HÜTTENWERK

“Haunting accounts by the blue-collar workers of the painstaking clean-up once the cargo has been cleared (…). These unvarnished, first-hand accounts are articulated unassumingly, as if the actors were just recounting something in a bar.”

Jens Fischer, TAZ, 04.06.2025 (about „Reibholz“)

Documentary railway theatre experience about the steel industry between East and West at Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park, blast furnace 5.

In the spring of 2026, a train comprising six-axle flat wagons loaded with skelps, steel girders and coils weighing several tonnes will travel through Germany, finally coming to a halt in Duisburg. In their new play “HÜTTENWERK” (Steelworks), railway theatre company “Das Letzte Kleinod” (The Last Treasure) sheds light on the history of the steel industry and its intercontinental as well as German-to-German connections: ore came by rail from the Kazakh steppe, coal from Poland. Women often worked on the cranes, locomotives and at the blast furnaces, and were indispensable to the former flagship industry of the GDR. The steel went from Eisenhüttenstadt to factories and ports in the West, where it was sold for hard currency. For this documentary theatre piece, shared by actors in the train carriages, twenty former workers told of their experiences at the ironworks. In an extraordinary theatrical experience, “HÜTTENWERK” brings together the history of fire, foreign currency and steel that connects workers between Eisenhüttenstadt and the Ruhr region to this day. As part of Impulse 2026 and as a partner in the Post-West project, this spectacular production will stop for its only dates in NRW under the decommissioned Hochofen 5.

In collaboration with the Impulse Festival, the documentary railway theatre will also be staging two performances for schools at the Duisburg-Nord Landscape Park. The performances are suitable for pupils from Year 8/9 upwards. Further information for teachers regarding the school performances on 12 and 15 June can be found here.