Committees
Our committees are comprised of members of the State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia, executive board members and senior managers of RAG Aktiengesellschaft and functionaries of various national and Ruhr region organizations.
Foundation
In 1995, an instrument to master structural change in North Rhine-Westphalia was created with the Foundation for the Preservation of Industrial Monuments and Historical Culture. It is the only foundation Germany-wide that is actively committed to the preservation of high-profile industrial monuments, with the objective of safeguarding them against demolition, securing them, conducting scientific research, making them accessible to the public and instilling them with new, monument-oriented use. The Foundation assumes ownership of industrial monuments and gives impetus to the integration of the industrial age’s relics in concepts of urban development and landscape planning, protection of monuments, the economy and tourism.
The Foundation for the Preservation of Industrial Monuments and Historical Culture was founded by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and RAG Aktiengesellschaft as an operationally active, independent foundation under private law. The public in NRW and especially companies, owners of industrial monuments as well as cities and communities, associations and economic associations are invited to support the Foundation’s work through donations, charitable contributions and active cooperation in support associations. In the meantime, benefactors do not only include RAG AG, but also other companies like Thyssen Krupp Federn AG and RWE Power AG. At many locations in NRW, support associations are promoting the Foundation’s work right on-site, in turn, delivering a contribution towards revitalizing and conveying the history of the monument locations thanks to their intensive honorary engagement.
The Foundation itself and its projects are financially supported by the Federal Government and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the foundation RAG-Stiftung, RAG-AG and by the Regional Association Ruhr (Regionalverband Ruhr).
The Foundation takes over properties with industrial plants under monumental protection when the owner simultaneously provides an appropriate amount of money. Industrial monuments are incorporated into the Foundation’s assets that are under threat of demolition or for which there are initially no signs of any kind of use. By acquiring ownership, the Foundation removes the plants from economic exploitative pressures. Together with local and regional partners, it carries out construction reinforcement and maintenance work on the buildings and designs usage concepts that are suitably aligned to the monuments and sustainability.
By now, the portfolio includes industrial monuments at 13 locations in NRW. They are relics of hard coal mining plants like, e.g., headframes, shaft halls and machine buildings, in addition to a coking plant as evidence of the integrated economy in the Ruhr region, a monument of the energy industry in the shape of a historic pumped-storage power plant and an Osemund hammer mill as a historic technical testimony.
Who is the Foundation for the Preservation of Industrial Monuments and Historical Culture? Learn more about the Foundation’s statute, tasks and current topics here.
