Greenish lighting, the name Erin - you might not immediately think of Ireland, but you would be right. At the end of the 19th century Irish mining entrepreneur Mulvany merged several claims in the Castrop area and named the new large claim after the goddess Erin, whose name is a form of the Gaelic Eire: Ireland.
The mines have a long history. Initially used to mine hard coal, the owners changed several times over the course of the following year until it was shut down in 1982 after almost 120 years of mining activity.
The disused coal mine Zeche Zollern in Dortmund is one of the most architecturally remarkable pits in the Ruhr area. The park-like facility with its impressive Art Nouveau buildings still shows today that it was built as a model colliery around 1900 and was intended to show both economic strength and progress.
We visited the facility with our friends from Herne, the photographers Renate and Jürgen Saibic, whom we met many years ago on Easter Island in Chile.
If you travel to the large and long graves of the road of megalithic culture between Osnabrück and Oldenburg, there is a very special Early Stone Age construction near Hüven in Emsland: the Volbers Hünensteine (also called Hüven-Nord with the Sprockhoff no. 842). In June 1956, Lisa and Rudi, Karin's parents, who lived in Lahn at the time, were photographed here. We have recreated the photos and the comparison also shows the changes in the dolmens over the past 65 years.
From Oldenburg to Osnabrück, the route of megalithic culture in Emsland runs around 330 kilometers to 33 well-preserved Neolithic burial sites that were built around 5000 years ago. And detours from this route lead to other "dole graves" or at least to places where special rock formations serve as an indication of buildings from the Early Stone Age.
This article shows photos of the following megalithic tombs:
Anyone who deals with Stone Age buildings may first think of England's world-famous stone circle called Stonehenge. But also individually standing menhirs (Celtic/large stone), rows of stones (French/alignements), cromlechs (Welsh/curvature) and dolmens (Breton/stone table) are well-known designations for buildings whose age is estimated at 3000 to 5000 years. The different languages already show that these are not regionally limited architectural or structural achievements.
