Ruhrgebiet

The Ruhr industrial area (German: Ruhrgebiet "Ruhr area"), often known in English simply as the Ruhr, is an industrialized region on the banks of the Ruhr river in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Friedrich Engels, son of a capitalist and student of political economy, was born in Wuppertal, a city close to the Ruhr and one of the early centers of industrialization in the Kingdom of Prussia. The Ruhr continued to grow in importance during the imperial era and was crucial to Germany's war effort during World War I. In 1920, industrial workers rebelled in what became known as the Ruhr uprising. Three years later, France would occupy the Ruhr militarily in order to force Germany to pay reparations as dictated by the Treaty of Versailles, a move which increased instability and led in part to the rise of fascism and communism in the country.

After World War II, the Federal Republic of Germany inherited the region at the expense of the German Democratic Republic, which had to reindustrialize its own territory using socialist planning.