Volklingen Iron Factory
Here, The Machine Controls The Man
Ah, our visit to the Volklingen iron factory. Just a sidenote, I'm aware that the 'o' in Volklingen should have an umlaut over it, but I don't know how to put that character in on an English keyboard.
This was an amazing trip. Was extremely interesting and fascinating for me, for a few reasons. Firstly, on the bus ride to the factory, I was reading E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops," which has a lot to do with the machine controlling humans. During our tour at the ironworks, our guide mentioned how especially during the war the workers kept coming in to their jobs not because they needed the money but because the factory needed to keep running. The workers were just cogs in the machine which got oiled whenever the shifts changed. Secondly, up until this trip I was definitely in the dark as to how iron is processed and how it becomes steel. Our tour guide took us along the path though the ironworks that was the same path the iron ore would have taken, and so he explained the process every step of the way. Absolutely scintillating. Thirdly, I've been fortunate in my travels to have seen many different types of beautiful architecture and other things from times gone past, but I'd never seen anything like this; usually it seems like places like this get destroyed since they aren't that visually pleasing to look at. I'm sure even when everything wasn't covered in rust it didn't actually look much better aesthetically. However, a different thing about the ironworks was beautiful to me. Its complexity. I can't fathom how difficult it must have been for the main engineers/designers of the place to get this thing working properly. Every little pipe, ever last screw has a purpose, and the people that designed it knew everything. That's pretty incredible. Hats off to them. |