English translations

Workers' housing estates are characterised by a special way of living together and their architecture shapes entire districts. They are regarded as almost typical for the Ruhr area and there are many of them. The oldest is the Eisenheim settlement. Founded in 1846, its history is chequered by waves of construction, destruction, the threat of demolition and its designation as an architectural monument.

However, with the change in the working world and the transition into the digital age, a change is taking place in the former residential quarters, which were home to miners and smelters. Here too, traces of the industrial age are fading rapidly.

The idea of setting up a museum came from the Eisenheim residents themselves. At the suggestion of the workers' initiative of the time, historical objects from the households were collected and exhibited in one of the empty wash houses as early as 1979. Today, the collection of the “Volksmuseum Eisenheim” forms part of the LVR Industrial Museum.

In 1758, ore was smelted into pig iron for the first time at the St. Antony ironworks in Osterfeld. Some 80 years later, iron and steel production experienced a rapid upswing. The “Hüttengewerkschaft und Handlung Jacobi, Haniel und Huyssen" (JHH) also profited from this and recruited "capable masters and workers of the right kind”. The Eisenheim settlement was built for them in 1846.

The first to be built were the masters' houses for metallurgical specialists. In a second construction phase lasting from 1865 to 1872, more houses were added, thereby welcoming miners into the settlement. By 1903, the settlement of Eisenheim had grown to a stock of 51 houses with around 200 apartments. Around 1,200 people lived in them.

The settlement was characterised by different building types, at first semi-detached houses with two apartments, and later one-and-a-half storey houses with four flats. The settlement was criss-crossed by a network of public roads, gardens and stables. In 1911, a factory kindergarten was even opened.

As industrialisation gathered pace, the demand for labour increased. As an incentive, the Gutehoffnungshütte (GHH), which had emerged from the JHH, offered its own apartments at affordable rental prices and gardens that would allow families to provide for themselves. But the settlements also facilitated social control, as the workers were bundled into one living place. It was particularly challenging given that the loss of a job also entailed the loss of the apartment.

In the first few years, workers moved to Eisenheim from the regions of Siegerland, Bergisches Land or the Eifel. Around 1900, many miners from the Prussian eastern provinces – in what is today Poland – arrived and settled here. After the Second World War, immigrants came from Southern Europe and Turkey.

Over time, a special sense of community developed. Many families lived in Eisenheim for several generations. But there was always conflict and tension. Both sides of coexistence still characterise the settlement of Eisenheim today.

Products from their own gardens were, for a long time, vital to feeding what were mostly large families. The modern mass consumption of food did not yet exist. And earnings were often only sufficient for the most necessary purchases.

Up to 400 square metres in size and surrounded by low hedges, the gardens ran through the settlement. Potatoes as well as fruit and vegetables were cultivated, which were easy to store and preserve. Sour pickled beans and white cabbage or preserved cherries and pears provided vitamins. Some families kept a pig in the barn, fed with kitchen waste and slaughtered in autumn. Goats, rabbits, chickens and doves also contributed to the supply of meat, milk and eggs.

Today, many gardens are used purely for relaxation. Some are barely tended to any more. And the maximum height of the hedges – set at 150 cm as prescribed by the preservation order and which is intended to serve as a point of contact within the neighbourhood – is often exceeded in order to protect one's own privacy.

For many people, leisure time was a rare commodity for a long time, and 14-16 working hour days were not uncommon in the 19th century. The 48-hour week was still in force around 1950.

Once work was over, everyday life presented further obligations. Women, in particular, took care of the household, bringing up the children or tending to the garden. Wash days were exhausting, which were all done by hand until well into the 1950s. Only after that did electric washing machines become established.

While the men spent free hours in one of the nearby pubs, devoting themselves to their pigeons or the football club, the children played in the street. Women usually only had free time for an evening chat on the benches in front of the houses.

You can still find seats in front of the houses in Eisenheim. However, modern forms of leisure activities have long since found their way into Eisenheim, as can be seen in the form of satellite TV systems, bathing pools or brick barbecues.

After the Second World War, the settlement fell into disrepair. Several houses were destroyed. In 1965, the masters’ houses were also demolished. The Hüttenwerke Oberhausen, as the owners, lost interest in the outdated buildings, some of which were not even connected to the sewage system. In their place, a modern settlement was to be built in the 1960s, which also promised more profit.

This provoked a wave of protest by the inhabitants. In the 1970s, the art historian Prof. Dr. Roland Günter and many others supported the struggle of the workers' initiative, which became ground-breaking for the preservation of industrial monuments in the Ruhr area. Like Eisenheim, many workers' housing estates are now protected as historical monuments.

By the mid-1980s the housing estates had been renovated. Today, it is a residential quarter with a mixed neighbourhood. Workers and office employees still live here. Artists and creative people have also joined the scene. Steelworkers and miners have become somewhat rare, as is the case everywhere in the Ruhr area today.

Almost all family life would take place in the kitchen. It was usually the central room in the house and often the only one with any heating. Here, people cooked, washed, played, learned and rested.

The furniture used by the first settlers was simple. The central point was the coal-fired cooker. Other small pieces of furniture usually served only simple needs. Those who could afford it had a sofa or a buffet cupboard with glass top.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the first electrical appliances, such as refrigerators, found their way into the kitchens. They were followed by functional kitchenettes following the renovation of apartments in the 1980s. It was not unusual, however, for modern appliances to be placed next to the old furniture.

Since then, many of these older apartments have been merged into one larger one. Located directly next to the entrance, the kitchens are still a meeting place for family and guests today.

In the beginning, water for washing, cleaning and cooking had to be fetched from wells. It was not until the 1920s that apartments were provided with running water. Only a few houses were connected to the public sewage system. Until the settlement’s full-scale renovation from the 1970s onwards, most of the sewage flowed into the street gutters.

There were also no toilets or baths in the houses to begin with. Residents had to go to the outhouse located in the stable via the courtyard path, or they had to use chamber pots. Daily personal hygiene was managed at the washbasin. Usually, Saturday was bathing day. A zinc tub with warm water was placed in the kitchen and one family member after another went in until everyone was clean.

Laundry was also washed in large vats in the kitchens. It was not only stews that were cooked on the cookers, but also the laundry. The term “boiled laundry” (“Kochwäsche”) remains in the German language until this day.

Families around the year 1900 were large. On average they had four children, but some families had considerably more. And not all children who were born survived. The infant mortality rate during this period was high.

In the Eisenheim apartments, people lived in very confined spaces. Depending on the type of house, 40 to 55 square metres of space were available. Besides the kitchen, there were two bedrooms under one roof. One or two small children slept there with their parents, the others next door often in a shared bed.

In order to earn additional income, many families also took on unmarried workers as “boarders”. This was not without its consequences. There were often complaints about binge drinking and immoral approaches to the women and girls in the household. It is true that the GHH strictly prohibited boarders. But in Eisenheim, property management found them again and again during inspections and, in one household, there were once even eight of them.