The Ruhrgebiet Regional Route

Heavy industry means heavy labour. Nowhere in Europe is this so clear as in the Ruhrgebiet. The region is full of the history of coal, steel and people, exemplary pioneering achievements and countless victims. A history in which entrepreneurial audacity simultaneously resulted in appalling suffering and a proud sense of community, and the urban population was welded together by the common fate of poor living conditions, poisonous gases and pulmonary diseases. Now the clouds of smoke from factory chimneys have for the most part disappeared, leaving more industrial monuments in their wake than anywhere else in Europe.
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