Rheinelbe dump

They served as the foundation for Dortmund's Fürst Hardenberg colliery and today lead straight into the sky: the artist Herman Prigann stacked 35 concrete blocks to form a tower - the goal of his "Stairway to Heaven", which towers far above the Rheinelbe colliery site. Summiteers discover more of his works in the "Sculpture Forest" as they climb up the mountain. In addition to art, nature has conquered the dump. Completely without a plan and without human intervention.

The Rheinelbe colliery, founded in 1861, was shut down again in 1928. The associated heaps, however, remained in operation - they were piled up, but also removed again when the mountains, i.e. the residual material, were needed as building material. In 1999 the last landfill on the Rheinelbe took place; the mighty heap south of the former Kray-Wanner railway line was "finished" - and became an important project of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) Emscher Park. The Recklinghausen artist Herman Prigann incorporated the former heap of rubble into an art concept: in the years that followed, a kind of adventure landscape for the triad of people, nature and technology emerged from the industrial wasteland, on which forest and vegetation have been able to spread since the colliery was closed. Paths arranged in a spiral lead up to the roughly ten meter high "Stairway to Heaven"; In the "Sculpture Forest" there are remains of demolished industrial plants, which only on closer inspection reveal themselves as works of art made of concrete, steel and natural materials.

The industrial forest on the Halden site is now an important habitat for numerous plant and animal species. The Rheinelbe forest station has found a new home in the former substation of the Rheinelbe colliery - the largest station in the Ruhr area. Here, among other things, adventure hikes for adults and children are offered.