page_title: Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex
section_title: Shaft 12
hierarchical_section_title: Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex / History / Shaft 12
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Essen, Zeche "Zollverein" Illus-Stachelscheidt Ruhrbergbau, Februar 1949 Anlage Zeche "Zollverein", Essen. 2867-49
context_page_description: The Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex is a large former industrial site in the city of Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It has been inscribed into the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites since December 14, 2001, and is one of the anchor points of the European Route of Industrial Heritage.
  The first coal mine on the premises was founded in 1847, and mining activities took place from 1851 until December 23, 1986. For decades, starting in the late 1950s, the two parts of the site, Zollverein Coal Mine and Zollverein Coking Plant, ranked among the largest of their kinds in Europe. Shaft 12, built in the New Objectivity style, was opened in 1932 and is considered an architectural and technical masterpiece, earning it a reputation as the "most beautiful coal mine in the world".
context_section_description: In 1928, the GBAG voted for the construction of a totally new twelfth shaft designed as a central mining facility. When in the shaft opened in 1932, it had a daily output of up to 12,000 tons, combining the output of the four other existing facilities with 11 shafts.
  Schacht Albert Vögler, as the highly modern shaft was named after the director general of the GBAG, was designed by the architects Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer and quickly gained notice for its simple, functional Bauhaus design with its mainly cubical buildings made of reinforced concrete and steel trusses.
  The shaft's characteristic Doppelbock winding tower in the following years not only became the archetype of many later central mining facilities but also became a symbol of German heavy industry. 
  Whilst this symbol may have slowly been forgotten when German heavy industry started diminishing in the second half of the 20th century, it was this shaft and especially its characteristic winding tower that were to become a symbol of the Ruhr area's structural change.
caption: Zollverein, 1949
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