Ruhr (region)

Ruhr (region), region, western Germany, located north-west of the Sauerland Plateau, comprising the valley of the River Ruhr and adjacent areas, and usually regarded as covering the region that extends from the River Rhine at Wesel south to Düsseldorf, and east beyond Dortmund.

Covering an area of some 4,500 sq km (1,737 sq mi), the Ruhr is located on western Europe's largest coalfield and is one of the world's most industrialized regions. It has a number of large cities which form a conurbation of some 4 million people across its centre, north of the River Ruhr: Duisburg, Essen, Bochum, Dortmund, Oberhausen, and Gelsenkirchen. Düsseldorf, Wuppertal, and Krefeld lie on the edges of the conurbation. The Ruhr has excellent communications, being traversed by extensive networks of railway lines, motorways, and inland waterways. It has direct access, along the Rhine and through the Netherlands, to the Atlantic Ocean.

Apart from its bituminous coal, the Ruhr is best known for its metals production and manufacturing. Indeed, until relatively recently it was the source of a large proportion of the iron and steel, and of the machinery and other metal products produced in Germany, as well as of chemicals and textiles. However, like other areas of relatively early industrialization and heavy industry in Western Europe, the Ruhr has undergone significant changes over the past 30 years.

Coal production peaked in 1956 at more than 125 million tonnes and then began to decline in the face of competition from alternative producers and energy sources. By the mid-1980s production was about half the 1956 figure, while employment had been cut by more than 60 per cent to about 70,000 workers. Mines continued to close over the subsequent decade, and production declined; in 1993 bituminous coal production for the whole of Germany was just over 60,000 tonnes. The remaining mines are large, highly mechanized, and concentrated mainly in the north. The steel industry has similarly declined in the face of competition, mainly from East Asia. Production has been concentrated in fewer plants, again highly mechanized, notably in Dortmund and Duisburg.

Other industries have been brought in to try to offset the unemployment caused by the decline of coal and steel, including electronics and consumer goods. The Ruhr is still Germany's industrial core; however, at the same time it appears to be in the process of de-industrialization. The service industries are now more important than manufacturing in terms of employment.

The large-scale development of coal-mining and heavy industry in the Ruhr dates from 1870. Previously, mining had been on a small scale, utilizing coal outcrops in the south. The larger market created by German industrialization and unification (1871) combined with new technology to enable the richer underground coal deposits to be exploited. The close proximity of exposed seams of coking coal and iron ore in the south had enabled the emergence of iron and steel production in the early 19th century. The industry developed rapidly under the management of such internationally famous firms as Krupp, Thyssen, and Stinnes.

By virtue of its productive capacity, the Ruhr was the core of the German war effort during World War I and World War II. France and Belgium occupied the region from 1923 to 1925 on the grounds that Germany had not paid the war reparations that were due under the Treaty of Versailles. About one third of the region's industrial facilities were destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II. After the war, limitations were placed on industrial output. The Ruhr was under the control of an international body from 1949 until 1952. In that latter year the European Coal and Steel Community (the forerunner of the European Union) was formed, and all restrictions on industrial output were abandoned.