"Give me five years’ time!"
The Working People’s Exhibition
Every epoch in Duesseldorf seems to have had its own exhibition on the Rhine. The German Empire held its exhibition in 1902, the Weimar Republic held the "Gesolei" exhibition in 1926 and the Third Reich held its ‘Working People’s Exhibition’ in 1937.
This exhibition – four years after the Nazis seized power – was intended to demonstrate the power of National Socialism to the rest of the world. On the banks of the Rhine, on what is today the Nordpark, an exhibition was held to demonstrate the efficiency of German industry, without any consideration being given to technical problems or vast funding requirements.
The exhibition focused on substitute products which, according to the Four Year Plan, were to replace foreign products and thus ensure the German Reich’s independence from imports. Among other things, a complete miniature steel works produced molten steel, a wire drawing mill processed the raw material, and high-speed Reichsbahn locomotives, Luftwaffe aircraft and other large exhibits were displayed. The exhibition was far beyond the scope of anything that had ever been seen before. Duesseldorf’s older citizens can still recall the inconceivable things that they saw there.
However, in many respects, the initiators based their concept on the 1926 exhibition. For example, the Rheinbahn operated a mini railway through the exhibition again, and the carriages were pulled by an express train locomotive on a scale of 1:5. The UFA newsreel provided detailed coverage of the exhibition and the visit by the portly party functionary, Hermann Goering. The cameras followed the mini railway through the exhibition. The film shows the Henkel pavilion, a wire drawing mill, Luftwaffe aircraft and the present-day Golzheim district, which was called "Schlageterstadt" during the exhibition.
More than seven million people travelled to the exhibition in Duesseldorf that summer and five million took a trip on the mini railway.