A photo of the Drüggelter Chapel on the Möhnesee, which Bertha and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach took in 1936 on their way to a hunting event;

a 1962 drawing of the Ahe hammer between Herscheid and Werdohl, which, at that time four hundred years old, was taken over by the Krupp Group a little later;

a panoramic view of the Linscheid an der Lenne plant in Altena from around 1910, which after several mergers belonged to Krupp from 1989 to 2015;

Photographs of dams and bridges, recreation and youth homes, landscapes and nature, including a few that were inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch;

Advertising graphics, letters, letterheads, bank statements and a recording from the Karl May Festival in Elspe, where the roof over the grandstand was made by a Krupp subsidiary.

Andreas Rossmann

Freelance author in the features section.

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The narrow volume contains less than two dozen images, documents from the Krupp Historical Archives, most of which have not yet been published, and each of which attests to the company's connection with the Sauerland region.

But the selection is too small and heterogeneous to turn into a narrative.

It only becomes this through Ulrich Raulff, who takes it as an occasion for a small, complex essay: “Sauerland as a way of life” portrays “one of the most unknown and misunderstood tribes among the Germans” and gives shape to a region that for many is terra incognita , Colors, gain luminosity.

And no Friedrich Merz tarnishes the picture.

Where prohibition signs were ignored and head jumps were practiced

The presentation begins with Caesar, who did not even get to the Sauerland, and does not end with Heinrich Lübke from Enkhausen and Carl Schmitt from Plettenberg. The two stand in the same line, the dichotomy becomes - historical, political, denominational, aesthetic - the characteristic and the key. The Sauerland is measured and compared with its neighbors with its small iron industry. The attributes exceed each other: “Open-air sanatorium for the regeneration of exhausted people”, “Villeggiatur of the Ruhr area”, “Rainy Riviera des Reviers”, “Dolomites of the Netherlands”! The engineer Otto Intze redesigned the landscape by using the topography for dams to secure the water supply and keep drive water available. The monumental architecture and the artificial lakes became tourist attractions.

Raulff praises the dam as an engineering art, but also as an adventure playground of childhood, where every prohibition sign was disregarded and diving was practiced, dragged into battle with boats and extinguishing water was scooped up.

Oscillating between cultural-historical treatise and personal memory, he comes up with many topics, associative and knowledgeable.

This ranges from worker recreation to types of beer and dialect, long-distance hiking trails and potato harvest, rainy weather and forestry to forced labor.

Raulff writes slim, springy, ironically winking prose, and if he does get into a chat, he cleverly pulls the emergency brake: “You will read the next episode of our great country novel 'Das sündige Dorf' next week.

At this point it continues with local history. "