The Thale Works after 1990 @museum.de

The aerial photographs show the site of the Thale works in 1985, 1994 and after 2007. In all of them, our museum is located in the bottom right-hand corner, half-hidden by the trees. That‘s because this building was originally part of the large works complex. In the 19th century, it was the residence of Johann Carl Bennighaus, the first private individual to own the ironworks. But let's look at the more recent past:

In the 1980s – that’s the photograph at the top – the factory covered more than 500,000 square metres – 123 acres. Every square inch was built on, and in addition to a 6,500 strong workforce, there were 500 trainees.

Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall and unification. The plant was shut down, the metallurgy works were demolished, and the soil was decontaminated.

That development had serious consequences for the town: by the mid-1990s, only around 400 people were still working on the site, and there were no trainees at all. Many left the area, especially young people.

The third poster shows roughly where we are now: in the early 2000s, the metal-punching and enamelling plants were demolished. Only the buildings housing Container and Apparatus Construction and Powder Metallurgy have survived. Today, several hundred people still work here in metal processing. There’s now a huge area of wasteland where the other factory buildings once stood.