My personal site

 

 

 My name is Heinrich Ströver, I was born in 1960 and I am whole-heartedly dedicated to the mining district at the rivers Ruhr, Lippe and Emscher. It was in 1977 that I first came in contact with this very old traditional type of industry. I started to learn the miner's job at the Westerholt colliery.
  After passing the miner's degree I experienced a period of hard work underground. Later I returned to my homeland – the Northsea coast. From that time though the Ruhrrevier was far away in distance, it was never out of my thoughts, the impressions of the mine had cut too deeply.In 1988, after changing my profession, I moved to Baden-Württemberg in South West Germany. In November 1996 the Ruhrrevier faced a serious crisis, when the Government planned to cut  most of the subsidy funding for the local coal mining. The mine workers joined a resistance movement. Shortly before Christmas during a solidarity meeting I met many fine people from the Fürst Leopold/Wulfen colliery. Of behalf of all these friends, I would like to mention especially two members of the works council, Mr. Brieskorn and Mr. Ringel. From that time I was totally in support alongside my wife Elke.

 
  The peak of action took place in February of 1997 when a huge chain of human bodies passed from end to end of the Ruhrrevier. My wife and I, of course, took part in this protest together with the coal miners from the FürstLeopold/Wulfen colliery in the city of Essen-Kray.

(friendly permission from the editorial staff from the WAZ, Dorsten)

 
 

Since those dramatic weeks I have been a dedicated follower of the development of the Ruhrrevier, which has changed significantly since I worked here. Since the year  2000  I have been running this homepage. I am driven by my close relationship to the mining people who can be proud of their contribution to social history. While the times are always changing, I see my homepage as a reminder of this long period of mining. Compared with professionals and with all respect to their work, the contribution of my homepage is rather modest. I am following first class authors of books, who prepared the ground for this homepage. These authors and the very welcome increasing number of mining homepages establish a close stable network of mining "freaks". It should be possible to keep in mind the history of mining, as it faces continuing economic change. Even the fastest developments should allow us to look back to times which tell us from whence we came, and how we should go on.

My special thanks to Mrs. Fay Hogben for translating this site

Heinrich Ströver

Frickenhausen, at 17th. February 2003