadt-Quelle, RAG and Thyssen-Krupp. Besides the economic importance, Essen is a notable educational site as well with a university, the traditional Folkwang Academy and other numerous academic and non-academic institutions.
Furthermore Essen has a dense cultural infrastructure. Besides the famous Folkwang Museum, which represents all important art epochs from the romantic period to classical modernist art, from contemporary art to Far Eastern and African art, the World Heritage site Zollverein with its numerous affiliated institutions, such as the Design-Museum of Northrhine-Westfalia, stands for the importance of the artistic and cultural landscape of Essen. Other museums, exhibition sites, theatre-, music- and leisure-institutions as well as a lively gallery scene round the high level of cultural life in Essen off. The other main cities of the Ruhr region as well as the near capital city Duesseldorf offer further cultural highlights close by.
 The Stellwerk Zollverein is situated in Essen, in the city part Katernberg. About 23,800 people live here in the north of Essen. The history of Katernberg is strongly connected to coal mining. The shaft system Zollverein formed the economic centre of today’s Katernberg in the middle of the 19th century. Therefore miners housing schemes still characterize the townscape. The radical change started with the retreat of the mining. The closing of the coal mine Zeche Zollverein in 1986 and its coking plant in 1993 led to a tremendous loss of jobs and severe social problems. Extensive industrial fallows were the visible legacies of this process.
Since the end of the 80’s, city and businesses have been involved in well-directed initiatives for Katernberg. Main points of emphasise are projects dealing with employment and qualification, promotion of coexistence between Germans and Non-Germans and improvement of the infrastructure. Art, culture, design and exhibition centres, nationally and internationally important, as well as the establishment of enterprises are being developed on the grounds of the former mining fallows. A gain in prestige is connected especially to the designation of the Zeche Zollverein and its coking plant as a World Heritage site by the UNESCO in August 2002.
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