If you want to feel the power of the old industry in Germany, it is best to drive on a motorway in Duisburg.

Over the Berlin bridge, for example, the A 59. The chimneys are still smoking around here and the blast furnaces are burning.

And the world's largest inland port shows its full dimensions.

It's the leftovers of industries that once made us rich.

Today, the brown signs pointing to disused mines such as the Zeche Zollern predominate on the motorways in the Ruhr area.

There is the route of the industrial culture, the "most important and touristic most attractive" industrial monuments.

Daniel Mohr

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

  • Follow I follow

No wonder that Winfried Kretschmann (Greens), Prime Minister of the Autoland Baden-Württemberg, chooses the Ruhr area as an example when he urges you to hurry.

“I don't want us to become the new Ruhr area,” says Kretschmann.

The economic success of his state depends on the success of the auto industry, as clearly as in the south-west this is at most the case in the VW state of Lower Saxony.

Just as coal and steel once came from North Rhine-Westphalia and Saarland, the cars are from the factories of Daimler and Porsche in Baden-Württemberg.

But not only that. Important parts for all car manufacturers in the world also come from suppliers in Swabia and Baden.

Why does Kretschmann have to worry?

Because the focus of many companies in Baden-Württemberg is on internal combustion engines.

But their years are numbered.

More and more countries in the world are deciding to put an end to the internal combustion engine.

40 percent of German car exports go to such countries.

Ever stricter CO2 regulations make it almost impossible to produce gasoline and diesel engines in the future.

Not only Stuttgart, Wolfsburg and Ingolstadt have been affected for a long time

But this is by no means just a problem for the Prime Minister in his car country.

It concerns us all.

1.7 million often well-paid employees in this country have to fear for their jobs.

If their incomes fall away, their tax payments are gone, so are their contributions to the social security system, their consumption is reduced - the effects diminish the prosperity of all of us.

IG Metall has drawn up a map that shows the areas in which a particularly high proportion of employees depend on the combustion engine. If you only think of Stuttgart, Ingolstadt and Wolfsburg, you are wrong. Rather, where Daimler, Audi and VW have their headquarters, research has long since been redirected and research has been steered in other directions. Not that the change is a piece of cake there and can be booked as a success. But there are other regions where the level of dependency is much higher and there has often not yet been a change in direction. More than half of the jobs in the IG Metall district of Bamberg depend on combustion engines, for example. Things don't look much better in Salzgitter, Halberstadt, Neunkirchen or Homburg. A look at the map shows red, yellow and green spots almost all over Germany. The higher the weight of the combustion technology,the greater the worry.