Industrial Heritage and the Ambiguities of Nostalgia for an Industrial Past in the Ruhr Valley, Germany

After theorizing and situating nostalgia in the academic discourses surrounding deindustrialization, this article will address the deindustrialization process and the accompanying heritagization of the Ruhr before investigating the different meanings and layers of nostalgia that are attached to industrial heritage discourse in the region. It will discuss why certain representations of the industrial past do not appear under the spotlight of the Ruhr's heritage industry and will conclude by using the case study of the Ruhr Museum to illustrate what appears today as a/the dominant and widely uncontested heritage discourse in the Ruhr.