2004年6月，一个温暖明媚的下午，赫尔德区看上去安宁、平静，显然已不再是鲁尔地区跳动的心脏了。阿尔佛来德•特拉宾(Alfred Trappen)街上，一家冰淇淋店外，几个人坐在阳光下，用长长的调羹挖食着圣代冰淇淋。街道不远处，有一家齐曼纺织品(Zeeman Textiel)折扣店，店门外，妇女们在网格篮里翻找，仔细打量着0.99欧元一件的T恤衫。折扣店附近，三家日光浴室、一家纹身馆一字排开。纹身馆的广告说，能把“爱”、“富”、“康”三个汉字纹在顾客身上。不过，日光浴室和纹身馆都关门了。
But on a warm, bright afternoon in June 2004, Horde was clearly no longer the pounding heart of the Ruhr. The place looked laid-back, becalmed. A few people sat in the sun outside an ice-cream shop on Alfred Trappen Street, digging to the bottom of their sundaes with long spoons. Up the road, women fished into a wire basket outside Zeeman Textiel, a discount store, inspecting T-shirts for 99 (euro) cents. There were three solariums in the vicinity and a tattoo parlour advertising its ability to emblazon the characters Ai, Fu and Kang, the Chinese characters for love, wealth and health, on to the bodies of its customers. But both the solariums and the tattooist were shut.
钢铁厂没了，生活发生了什么变化呢？我来就是要了解此事。不过，我不会讲德语，倒成了个障碍。想拜访当地官员，他们又不愿谈。与街上的人搭讪，这些人觉得我的问题意思不大。我去了路德教会，按传单上的名字一一给五位牧师打电话，约他们喝杯咖啡聊聊。马丁·蓬塞(Martin Pense)神父很忙，克劳斯·沃尔特曼(Klaus Wortmann)神父出城了，伯尔恩·怀斯巴赫-拉迈(Bern Weissbach-Lamay)神父没接电话，安格拉·迪克(Angela Dicke)嬷嬷很乐意帮忙，不过今天放假，很抱歉。轻声细语的斯温·弗罗里希(Sven Frohlich)神父倒愿意电话上聊几分钟。
I had come to try to understand how life was changing now that the steel plant was gone. But my inability to speak German was a handicap. I tried calling on local officials but they were unwilling to talk. People on the street, when approached, seemed to find my questions unwarranted. So I went to the Lutheran Church and phoned each of the five pastors listed in a leaflet to invite them for a coffee. Pfarrer Martin Pense was busy, Pfarrer Klaus Wortmann was out of town, Pfarrer Bern Weissbach-Lamay did not answer, and Pfarrerin Angela Dicke would have been happy to help but it was a holiday, so sorry. Pfarrer Sven Frohlich, a softly spoken man, was ready to give me a few minutes on the phone.
弗罗里希神父说，钢厂消亡是竞争力丧失所致，厄运来得慢，却不可避免。90年代初，生产效率高的韩国钢铁厂就开始在全球削价抢生意，赫尔德区的钢铁工人却强烈要求实行每周35小时工作制。接着，东西德统一，迫使政府提高税收，拖了整体经济活动的后腿，给赫尔德区造成了沉重打击。到90年代中期，赫尔德钢铁厂最终何去何从，成了辩论话题。一开始，管理层做出惯有的反应：讨论与某家竞争对手合并，实现经营增效，成本缩减，提高竞争力。到2000年时，全球钢铁价格陷入低谷，一切有关拯救的言谈都烟消云散，似乎无能为力了。
The death of the steel mill, he said, had been the slow but inevitable result of a loss in competitiveness. In the early 1990s, when efficient South Korean steel plants were undercutting the world, Horde steelworkers were agitating to work a 35-hour week. Then the reunification of West and East Germany took its toll by forcing the government to raise taxes and by acting as a drag on general economic activity. By the mid- 1990s, the ultimate fate of the Horde plant had become an issue of debate. To start with, the management reacted as managements generally do: it discussed merging with a competitor to derive operational synergies, cost reductions and improved competitiveness. But by 2000, when global steel prices were in a slump, all talk of rescue faded away. There seemed to be little that could be done.
弗罗里希神父说，数千钢铁工人失去工作，路德教会的教团也迁走了，社区并不贫穷，却陷入了一种麻木状态。教会采取措施，竭力吸引年轻人参加各种社区活动（这一点从教会的通讯中就可以看出)，年轻人似乎感觉不到宗教的吸引力。“我们迷失了自我，”弗罗里希神父说。“这可是人身上最重要的东西，却被拿走的。找回这种东西可能需要10年以上。”
Pfarrer Frohlich said that the Lutheran church’s congregation had moved away as thousands of steelworkers lost their jobs, and the community, though not poor, had sunk into a kind of numbness. Young people did not seem to feel the pull of religion in spite of the strenuous efforts, evident in the church newsletter, to lure them into all sorts of community activities. "Our identity is lost," said Frohlich. "And that is the most important thing that can be taken away from somebody. It could take more than a decade to recover it."