German Workers Storm Krupp Mansion

Hundreds of West German steelworkers surged into the mansion that once was home to the Krupp family steel barons in a protest Wednesday against the pending shutdown of a Krupp company mill.

The demonstrators were among the 3,200 Krupp workers who stand to lose their jobs with the announced closure next year of the company’s Rheinhausen plant in nearby Duisburg, Europe’s biggest steel city and the center of the declining Ruhr industrial region.

“The rich are sitting pretty in there while we are the poor standing out here,” one Krupp worker said. Shortly afterward, the demonstrators, many wearing hard hats, pushed through the front door of the Villa Hugel.

There was no violence or damage in the 90-minute demonstration, and police were not called.