Königsgrube

A former pumping station of the Emschergenossenschaft is now an installation; the name it retains has an auspicious ring to it: Königsgrube — the King’s Mine. The past and the present shape Markus Jeschaunig’s work in which he has transformed fragments of the dismantled building into a hybrid landscape.
From 1860 to 1967, coal mining at the Konigsgrube pit in Herne-Rohlinghausen
was extremely productive; but once the black gold had been fully removed the ground that remained was depleted and riddled with holes. The subsidences amounts to up to ten metres. The pumping station’s purpose was to channel the wastewater from neighbouring municipalities into the Huller Bach stream, and from there into the Emscher. The closure of the coal mine made underground wastewater disposal possible and the pumping station was shut down. Jeschaunig used the partially filled-in substructure to build an installation that sculpturally integrates various elements of the building: a part of one staircase has been preserved; three pipes tower up to create a solardriven fountain from which water drops and sounds emerge. Where the over twelve-metre-deep basin once stood that prevented rainwater from seeping away, a marsh forest has evolved, a biotope of seven nursery-grown black alders that thrive in damp ground and bring to mind the pre-industrial wetlands that once bordered the Emscher. Rainwater is collected in a cistern on the
paved forecourt and, together with the photovoltaic pergola, enables completely self-sufficient operation. As an artistically reshaped ruin, Jeschaunig’s work alludes both to the outstanding technology and to the enormous ecological devastation brought on by coal mining, while at the same time showing a way for new life and climate-positive places to emerge in the city.