A massive Malakow winding tower dating from 1857/58 and the adjacent machine room are what remains of the once large and prosperous Hannover colliery in Bochum. The steam engine at the heart of the Koepe winding system, developed at this mine, dates from 1893.

An important theme for the future museum will be the development of the Ruhr coalfields in a landscape which was until that date purely agricultural. This development can be found mirrored in the colliery’s immediate surroundings, in churches, schools and several miners’ housing estates.

Two miners’ houses converted by the LWL-Industriemuseum inform visitors about the daily life in such housing between 1890 and 1960.

Our main attraction for young visitors is the “Zeche Knirps”, a children’s mine in which boys and girls can try their luck as miners whilst still having fun.
The Zeche Knirps offers young visitors the chance to work as a team for a shift and experience the work operations in a mine. With Malakow winding tower, conveyors, a shaft, galleries and an overhead track for coal trucks, Zeche Knirps has everything that belongs in a real mine but the children mine gravel and not coal. This children’s mine is unique for it uses the winding system developed at this colliery in 1876 by the mining director Friedrich Koepe, a system still valid in coal mines all over the world.