As the river twisted and turned its way towards Saarlouis, we couldn’t work out what the odd structure on the mountain of overburden actually was. It seemed to change shape as we went along, and when we finally took up our mooring place it took its triangular form, standing like a beacon in the distance. We could not be sure but we had the feeling we were being drawn to it. We had to find out what it was.
A bus trip, two kilometre walk and a two hundred metre climb later we were there. The kid in the Tourist Office had told us it was a monument to the coal mining industry. The architect said it "traces a multitude of mountain motifs as a symbol of change in an abstract form language," and is intended to form a gateway into the future in the eyes of the beholder. The formal language of purist steel grid construction is intended to express the indivisibility of the country's origin and future in the country, and to show the classical connection of coal, steel and energy in Saarland.
In reality, its form changes from symbolic crossed picks, to gateway, to single pick, to the triangle expressed above. It was funded in part by families of the former miners who donated a thousand Euros per stair, and it has a lot of stairs. It was certainly worth the effort to see it up close and personal, particularly as we knew we had to go back through town where another bowl of spaghetti ice cream awaited.
1 comment
an interesting monument..
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