Rungenberg dump

Heaped up from black mining material, two pyramids without greenery and almost inhospitable rise into the sky and form the double peak of the Rungenberg spoil tip. Dark, massive structures crowned by thick tubes of rusted steel - and the radiant light of the headlights housed within. An artistic play with opposites that turns the overburden heap in Gelsenkirchen into an extraordinary work of art.

The heap in the Buer district is around 63 hectares in size and a good 60 meters high. Heaped up from the overburden of the Hugo mine, it is one of the largest heaps in the Ruhr area. The geometric, ungreened design of the tip of the heap results from a concept by the Swiss architect Rolf Keller, who also designed the nearby new housing estate and deliberately wanted to emphasize the artificiality of the heap. Its artistic design was placed in the hands of Hermann EsRichter and Klaus Noculak in 1992, who designed the "Night Signs": Two mirror spotlights were positioned towards the sky in such a way that their beams crossed exactly over the imaginary tip of the heap, thus completing it. EsRichter and Noculak also designed the so-called "rail plateau" roughly in the middle of the upper heap terrace: a field formed from 5.500 meters of colliery railway tracks, which on the one hand is intended to remind of the importance of train traffic for mining, but on the other hand with some rails welded diagonally onto the basic structure symbolizes structural change.

From Horster Straße or the Schüngelberg settlement, the heap can be accessed by walkers via numerous paths that wind their way up the mountain in large loops. If you want to storm the summit in a hurry, you can access the bridge over the Lanferbach on Holthauser Straße from the settlement and climb the approx. 300 steps. The reward: impressive art and a view that makes it abundantly clear how closely colliery and settlement, mine and heap are still linked today.