Tiegelgussdenkmal

The Tiegelgussdenkmal stands in Essen’s Westviertel, beside the Altendorfer Straße in the Krupp belt of former factory buildings. A half-circle wall of red sandstone carries cast-steel plates that trace every step of Krupp’s crucible-steel process. The arc itself measures twenty-two metres long and weighs about nine tonnes. Commissioned in 1935 by Gustav and Bertha Krupp, the design came from Berlin sculptor Artur Hoffmann. Shortages and war delayed its completion until 1952, when it was finally erected a hundred metres from the original crucible-steel workshop. Friedrich Krupp had first produced the steel in 1823, though the science behind it was still unclear at the time. Visitors walk the gentle curve of the sandstone wall and study the reliefs that show filling the crucibles, lowering them into the furnace, tapping the molten metal and cleaning the finished ingots. The arc frames the surrounding factory yards and the low roofs of the former Gussstahlfabrik, linking past and present in a single view.