In the exhibition "From Ore to Steel - Images from the Working World", the Municipal Art Collection presents works that impressively document this development and the difficult path to steel production.

The exhibition begins with mining, the extraction of naturally occurring ore. The hard work underground is depicted by Hermann Kätelhön (*1884 Hofgeismar - †1940 Munich) and Jürgen Waller (*1939 Düsseldorf) in gloomy pictures. In Waller's works in particular, the miners are shown in dull, earthy to black colors in a compact depiction, with only the light on the helmet illuminating the scenery. The further journey of the ore and other raw materials to the steelworks is also shown, as is the view of the various smelting works.

Salzgitter-based artists Walter Junge (*1905 Hamburg - †1990 Salzgitter) and Helmut Lingstädt (*1939 Seesen) have documented Salzgitter AG and the work in the plant itself. The exhibition ends with works by Dieter Kraemer (*1937 Hamburg) and Harald Duwe (*1926 Hamburg - †1984 Tremsbüttel), among others, which depict the processing industries, such as modern vehicle construction at VW.

The exhibition documents the path of industrialization in relation to steel and the further development of steel products. The artisan blacksmiths were replaced by steelworks and factories, which were able to bring the products to market in cheap mass production. The coal and steel industry emerged. New technologies also made products possible that would have been difficult to produce manually due to their size, such as railroad rails and locomotives, which drove industrialization forward, or construction steel, without which the reinforced concrete construction of modern large buildings would not be possible. Without a productive coal and steel industry, there would be no modern vehicle construction. In Germany, the coal and steel industry was the driving force behind the German economic miracle. Even today, the steel industry and the steel processing industries are still important economic factors.