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The Rheinpreußen mining tip

As part of the IBA Emscher Park project in 1998, Kultur Ruhr GmbH selected a number of new mining tips to be re-designed as landmarks. Dr. Brockhaus, the director of the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, asked the artist Otto Piene to re-design the Rheinpreußen spoil tip which towers above an old industrial landscape. Piene’s concept foresaw a 30 metre tall steel tower illuminated in red in the form of an oversize collier’s safety lamp: the so-called "pit lamp". In addition the whole area around the 70 metre high tip was to be flooded in red light. The illuminated tower above the red tip is a tribute to the two motors of economic development, the energy derived from coal and the molten heat of steel.

The first phase of the work was completed in March 2006. On 8th August 2007 the 30 metre high pit lamp was switched on for the first time in the presence of Otto Piene and the local press. In September 2007 thirty-five illuminated masts went into operation. Every evening they flood around 8000 cubic metres of land around the tip in a warm red glow.

The landmark is intended to highlight the contribution made by millions of colliers and steel workers to the economic development of the area, especially those who worked at the Rheinpreußen colliery, the first colliery on the left bank of the Lower Rhine.