Steelworker, Angler or...? @museum.de

As you came in – did you notice the photograph of a man and a young boy? It was taken in 1900 and shows a steelworker and his apprentice. The young lad hardly seems old enough to be doing the kind of heavy labour involved in working at the steel mill!

On either side of the pillar from that photograph, there are red windows – one on each side. They give an idea of what the work was like. In the recesses beyond the windows, you can see the typical work clothes the furnace man wore for protection against the scorching heat. The long jacket was made of asbestos – which may have protected him from the heat; but the material’s toxic fibres might still have cost him his health.

If you walk around the pillar, you’ll see the steelworker at leisure. One popular pastime was fishing in the River Bode. So come the weekend, many a steelworker put on his rubber boots, grabbed his fishing rod and catch bag... and might well find himself out of luck. Because the plant often discharged its waste water into the river virtually untreated. Oils, pickle liquor containing acid, which was used to remove stains, and phenols in particular found their way into the Bode.

So people familiar with the region would know it was advisable to cast their lines upstream of Thale – or a long way downstream of Quedlinburg!

These days, the worst of the environmental damage has been eliminated, and the contaminated soil remediated. However, the problem of environmental pollution and its consequences remains.