The wall in the old control room immediately reveals that this was the hub of all activities. It contains operating panels, levers and a huge amount of measuring instruments. Visitors can even still see a part of the historic engine house with its two turbines. Together they make up the core of what was once the largest steam power station in the world.

Its history begins on the 14^th December 1915 with a trial operation on a turbine with a 16 MW output. By the end of the 1920s this had risen to 430 MW. From then on 15 chimneystacks and 21 cooling towers dominated the horizon around the Zschornewitz power station. This gigantic plant on the edge of the Dübener Heath was the powerhouse behind the region's flourishing engineering and chemical industry and delivered electricity as far as Berlin. The brown coal necessary to power the station came from opencast mines whose spoil tips and ash landfills gradually surrounded the whole of Zschornewitz. Directly next to the power station stands a model garden city that was built at the same time: the “Kolonie” works housing estate. In summer 1944 its residents were forced to dismantle two thirds of the power station as war reparations. In 1955 work began on building up the factory to full capacity once more, and this culminated in an output of almost 600 MW.

In 1992 the power station, which had changed over to natural gas in the meantime, was finally taken off the net. A grass-roots initiative set up by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation saved the core historic buildings on the industrial site from the threat of demolition and ensured that they were listed along with the works housing estate. All the houses and streets where repaired and restored to their original state for Expo 2000 as a major testament to Germany industrial heritage. The power station itself celebrated its reopening in 1992 as a "cultural power station". Two years later most of the work on restoring the existing buildings according to monument preservation standards had been completed. Today the engine house and the control room are not only a living witness to our industrial heritage, but an impressive setting for a broad range of events.