Manifesta Biennial Breathes New Life into Germany's Empty Churches

A Sacred Legacy Left Behind

In the aftermath of World War II, the Ruhr region of western Germany embarked on one of the most ambitious ecclesiastical construction projects in modern European history. Approximately 1,000 new churches rose from the rubble between the late 1940s and the 1970s, built to serve the swelling populations of industrial workers who flooded into cities like Essen, Dortmund, Bochum, and Duisburg. These were not merely places of worship — they were symbols of resilience, communal identity, and the spiritual reconstruction of a society shattered by war, genocide, and moral collapse.

Decades later, however, many of these churches stand largely empty. Declining church membership, demographic shifts, and the long-term economic contraction of the Ruhr's deindustrialized communities have left congregations too small to justify maintaining the massive structures. The architectural gems — featuring bold modernist designs, striking stained glass, and brutalist concrete aesthetics — now face an uncertain future. Demolition, conversion into apartments, or slow deterioration have become the fates of far too many.

Into this landscape of cultural and spiritual vacancy steps Manifesta, the roving European biennial of contemporary art, which has chosen the Ruhr region as its 2024–2025 host. With a mandate to engage critically with the social and political environments in which it operates, Manifesta has seized on these abandoned or underused sacred spaces as powerful venues for artistic exploration and community dialogue.

Manifesta's Nomadic Mission

Founded in the early 1990s in response to the geopolitical upheavals following the end of the Cold War, Manifesta was conceived as a nomadic institution — one that would deliberately avoid the established art capitals of Europe and instead situate itself in cities and regions undergoing profound transformation. Past editions have taken place in Rotterdam, Ljubljana, Murcia, Trentino, Marseille, St. Petersburg, Zurich, Palermo, and Pristina. Each edition has been shaped by the host city's history, conflicts, and social dynamics.

Choosing the Ruhr region is a statement in itself. Once the industrial powerhouse of Europe and a decisive factor in Germany's wartime production capacity, the Ruhr has spent the past forty years navigating the painful transition away from coal and steel. Its churches, built to serve a population defined by heavy industry and Catholic or Protestant working-class identities, now reflect the broader existential questions facing post-industrial communities across the Western world.

The biennial's curatorial team has worked alongside local communities, church authorities, urban planners, and artists to develop site-specific installations and exhibitions that engage directly with each building's unique history. Rather than simply using churches as neutral exhibition halls, Manifesta has encouraged artists to respond to the spiritual, architectural, and social weight these spaces carry.

Art as Archaeology of the Soul

The results have been striking. International and German artists have created works that interrogate themes of memory, loss, migration, identity, and the changing role of religion in secular society. Some installations draw explicitly on Christian iconography, challenging or reinterpreting it through the lenses of contemporary politics — migration crises, climate anxiety, post-colonial reckoning. Others engage more subtly with the acoustic and architectural qualities of sacred spaces, using sound, light, and material to create meditative or disorienting experiences.

One particularly resonant project involves a former Catholic church in the heart of Bochum that had been stripped of its congregation after a merger with a neighboring parish. An artist collective has transformed the nave into an immersive installation exploring the histories of the migrant workers — many from Poland, Italy, Turkey, and Morocco — who built both the steel mills and the very church in which they once prayed. The work acknowledges the layered, multicultural reality of the Ruhr's past and present, challenging the narrative of the region as a monolithically German working-class heartland.

The Broader Cultural and Political Stakes

The Manifesta initiative in the Ruhr arrives at a moment of acute political sensitivity in Germany. The country is grappling with the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which has made significant inroads in regions experiencing economic anxiety and cultural dislocation. The Ruhr, despite being historically a stronghold of the center-left Social Democrats, is not immune to these political currents.

In this context, the biennial's engagement with questions of heritage, belonging, and community takes on an explicitly political dimension. By reclaiming spaces that might otherwise fall prey to neglect or commercial conversion, and by doing so through an inclusive, internationally connected artistic practice, Manifesta is making an implicit argument about what the Ruhr's identity can and should be.

Church authorities — both Catholic and Protestant — have largely welcomed the initiative, viewing it as an opportunity to keep their buildings alive and relevant even as traditional congregations shrink. For the German Protestant and Catholic churches, both of which have faced years of declining membership accelerated by abuse scandals and shifting social attitudes, the partnership with Manifesta offers a way to reassert the civic value of their architectural patrimony without abandoning their spiritual mission.

Urban Renewal Through Cultural Investment

Beyond the artistic and religious dimensions, Manifesta's presence in the Ruhr is being closely watched as a model for urban regeneration. The biennial is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors over its run, injecting tourism revenue into communities that have long struggled with unemployment and outward migration. Local businesses, hotels, restaurants, and transport providers are preparing for an influx that some economists compare to the impact of major sporting events.

City planners and cultural economists are studying the Ruhr edition as a potential blueprint for how post-industrial European cities might leverage contemporary art and cultural programming to drive sustainable urban renewal. The challenge, of course, is ensuring that any regeneration benefits existing communities rather than displacing them through gentrification — a tension that Manifesta's organizers have publicly committed to navigating carefully.

The long-term fate of the churches themselves remains unresolved. While Manifesta can provide a temporary boost in visibility and footfall, the structural challenges of maintaining and repurposing these buildings require sustained investment and policy commitment. Some observers hope that the biennial will catalyze a broader conversation — among municipal governments, church institutions, heritage bodies, and communities — about what these remarkable buildings can become in the twenty-first century.

A Mirror for Europe's Transformation

Ultimately, Manifesta's engagement with the Ruhr's postwar churches is about more than art. It is a meditation on transformation — on how societies rebuild after catastrophe, how communities hold onto identity as the economic foundations that shaped them erode, and how culture can serve as both witness and healer. In a Europe still wrestling with the legacies of war, deindustrialization, migration, and political polarization, the Ruhr's empty churches offer a uniquely powerful setting for these conversations to unfold.