During the official ceremony in the presence of José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, Germany’s Federal President Horst Köhler opened the Cultural Capital of Europe Ruhr 2010 at the historical Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex with a cordial “Glück auf”, the traditional miners’ greeting. The city of Essen holds the title of Cultural Capital on behalf of 53 municipalities in the Ruhr District, which has a total of 5.3 million inhabitants and is thus the third largest conurbation in Europe after Paris and London. As the Federal President remarked in his address, this was “a first in the 25-year history of this European honorary title, a great endorsement of the Ruhr District and of us all”. The Ruhr District’s very own rock star Herbert Grönemeyer then struck up his new, specially composed mining-district hymn “Komm zur Ruhr”. For three whole years the two managers of Ruhr 2010 GmbH, Fritz Pleitgen and Oliver Scheytt, worked with their team to prepare for this special year, which will involve 300 projects and 2,500 events. These aim to rid the district of the cliché of being – as Horst Köhler put it – “a region of chimney stacks” and to conjure up new images. The motto is Culture through Change, Change through Culture, and the programme guide, which is still not complete, runs to 224 pages.
Fritz Pleitgen, born in Duisburg, used to be a foreign correspondent for German television. His last position was that of director of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk broadcasting company in Cologne. He regards the Ruhr metropolitan area as an economic and cultural link between Warsaw, Berlin and Brussels. After all, people at its five general universities, ten universities of applied sciences and roughly 100 research institutes are working “on innovations for the future of Europe”. Ten of the 100 German companies with the highest turnovers have their headquarters there. As Pleitgen pointed out, “Cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Cologne and Antwerp are just around the corner, and the road and rail network, the canal system, and the Rhine and Ruhr rivers provide the logistical prerequisites for organizing commerce in Europe.” The Ruhr 2010 organization aims to use this infrastructure to create new cultural axes that will be marked by different artistic projects. “The Ruhr District will thus merge into one cultural metropolis that assumes significance at the national level for the old and the new Europe.”
With a view to Ruhr 2010, can one speak of “active integration” of the Ruhr communities? “Not yet!” says Pleitgen. “Because the city perimeters border directly on one another, the Ruhr District has for centuries been marked by a parish-pump mentality.” But the application to be European Cultural Capital under the heading “Essen for the Ruhr District” already brought about a change in attitude. “The cities in the mining district pulled together like never before. City boundaries are increasingly blurring. From Duisburg to Essen to Dortmund, from the borders to Münsterland to Bergisches Land, local administrations are collaborating strategically.” This interplay could also be a model for other regions in Germany “especially in times of economic crisis and emergency local government budgets, along with growing global competition”. “In the future, if you want to survive internationally, you will also have to be strong at regional level. That works better in a group.”
Fritz Pleitgen grew up in the Ruhr District. While still an active journalist he was also vice president, and latterly president, of the European Broadcasting Union, an amalgamation of 75 broadcasting organizations in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. According to Pleitgen, the Cultural Capital is also engaging “explicitly with issues to do with migration and identity, culture and education” in the programme section entitled “Europa bewegen” (Getting Europe Moving). Different projects aim to show a “lively Europe of encounter and collaboration, above and beyond official guidelines”. “They rise to the experience of 150 years of migration, the everyday life of people from more than 170 nations. The sections “Wissenschaft und Ruhr 2030” deal with local and global questions of the present and the future. In Pleitgen’s view the decisive issues are: What is the role of the European city in a Europe of the regions? How will the Ruhr Metropolis develop? What will be the results of an ageing society? What role will renewable energies and climate change play at the global and regional level? How can children and young adults be acquainted with cultural education?
The 53 municipalities in this former mining region have more than 200 twin towns in Europe and beyond. These cities, referred to as the Twins, were asked to enter exciting future-oriented ideas and projects for the European Cultural Capital. As early as spring 2008 and 2009 an international jury nominated the 100 best Twins Ideas from some 500 entries. These projects will mainly give young people opportunities to actively work on the European Cultural Capital programme and implement their own unconventional ideas. Pleitgen: “Over recent years, Twins has become a highly creative driver for a superlative European Cultural Capital programme.” One of several examples Pleitgen mentions is the international theatre project “Piano – Fortissimo”, which involves cooperation between the Piano Theatre Nizhny Novgorod and the Studio-Bühne Essen. A school theatre group from Nizhny Novgorod in Russia will be performing, with deaf children expressing their feelings and ideas in pantomime. For the managing director of Ruhr 2010, this is “a moving example of how – even without words – understanding between peoples can be achieved if good will exists on both sides.”
That art and culture can forge links across languages and borders is also demonstrated by the joint projects with the two other European Cultural Capitals in 2010, Istanbul in Turkey and Pécs in Hungary. There will be more than 25 projects organized with Istanbul alone, and a dozen with Pécs, including trilateral projects. The Ruhr Metropolis has had close contacts with both cities for years; this applies not only to the mutual exchange of ideas on organizational matters, but also to mutual visits as well as to artistic and cultural collaboration on projects in the run-up to the Cultural Capital 2010.
The Ruhr Metropolis sees itself as a “forward-looking immigration society” especially as it emerged through immigration, so to speak. Pleitgen: “It was in mining that the lived solidarity of the Ruhr District developed. The miners had to be able to trust one another, and that welded them together – despite language barriers.” Needless to say, the challenges of integration have changed over past decades. The figures say it all: currently, the Central Register of Foreigners in the Ruhr District lists more than 500,000 persons with more than 170 different nationalities in an overall population of 5.3 million. The largest number of foreigners are from Turkey, ex-Yugoslavia, Poland, Italy, Greece and Morocco. Ruhr 2010 would like to make a contribution towards dealing with the tasks that arise from the situation of migrants. Pleitgen says: “The leading discipline is the ‘art of living together’. How do we perceive one another? How do immigrants and their families take part in cultural life? How do we make this participation possible? How and for whom do our cultural institutions draw up their programmes? Who is the potential audience for all the art and culture on offer in the Ruhr Metropolis? We want to use the European Cultural Capital Year to raise, discuss and hopefully also find answers to these questions.”
