Industrial heritage as a form of urgent repair? The Making of Industrial Heritage in the Late Industrialism

Abstract (English)

In line with climate actions and coal-phase-out policy in Germany, the central coal mining district in Saxony-Anhalt, previously renowned for its heavy industry and lignite mining, is being rapidly, urgently, and continuously reimagined and transformed. While industrial infrastructures slowly fade into obsolescence, leaving behind what could be described as “late industrial” landscape (Fortun 2012), the region’s industrial past remains deeply connected to its cultural identity (Berge, Wicke 2017, Berkner 2022 etc.) and industrial heritage is gaining prominence. Apart from providing space and platform for commemoration and preservation, industrial heritage, represented by physical remnants of the past industries and infrastructures, as well as sustained by institutions, networks, and other institutions, possibly carries the potential to contribute to the complex societal challenge: how to reinvent itself, without losing the sense of itself. By valuing, heritizing, and in reinventing the past, while acknowledging its contributions and its consequences for the present and future, industrial heritage holds a unique and important position within the ongoing vast structural transformations in the region.
The paper explores the tension between the "urgency" of post-coal transformations and the "slowness" imposed by the temporalities of heritage-making. Focusing on how industrial heritage is imagined, made and developed by the industrial heritage social actors in Saxony-Anhalt, the paper engages with two intersecting axes: slow vs. urgent and heritization vs. reinvention. To illustrate this, three specific industrial heritage institutions and networks serve as examples, each representing a different approach to conceptualizing, imagining, and 'making of' industrial heritage in Saxony-Anhalt.
By examining the current representation, imagination and practises of the industrial heritage in Saxony-Anhalt, ultimately the paper aims to contribute to the broader anthropological debate by thematizing the role of heritization and the process of (re)shaping industrial sentiments in the context of the post-coal, late industrial world.