Karlstraße - A coal mining street in Germany

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Karlstraße - from decline to reinvention of a former coal mining district

The houses of Karlstraße (Karl Street) were built between 1900 and 1910. Built close to Halde Hohewald, a mining waste tip in the Ruhr area of Germany, Karlstraße experienced high fluctuations in workforce volumes at that time. The houses were built by the Pit as way to attract more permanent miners to the area and prevent them from running to others mines who offered slightly higher pay. Fortunately most of the housing stock survived the bombardments of World War II. The A2 freeway was built during WW2 adjacent to Karlstraße, carrying few vehicles at that time. It seems incredible to think that one of Germany’s busiest highways was once empty enough to be the playground for the children of Karlstraße.

The residents at that time were the miners of the Ewald Pit and their families. For the most part, they were German, but with the first influx of migrants in the 1950s, Turks and other migrants arrived. The rate of immigration seen in the 1960s has tailed off in the intervening years. Once this area was known as Little Turkey; today it has a distinctly German feel. Many houses are undergoing renovation, often by the children of the migrant families who grew up in this street and now seek to return with their own families.

This street is alive, and whilst some aspects remain the same, it is always changing in small but subtle ways. Ten years ago, rain water would flow down the left side of the street; these days it is diverted to the right. The ground itself is uneven, but the people are used to it. Over the past 15-18 years, many of the semi-detached houses were sold on to new owners, who came with their own ideas for changing the appearance and internally redecorating their halves of the buildings. I started documenting this street in 2005; in the intervening years, residents have become more daring with colours, and even added solar panels to some of the old houses.