Kokerei Hansa

Zentralkokerei Hansa is the last remaining plant of the 17 coking plants that were built during the 1920s’ modernisation rush.
Kokerei Hansa, erected next to the Hansa pit in 1927 and based upon plans by architects Stegmann and Stein, supplied the Dortmunder Union smelting works.
It was built as part of the major modernisation done at Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG, founded in 1926 and also including Dortmunder Union.
A striking feature of Kokerei Hansa is the separation and arrangement of coke oven batteries and chemical production plants in two lanes.
In the 1930s, Kokerei Hansa, with a capacity of 4,800 tonnes a day, was the largest coking plant in the Ruhr area. Due to massive war damage, in 1945 it was temporarily shut down before in 1946 the first parts of the plant were put on stream once again.
In 1955 and 1958, the coking plant was expanded further and employed about 800 people. Before the coking plant in Dortmund-Hörde was shut down in 1964, Kokerei Hansa’s capacity was increased again. It reaches its apex in 1957, at 5,200 tonnes a day. (Die roten Jahreszahlen und die inhaltliche Beschreibung passen nicht zusammen.)
In 1980, after 110 years the Hansa pit was shut down. Now other pits supplied the coking plant with coal by rail.
But then, in 1992, the once so important coking plant was also shut down. Today, Kokerei Hansa is the seat of Stiftung Industriedenkmalpflege und Geschichtskultur des Landes NRW (the state of North Rhine – Westphalia’s industrial monuments and historical culture foundation), which wants to preserve the site’s special aesthetics. As a “large walkable sculpture”, the site gives an unusual insight into a past industrial era and an ever changing industrial nature. An unusual adventure trail guides visitors to, for example, the impressive compressor hall with its gigantic machinery and up on the coal bin, which provides a fascinating panoramic view of Dortmund.
Today, Kokerei Hansa comprises an area of 32 hectares and about 50 different buildings, some of which still feature a lot of machinery. The preserved equipment like pipelines on approach bridges, coke oven batteries and stack coolers and cleaning facilities is, in part, of gigantic dimensions.

Author: Route Industriekultur / Redaktion baukunst-nrw
Last changed on 03.06.2024

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