Days away from Germany’s federal elections, one city in west Germany is undergoing something of a political transformation, threatening to shift allegiances in what is being seen as a key test of Angela Merkel’s popularity.

On the face of it, the city is an unlikely political weather-vane. Nicknamed “Germany’s Detroit”, Oberhausen in the Ruhr Valley is a place at the tail-end of decades of industrial decline. These days, it is better known for being the former home of Paul the psychic football-loving octopus (of 2010 World Cup fame), Europe’s largest shopping centre, and, rather incongruously, the world’s most prestigious avant garde short film festival.

Historically, this once-thriving steel and mining powerhouse was a working-class heartland, a region the SPD – the Social Democratic Party led by Martin Schulz – could rely on. But last year, things started to change. For the first time in 56 years, Oberhausen elected its first Christian Democrat (CDU) mayor, from Merkel’s party. In May, the CDU won a decisive victory in a local state election, a blow to challenger Schulz in his own home region.

The political shift may reflect the changing way Oberhausen residents see their city – less like a landscape in decline, but one to be celebrated and rejuvenated in bold new ways. Since the mid-1990s, residents have increasingly been using abandoned buildings as the launchpad for daring architectural projects, art exhibits and social experiments. The most famous example is the Oberhausen gasometer, a 118-metre high former gas holder, built in the 1920s, that is now home to major exhibitions, installations and a panoramic rooftop viewing platform.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An climber checks a giant ad for the current exhibition ‘Wonders of Nature’ at the Gasometer in Oberhausen. Photograph: Roland Weihrauch/AP

The city in numbers …

212,500 – the population of Oberhausen.

14,000 – the number of people once employed by Thyssen in Oberhausen, Germany’s biggest steel company.

1954 – the year the Oberhausen Short Film Festival was established.



100,000 – the size in square metres of CentrO, Europe’s largest shopping centre.

In pictures ...

History in 100 words

Named after Oberhausen Castle, the city began life as a borough formed by the influx of workers flocking to the region in 1862 following the growth of the coal mines and steel mills. It gained city status in 1901. Thanks to its key role in supplying synthetic oil to the German war effort, the city was bombed multiple times in the 1940s as part of the allied “oil campaign” to deprive the German military of oil and petrol supplies. In 1954, the city began hosting the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, which led to the writing of the historic Oberhausen Manifesto, a call to arms by 26 young German filmmakers, written in 1962, to establish a “new German feature film” style.

Oberhausen in sound and vision

The city is famous not for its depictions on screen, but for nurturing and supporting young and experimental filmmakers. The Oscar-winning director Wim Wenders credits the city as being where he smoked his first cigarette: “For years, I saw every single film at the Westdeutsche Kurzfilmtage [as it was then known], looking forward to those days in Oberhausen every year. These events were important for me, for my decision to become a filmmaker,” he once said.

Many of the world’s most famous directors showed early works there, including Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, Werner Herzog and Agnès Varda. In 2017, the film festival will be touring a selection of its programme in 55 countries, including Cameroon, Chile, South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The Oberhausen short film festival touring programme trailer

What’s everyone talking about?



The region of North-Rhine Westphalia, in which Oberhausen sits, has taken in more asylum seekers than anywhere else in Germany. In the first 10 months of 2016, 172,511 people arrived there, almost 27% of the total number seeking asylum in Germany during that time. The city itself is home to around 1,902 asylum seekers, but only approximately 42 are currently employed, according to a BBC estimate. As such, questions of integration and community have become a central part of the conversation in Oberhausen, with many new projects and initiatives starting up to help welcome new arrivals.

Speaking to the BBC earlier this month, Joerg Fischer of the German Red Cross, said: “Oberhausen has received more migrants and refugees than any other region. We’ll probably start receiving more people in the autumn again so we are using this time to start integration programmes ...” The city now has an asylum seeker football team, cooking classes for men, an empowerment project for women and is home to the region’s first Syrian restaurant.

What’s next for the city?

Increasingly, Oberhausen’s industrial relics are being seen as sites of opportunity. The city council has been partnering with various groups to reclaim vacant spaces, and there is now a decisive push to try to revitalise the old city centre, which was overlooked in the last decade while Oberhausen focused on building Europe’s largest shopping centre.

One of the most exciting collaborations is with kitev, which produces projects by artists in the local local community. In recent years it has focused on ways to engage newcomers to the city, for example, by setting up a popular Refugee Kitchen.

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The group’s HQ is located in the water tower of Oberhausen’s disused main railway station, which they renovated over seven years, and their next large-scale reclamation is focused on a controversial high-rise building in the centre of Oberhausen, which they hope to renovate in partnership local residents and refugees.

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For advice on what to do and see in the city, Live Like A German’s page on Oberhausen is full of local tips. For news, Der Western covers the city and its surrounding region. For film festival updates, follow @kurtzfilmtage on Twitter.

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