{"id":14134,"date":"2026-01-06T15:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T14:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/?p=14134"},"modified":"2026-08-15T22:06:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T20:06:35","slug":"iii-10-zeitgeist-and-milieu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/iii-10-zeitgeist-and-milieu\/","title":{"rendered":"examples – 14 – Zeitgeist and Milieu in the steelworkers city Rombas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zeitgeist and Milieu in the steelworkers city Rombas –\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Born in 1960 in the Federal Republic of Germany,<\/strong> I think in terms of the categories that totalitarian systems gave rise to in the 20th century. When I observe family dynamics, I ask myself what background led people to act in certain ways. But then one quickly realizes that one is dealing with historical periods that lie much further back in time. And one realizes: it\u2019s about mentalities, the spirit of the times, societies in transition\u2014beyond or entangled with the politics of great powers\u2014in which this region stood like no other in Western Europe. Europe’s fate was decided in France.<\/p>\n

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@J.J. Sitek – Rombas in May\/June 1936 – Workers\u2019 strike at Gate 2, Moulin Neuf, Rombas<\/p>\n

In the 1930s, some 6,000 workers were employed at the Rombach Steelworks alone. With death always in their sights, the workers cherished the simple, good life. They looked out for one another. This was true for the miners in the tunnels, for the steelworkers at the blast furnaces, and it was true for the railroad workers on both sides of the Rhine.<\/p>\n

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The Rombacher Steelworks \/ l’Usine Rombas\u2014founded in 1888 by Carl Sp\u00e4ter\u2014for iron ore extraction and processing. The pig iron, cast iron, and steel from the steelworks of Lorraine were exported all over the world by rail and ship.\u00a0\u201cGenerally speaking, the factory workers were proud of their work, and despite the hard labor, they wouldn\u2019t have traded their jobs\u2014it was a different era; there was a sense of pride in belonging to a guild,\u201d Jean Larch\u00e9, a former steelworker, told me in 2019.\u00a0In the 1990s, steel production ceased throughout the region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zeitgeist and Milieu in the steelworkers city Rombas –\u00a0 Born in 1960 in the Federal Republic of Germany, I think in terms of the categories that totalitarian systems gave rise to in the 20th century. When I observe family dynamics, I ask myself what background led people to act in certain ways. But then one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-examples"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14134"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17846,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14134\/revisions\/17846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preserving-family-history.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}