Call for Support: Major Exhibition HEART OF STEEL
The major exhibition HEART OF STEEL , exploring the history of the Völklingen Ironworks, opens on November 1, 2026 – The UNESCO World Heritage Site invites you to contribute your valuable support.
With HEART OF STEEL, the Völklingen Ironworks World Heritage Site presents, from November 1, 2026, to August 8, 2027, the first comprehensive overview of the ironworks’ history from 1873 to the present. The World Heritage collection enters into a creative dialogue with literary texts, musical compositions, artworks, and spatial installations by modern and contemporary artists, making the exemplary significance of the Völklingen Ironworks in the industrial society of the 19th and 20th centuries tangible.
In addition to offering new perspectives on the Röchling family and the ironworks from German, European, and global viewpoints, and engaging deeply with the fate of forced laborers—who were brought to Völklingen from at least 21 countries or regions, from Morocco to Ukraine, during World War II—the exhibition also focuses on the less-explored social history of the ironworks. This includes the everyday lives of generations of workers’ and employees’ families.
We are specifically searching for traces and testimonies from the lives of forced laborers, ironworkers, craftsmen, secretaries, engineers, trade fair hostesses, advertising designers, directors, and all those who were part of the vast universe of people active at the Völklingen Ironworks—from the German Empire through the League of Nations era, National Socialism, and the Saar Protectorate period, when the ironworks were under French sequestration, to the economic miracle years in the tenth federal state, the crisis of the 1970s, and the closure of the ironworks in 1986.
Therefore, we call on everyone with a family or personal connection to the Völklingen Ironworks—whether in the Saarland, Germany, or beyond—to check their attics, basements, or living rooms for photos, objects, personal items, and documents that tell the story of life with, in, and around the Völklingen Ironworks.
Whether it’s work clothing, identification documents, diaries, or children’s drawings, any historical evidence could be of interest to us. As a first step, please send us meaningful photos of your potential exhibits or historical sources by the end of March 2026 to:
communication@voelklinger-huette.org
By doing so, you will help us bring the history of the Völklingen Ironworks and the traces of the people in and around the plant to life in our exhibition.
Thank you very much in advance!
Your World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte