History of Rostock
Colored copper engraving; Franz Hogenberg 1597
Etching; Wenceslaus Hollar 1624/25
The history of Rostock is strongly influenced by the geographic location of the city on the Unterwarnow near where it flows into the Baltic Sea . Mentioned for the first time around 1165 as Rozstoc , a Slavic trading center was already integrated into a supraregional sea trade network there. From the late 12th century a German settlement developed, to which the town charter was confirmed in 1218 and which grew rapidly, so that three independent sub-towns soon existed, which united in the years 1262 to 1265. Rostock became the center of the Rostock rule and had been a member of the Hanseatic League since the middle of the 13th century . During the heyday of the Hanseatic city , which reached its peak in the 15th century, representative secular and church buildings were erected in the brick Gothic style and the university was founded in 1419 . As a Mecklenburg state city that never succeeded in becoming a Free City , the history of Rostock is characterized by a constant opposition and togetherness with the Mecklenburg dukes . Above all, the economic interests of the city opposed the political and military interests of the sovereigns. In 1531 the city council officially introduced the Reformation .
With the decline of the Hanseatic League, the Thirty Years' War and a city fire in 1677, Rostock sank back into the role of a provincial town, but remained the intellectual and economic center of Mecklenburg. The industrialization began relatively late in Rostock. During the time of National Socialism , Rostock and Warnemünde became centers of the armaments industry with the Heinkel and Arado aircraft factories from the mid-1930s and, as a result, the first targets of the aerial warfare in World War II , which badly affected the city. Rostock was a district town in the GDR and was systematically expanded. Since German reunification , Rostock has been the largest city in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with over 208,000 inhabitants (2018) and, as one of the four regional centers in the state, is more than twice the size of the state capital Schwerin . In 2018 the city celebrates its 800th anniversary, in 2019 the 600th anniversary of the university.
middle Ages
Prehistory and early history
The prehistory of Mecklenburg is characterized by Germanic settlement up to the middle of the first millennium of our time . In the course of the migration of peoples, Slavic tribes migrated to the southern Baltic region from around the 6th and 7th centuries, and the Kessiner populated the area around the Unterwarnow . To the right of the Warnow, between today's Dierkow and Gehlsdorf , artisans and trading centers have been archaeologically documented since the 8th century. In addition to numerous finds of handicraft products, the remains of log and wattle houses that were up to eight meters long and similarly wide have been found. Objects from Scandinavia as well as the Franconian region and the Eifel prove that the Dierkower settlement must have been a (sea) trading place of supraregional importance.
Slavic princely castle and Henry the Lion
By the 12th century at the latest, there was a Slavic princely castle in the lowlands of the right bank of the Warnow, belonging to the Kessiner tribe of the Liutizen, with an early-town market settlement. In sources dating back to the 13th century, this craft and trading center was referred to as Wendische Wik .
Probably the earliest recorded mention of Rostock can be found in the Icelandic Knýtlinga saga (around 1260), in which the landing of Knuts the Great (994 / 995-1035) at Raudstokk is reported, although this could also mean the mouth of the Oder . The chronicle Gesta Danorum by the Dane Saxo Grammaticus (around 1200) is also the first reliable evidence of Rostock . Other early chronicles are the Slav chronicles by Helmold von Bosau (around 1170) and by Arnold von Lübeck (around 1210).
Saxo Grammaticus reports how in 1160 the Abodrite prince Niklot fell in a defensive battle against the Saxon Duke Heinrich the Lion south of Rostock near Werle Castle . Niklot's sons Pribislaw and Wertislaw were temporarily expelled from the Abodrite land. In the following year, the Danish King Waldemar I, who was allied with the Saxons, destroyed the Slavic royal castle of Rostock (urbs roztoc) .
1167 is Pribislaw Heinrich submitted to the lions and was then from him with a large part of West Mecklenburg invested , but without the county Schwerin . In this way he was able to regain a considerable part of his father's rule and rebuilt the castles Mecklenburg , Ilow and Rostock around 1170 . Gradually, Rostock developed into a second focus of the state of Mecklenburg alongside the nearby Kessin Castle . After Heinrich and Pribislaw made a joint pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1172, Heinrich married one of his daughters to Pribislaw's son Borwin I (1178–1227). While Pribislaw secured his rule through a high degree of foresight , a conflict later developed between his son Borwin I and Nikolaus I , son of Wertislav, about the succession, which led to open war. A seal from this time shows Nicholas as Prince of Rostock (nicolaus de roztoc) , as a warrior on horseback with a sword.
German settlement and urban development
After the Fürstenburg Rostock was destroyed in 1160/61, the castle and a Handwerkerwiek were probably rebuilt to the right of the Warnow. In the 12th century, however, craftsmen and merchants had also settled on the high left bank of the Warnow, including Holstein , Saxons , Westphalia , Danes and Slavs . This settlement on the hill around the later Petrikirche and the old market formed the starting point for the development of Rostock. Rostock was first mentioned in a document in 1189, when Nikolaus granted the monks of the Doberan Monastery, founded in 1186, duty-free on the Rostock market. The mention of a Clemens church with a German priest indicates the Christianization of the settlement.
After confirming the Lubeck town charter by Henry I. Borwin from 24 June 1218 was followed by an extension of the settlement to the south with the Nikolai Church at its center. In 1232 the Marienkirche is mentioned for the first time as a parish church of an independent settlement, which adjoined the older city to the west, beyond a Warnow tributary ("pit") and had its own market and town hall. After a recent expansion towards the west over the "Faule Grube" as a further natural boundary, the Neustadt was created around 1252 as a fourth independent settlement, the center of which was the Jakobikirche . In the years 1262 to 1265 the settlements finally united. The middle core of the settlement became the administrative center of the city, in which the city council and the court had their seat and the town hall was built based on the Lübeck model .
While the "Wendische Wyk" experienced its decline and Prince Nikolaus the child sold his property on the right of the Warnow in 1286 to the city, which set up a brick factory at the abandoned castle site, the urban area on the left of the Warnow grew until the middle of the 13th century rapidly increased that the occupied space did not have to be expanded until the early 19th century. The two city fires of 1250 and 1265 could not slow this upswing either. Rostock's position was strengthened by the acquisition of rights, such as fishing rights on the Unterwarnow, and the purchase of the Rostock Heath , which, as a huge urban forest, covered the enormous demand for wood and provided space for Rostock's extensive pig fattening.
At the same time, the city developed into the center of Rostock rule . The street names "Amberg" at the Petrikirche and "Burgwall" at the Marienkirche seem to indicate that fortified sovereign courts were laid out in the city. The Danish feudal sovereignty over Mecklenburg, which Waldemar II had wrested from Emperor Friedrich II in 1214 , ended in 1227 after the Battle of Bornhöved and the death of Heinrich Borwin II. In 1229 the country was divided up by the Mecklenburg main division between his sons and Heinrich Borwin III. became territorial lord over the rule Rostock.
The rapid rise of Rostock to the most important city in Mecklenburg went hand in hand with the decline of the state and city rule of the Lords of Rostock, while at the same time in the German Empire the power of the king at the time of the interregnum 1254–1273 had reached a low point. The Vogt increasingly lost its influence over the city council, which was formed from an exclusive group of wealthy merchants who were able to advise. Mayors can be identified from 1289 .
While the ramparts of the lordly castles in and around Rostock were being removed, Rostock erected a stone city wall seven meters high and up to one meter wide , which enclosed an area of approximately 1 km². If necessary, wooden battlements could be built at a height of three meters. The city fortifications included 22 city gates, of which the Steintor , the Kröpeliner Tor , the Mönchentor and the Kuhtor still exist today. How much Rostock was oriented towards sea trade can be seen from the fact that more than half of the city gates led to the port facilities on the Unterwarnow.
Hanseatic city
With the acquisition of the seaport near Warnemünde ( Hohe Düne ) in 1264 and the Hundsburg near Schmarl in 1278, Rostock gained the desired free access to the Baltic Sea, twelve kilometers away . As early as 1251, Rostock had received the same trading privileges from the Danish King Abel as Lübeck had previously received, and even before the three settlements had merged into one city, Rostock concluded an alliance with the councilors of the cities of Lübeck and Wismar in 1259 . The Rostock Landfrieden in 1283 between Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund , Greifswald , Stettin , Demmin and Anklam against some princes, such as the Margrave of Brandenburg, marked the beginning of the Wendish Quarter within the Hanseatic League .
In 1323 the efforts to acquire the small town (oppidum) Warnemünde at last were successful. In 1325 the city received the right to mint from Heinrich II and became a member of the Wendish Mint Association . In addition, Rostock gained full jurisdiction in 1358 . Rostock was on the threshold of a free city , but the last step towards it was never to be successful. The Hanseatic city had reached the peak of its autonomy and its economic as well as cultural heyday, especially since the inner-city disputes between the surveys of 1314 (see: Bernhard Kopman ) and 1408 were dormant and the Dukes of Mecklenburg were patrons of the city at that time. With around 14,000 inhabitants around 1410, Rostock in northern Germany was only surpassed by Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen .
Of considerable importance for the Hanseatic trade Rostock were Riga driver and the herring trade of Schonenfahrer on the Scanian fair on the peninsula Skanör-Falsterbo in Skåne , where Rostock own Vitte entertained. With regard to trade with Norway, the Rostock Wieck drivers, in contrast to the Lübeck Bergen drivers, concentrated less on the Bryggen office in Bergen than on the control of the branches (factories) in Oslo and Tønsberg . The Gotland trip to Visby was initially of great importance, while the connections to the Hansekontor in Bruges and the London Stalhof in the west and the Peterhof in Novgorod in the east were less pronounced . The only own product that Rostock exported to a considerable extent was beer .
Rostock played a decisive role in all of the important Hanseatic ventures, such as the first and second wars with Denmark . Occasionally, however, the city also acted against the politics of the Hanseatic League, for example when, after 1376, out of allegiance to the Mecklenburg ducal house, together with Wismar, it supported the Vitalien Brothers in the pirate war against Denmark. In 1390 the two Mecklenburg Hanseatic cities even opened their own ports for "anyone who wants to damage the kingdom of Denmark". In 1393 the "Rostocker and Wismarer Vitalienbrüder", obviously under the leadership of Mecklenburg nobles, did not even shy away from attacking the Norwegian city of Bergen, but seem to have spared the Hansekontor.
Among the Wendish cities, the core of the Hanseatic League, Rostock, along with Stralsund, played the role of the most important city behind Lübeck. Hanseatic days were often held on the Warnow, and Rostock councilors often took on important diplomatic missions for the Hansa. The long-time mayor Arnold Kröpelin († around 1394) stood out here in particular . Although Rostock often had to maneuver between the interests of the Hanseatic League and consideration for the Mecklenburg princes, the city played a leading role in the city alliance until the last Hanseatic day in 1669.
Crises, disputes and unrest
Since the end of the 13th century, the social differentiation of the city led to crises and power struggles between the patrician families and the rest of the city's population. In the 15th and 16th centuries there were repeated unrest and revolts against the city council. Recurring demands were the summary of the demands and rights of the citizens in "citizenship letters" and the influence of the craftsmen on the composition of the council. The first printed Rostock city chronicle by Peter Lindenberg reported six large "tumults" at the end of the 16th century. The weakness of the Lords of Rostock also aroused the interest of the neighboring princes in the flourishing city.
The first inner-city disputes, as a result of which the councilors, who usually held office for life, were deposed and replaced by new ones from the same circle of advisable families, occurred in 1286/87. The uprisings of the citizens against the council between 1298 and 1314 were more severe. The town in which the angry was also affected by acts of war by the last lord of Rostock, Nikolaus, called "the child" , against the margrave of Brandenburg and other princes Citizenship drove out some councilors. Nicholas was now forced to place his country under the protection and feudal rule of King Eric of Denmark . However, the city refused to accept the king, who tried to decide the trial of strength by blocking the access to the Baltic Sea. The Rostockers stormed a twin tower complex in Warnemünde, burned it and built - among other things with stones from the tower of the Petrikirche, which had been demolished for this purpose - a huge tower, which fell again in 1312 after a long siege. When the city council was ready to surrender, a riot sparked by the craftsmen broke out. Some councilors were killed, others banished. In this situation Heinrich II., The "Lion of Mecklenburg" succeeded in taking Rostock in 1314. In the same year Nikolaus the child died and the rule of Rostock fell to Heinrich as a Danish fief. After the death of both King Erich and Margrave Waldemar von Brandenburg , he and his son Albrecht II gradually reunited the state of Mecklenburg and promoted Rostock as their most important city.
After further uprisings in 1408/16 and 1427/39 it came from 1487 to 1491 to the " Rostocker Domfehde ". The occasion was the establishment of a collegiate foundation, commonly referred to as the “cathedral”, at the Jakobikirche, with which Duke Magnus II wanted to secure the financing of the university and his position of power within the city. On the day of the consecration of the monastery, January 12, 1487, the newly appointed provost Thomas Rode was brutally murdered on the street, and the princes present had to flee the city. It was not until 1491 that the uprising, supported by craftsmen, ended with the execution of the leader Hans Runge and three other rebels.
University and science
A visible sign of the importance of Rostock was the founding of the university in 1419 - the oldest university in Northern Europe . Rostock had thus achieved a leading role in science in the entire Hanseatic region for two centuries. Both the sovereigns Johann IV and Heinrich IV , who, together with the Bishop of Schwerin , asked Pope Martin V for approval of the establishment of a university, as well as the city council, who provided the financial basis, pursued the goal of their respective founding To consolidate a position of power, however, were dependent on mutual support. As was customary at that time, only the artist faculty , law and medicine were initially set up. 1433 followed with theology, the most prestigious of the classical four faculties. After the ban and interdict had been imposed on the city, the university left Rostock from 1437 to 1443 in the direction of Greifswald, where its own university was officially founded in 1456 . Later tensions between the city and / or sovereigns and the university resulted in two further moves in 1487 to Wismar and Lübeck and in 1760 to Bützow .
As early as 1476, the brothers from the Common Life founded their first printing press in the Michaeliskloster. Printing flourished under Ludwig Dietz , who among other things published a Low German edition of Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools in 1518 .
All four parish churches had schools, of which the Latin school of St. Mary's Church was the most important. There is evidence of a pharmacy in Rostock since 1260. The Marienkirche had the famous astronomical clock in 1379 , the work of which still works today.
Churches and monasteries
As a church in the middle town, St. Marien developed into the main and council church of Rostock, whose church patronage, however, lay with the sovereign. The bishop responsible for Rostock had his seat in Schwerin . In addition to the four parish churches, there were various monasteries in Rostock: Around 1240 and 1256, the mendicant orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans had come to the city and built the Katharinen- and the Johanniskloster . In 1283 the Danish Queen Margarete Sambiria died in the Cistercian monastery of the Holy Cross , the foundation of which was attributed to her. In addition, the Heilig-Geist- and St.-Georg-Hospitals were founded as foundations. Both the monasteries and the hospitals, as a powerful manorial rule, had numerous villages in the surrounding area.
In the 14th and 15th centuries, the so-called Michaelis monastery of the brothers from living together , the Carthusian monastery Marienehe outside the city, the Gertrudenhospital in front of the Kröpeliner Tor and several other foundations were added.
A small number of Jews have been found in Rostock since the second half of the 13th century . In the time of the Black Death around 1350, these were driven out of the city after alleged well poisoning .
Early modern age
reformation
The Reformation started in Rostock from the Petrikirche in the poor eastern old town, where Joachim Slüter worked as a chaplain from 1523. From here the teachings of Martin Luther prevailed comparatively slowly, as the old church with the council, the university, the collegiate monastery of St. Jakobi, the Dominican monastery of St. Johanni and the Duke of Mecklenburg-Güstrow, Albrecht VII , was able to mobilize strong opposing forces. On the other hand, Slueter received sovereign support from Albrecht's brother Heinrich V , the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Sluter gave his sermons in Low German and attracted such crowds that he had to preach in the open air because the church could no longer hold the audience. He had also written a hymn book published by Ludwig Dietz in 1525 in the vernacular. In addition to Slüter, the city counsel and university professor Johann Oldendorp and, during a short stay, Ulrich von Hutten played a decisive role in the implementation of the Reformation.
Surprisingly, however, the council changed its position in April 1531 and declared the Reformation doctrine to be binding in all four main parish churches. Slueter died just a year later. His early death raised suspicions of being murdered by papists . Even after the council regulations of 1531, the university and the monasteries of the Holy Cross, St. Johanni and the Charterhouse in Marienehe remained true to the old doctrine. Only began in June 1549 Johann Albrecht I. on the Sternberger parliament the Lutheran faith for all estates by 1552 and triggered nearly all Mecklenburg monasteries. In Rostock, the nunnery on the Holy Cross resisted the Reformation for a long time until it was converted into a women's monastery for the upper class of the city. The Charterhouse of Marienehe was forcibly abolished in 1552.
The school of the Brothers of Common Life in Michaeliskloster, which was dissolved by the council in 1534, was allowed again a year later on the basis of the Lutheran faith. In 1580, the Great City School was set up in the rooms of the St. John's Monastery, which flourished under the direction of Nathan Chyträus .
Disputes about bourgeois representation
During the feud of counts in 1534, riots broke out again in various Hanseatic cities, including Rostock. As in 1427/28, the anti-council opposition set up a citizens' council consisting of 64 merchants and craftsmen and which had to be recognized by the city council. When the war ended in a defeat against Denmark in 1535, the old conditions were restored without any resistance worth mentioning, but in future the council should face citizens' committees in all disputed cases. The relationship between the city and the dukes of Mecklenburg had been increasingly disturbed since the feud of the counts, as Albrecht VII's ambitions for the Danish crown had ended catastrophically with the defeat and the country was heavily in debt. As early as 1523, the estates had united and confronted the sovereigns with self-confidence. As the financially strongest city in the duchy, Rostock, with its huge land holdings in the surrounding area, played a leading role in the rural union . The university in particular was often the subject of arguments between the city and the sovereign.
From 1562 to 1565, a sixties council was placed on an equal footing with the city council and again defied a citizen's letter. On October 28, 1565, Johann Albrecht I , who was allied with the council, entered Rostock with armed forces after the city had refused to take the formal oath of homage . He dissolved the sixties and destroyed the citizens' letter. At the beginning of 1566 his brother Ulrich , who had previously been allied with the Sixties Council, also marched in . The two rulers reached an agreement, tore down the stone gate and the southern city wall and built a fortress in front of the city in what is now the rose garden. The smoldering conflict between the city and the sovereign was only resolved with the Rostock inheritance contracts of 1573 ( first Rostock inheritance contract ) and 1584. Rostock recognized the sovereign sovereignty of the duke, particularly with regard to jurisdiction and tax payments. Rostock's efforts to achieve imperial immediacy had ultimately failed, but the stone gate could be rebuilt and the ducal fortress razed.
In 1583/84 a new citizens' committee was set up in addition to the patricians who were still able to advise them , the Hundred Men College , which consisted of 40 brewers, 20 other merchants and 40 craftsmen. A council of sixteen was introduced as the main committee of the hundred men at the end of the 16th century. After several centuries of unrest, the Hundred Men College was the first long-term internal pacification of the city. In contrast to previous citizens' committees, the sovereigns hardly succeeded in playing off the council and the colleges against each other, even though the cooperation between the two bodies was not always free of tension.
Late blooming of the Hanseatic Rostock around 1600
Around 14,000 residents, a good 800 gabled houses and around 250 to 300 breweries at the end of the 16th century were an expression of a prosperity that exceeded even the heyday of the Middle Ages. Numerous Mecklenburg noble families had residences in Rostock or lived entirely in the city and sometimes became councilors and even mayors. Rostock, whose economy was completely determined by sea trade and brewing, attracted numerous newcomers from all over northern Germany. The university professors were particularly respected, but those citizens who had studied at the university also gained increasing influence. In particular, the legally trained city counsel played an increasingly important role alongside the mayor.
Poorer sections of the population lived in over 1000, mostly half-timbered or wooden shacks , the lowest social class in as many cellars. There was also a social gap between the districts: the density of stone houses was greatest in the Mittelstadt, followed by the Neustadt, and most of the stalls were in the old town. Within the suburbs, the marketplaces were the preferred residential areas, while the poorer classes lived on the periphery.
The intellectual and political center was formed by the axis between the town hall and the new market as well as the university on the hop market , which were connected by the Blutstraße . The Marien- and Jakobikirche were both not far from the two markets.
Thirty Years' War
During the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which irrevocably brought about the end of the Hanseatic League, Rostock was occupied, but suffered far less than other Mecklenburg cities and especially the villages. At first Mecklenburg was hardly affected by the war and more concerned with new disputes between the ducal brothers Adolf Friedrich I and Johann Albrecht II , which in 1621 led to the second main division of Mecklenburg into the duchies of Schwerin and Güstrow . When Denmark entered the war, however, the war spread to northern Germany, and since Rostock's beer exports mainly went to Scandinavia, the city was particularly affected. In 1627 the acts of war reached Mecklenburg, so that Rostock could no longer maintain its neutrality. Until 1628 the rich city, which had been fortified from 1624 by the Dutch fortress builder Johan van Valckenburgh, was able to buy itself free from imperial occupations with the enormous sum of 140,000 Reichstalers , but as Wallenstein after the deposition of the two dukes in January for his services from Emperor Ferdinand II received the Duchy of Mecklenburg and the Diocese of Schwerin as well as the title "General of the Baltic and Oceanic Sea", he forced Rostock to its knees by the tried and tested means of a blockade of Warnemünde.
As in the past with threatened acts of war, the council showed relatively quickly ready to give in, while the citizenry, organized in 13 flags for military defense since 1625, was determined to resist. In the end, the council managed to negotiate relatively mild terms of surrender. Rostock was occupied by an army of 1000 men and became the garrison town of Wallenstein, and a jump was built in Warnemünde to maintain the port. All of Mecklenburg was in Wallenstein's hands, and times were temporarily quiet for the city. Since Wallenstein tried to keep the negative effects of the war away from his duchy as much as possible, Rostock was even able to benefit from the new situation. When Gustav II Adolf of Sweden landed in Pomerania in July 1630, the situation also came to a head in Rostock. It almost came to a catastrophe when the lawyer Jakob Varmeier murdered the imperial city commander on February 1, 1631, but the theology professor and rector of the University Johann Quistorp managed to avert the revenge of the military through diplomatic skill.
On October 16, 1631 the imperial siege for Rostock ended and the "Swedish Era" began. Gustav Adolf reinstated the ancestral Mecklenburg dukes. This change of power had no major consequences for Rostock, for example the university flourished despite the troubled times. If the country and the villages of Mecklenburg were exposed to violence and looting by the Soldateska, the Rostock city walls offered protection to many refugees. Rostock's sea trade, however, fell drastically. The city was hit hardest by a customs duty in front of Warnemünde that was granted to the Swedes by the dukes of Mecklenburg.
The devastating defeat of the Swedes in the Battle of Nördlingen marked a turning point . The imperial family won more and more victories, and on May 30, 1635 the Peace of Prague was reached . Mecklenburg was able to break away from the alliance, which in the years from 1635 to 1638 represented a worsening of the situation in Rostock. Negotiations about the Warnemünde customs were initially suspended, but then it was doubled in order to force further payments from Rostock. In 1637/38 the Swedes in Mecklenburg had to retreat in the direction of Pomerania before the imperial general Matthias Gallas . The Rostockers asked both this general and the emperor, who took Rostock under his protection, to conquer the hill and hand it over for demolition. It was taken on March 11, 1638 by the Saxons under Count Vitzthum, who lost his life in the process. The situation for Rostock had only deteriorated further. After the Swedes had lost the town of Warnemünde, they collected their duties from ships that were moored in front of Warnemünde. The imperial commander now resided in the hill and demanded a separate fee there. It was only when the Danes intervened under Christian IV and laid their own ships in front of the Warnow estuary, thus preventing any collection of customs duties, that the Swedes had to leave and customs were temporarily lifted.
Swedish attempts to recapture the hill were repulsed by the imperial on the night of October 20th to 21st, 1638. The Rostockers began to grind the hill to make it more difficult for the Swedes to settle in the future, but they moved back into the hill on October 26th. It was repaired and strengthened, and customs were resumed at the old level. Only at the end of the Thirty Years War did the Swedes withdraw from Warnemünde in 1648, but continued to levy customs duties.
Decline and the city fire of 1677
Compared with the cities of Stralsund, Wismar and Greifswald, which fell to Sweden, Rostock had poorer trade connections with Scandinavia after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Swedish tariff, Mecklenburg's satisfaction payments to the Swedish krona and the collapse of the Hanseatic trade network - the Hanseatic League of 1669 was the last of the old trade alliance - had hit Rostock, but could not ruin it.
During this phase of stagnation, a sudden catastrophe with long-term effects fell: on August 11, 1677, a devastating city fire broke out in a bakery in the old town, which, extended by unfavorable winds, lasted for two days until it finally began to rain. Almost the entire old town and a considerable part of the northern central city fell victim to the flames. In total, a third of all buildings in the city had been destroyed - around 700 houses and stalls. It weighed particularly heavily that the center of Rostock's brewing industry in the streets leading to the port had been destroyed. The number of breweries fell from almost 200 to less than 100, and the number of inhabitants, which had been 14,000 at the end of the 16th century, fell to 5,000.
Northern War and Seven Years War
Palais : Client: Duke Karl Leopold of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 1714
Baroque Hall : Architect: Jean L. Legeay, 1750
The Great Northern War 1700–1721 brought about a further deterioration in trade connections and led to looting by Danish and Swedish troops. The Seven Years' War also marked the city, which was occupied by Brandenburg from 1758 to 1762. In addition, the absolutist princes took advantage of Rostock's weakness and during this time secured their power over the long term with the sovereign inheritance agreements of 1755 and 1788. From 1702 temporarily residence of the dukes, Rostock had finally become a Mecklenburg country town.
The university sank into insignificance in the 18th century and also had to compete with a ducal university in neighboring Bützow , which had existed from 1760 to 1789 and which Friedrich von Mecklenburg-Schwerin had founded there.
Rostock did not begin to rise again until the end of the 18th century. Maritime trade flourished again with grain transports. Above all, the blockade of Great Britain by revolutionary France contributed to this , as the Rostockers were able to tap into the British market that had been abandoned by French competition. The last vacant lots in the cityscape that had been vacant since the city fire were finally closed. Rostock also flourished again culturally: a theater was built in 1786, the Rostocker Zeitung was published in 1711 , and the Enlightenment "Societät" was active from 1784.
Despite the boom, there was a series of unrest among the craftsmen in the 1790s, triggered primarily by rising food prices. The best known of these conflicts with looting and destruction in October 1800 was known as the “Rostock Butter War”.
19th century
French times and wars of liberation
Monument: Johann Gottfried Schadow
Both Mecklenburg duchies did not initially take part in the coalition wars against France, but only paid contingent compensation payments to Prussia. After the battle of Jena and Auerstedt , fleeing Prussian soldiers first marched through the country, then the French army, plundering and destroying. On November 29, 1806 Mecklenburg was occupied by the French General Michaud , Rostock had to endure billeting, humiliation, restrictions and contribution payments. The sea-trading city was particularly hard hit by the continental blockade against England. It was not until Mecklenburg joined the Rhine Confederation on March 22, 1808 , that the French occupation troops evacuated the duchy and Rostock's maritime trade was revived, even if it remained largely restricted to the Baltic Sea area. On August 17, 1810, however, the French returned to Rostock and with them the restrictions on the public and private life of Rostock citizens. When the French army set out on the Russian campaign in 1812, they carried a contingent of around 2,000 Mecklenburg soldiers with them. After the defeat of the Grande Armée in Russia, the last soldiers of the French garrison left Rostock on March 26, 1813 .
The two Mecklenburg duchies were the first German states to leave the Confederation of Rhine on March 25, 1813 and call their subjects to arms. Several hundred Rostock citizens took part in the wars of liberation in the regular Mecklenburg army or in Freikorps . One of the outstanding personalities of the Wars of Liberation was the Rostock-born Prussian Field Marshal Blucher , who played a decisive role in the Battle of Waterloo , in which Napoleon was defeated.
Biedermeier, Vormärz, 1848 revolution and restoration
In the 18th and 19th centuries Rostock gained the reputation of a solid but sedate provincial town in which new developments came slowly and with delays. The bourgeoisie shaped social life increasingly self-confidently and after the “Geselligkeitsverein” (Societät, 1784) founded the “Philharmonic Society” (1819) and the “Rostocker Kunstverein” (1841), the gymnastics movement was given a place in Wallstrasse in 1827. In addition to their economic success, the introduction of compulsory schooling in 1845 and the expansion of the educational system also contributed to their civic self-confidence .
The Mecklenburg bourgeois-liberal opposition to the March Revolution against the corporate state , which was politically dominated by aristocratic landowners, gathered around the editorial staff of the Mecklenburgische Blätter , which were published from the beginning of 1847 to the beginning of 1848 by the university professor Karl Türk in Rostock. In addition, the Rostocker Zeitung , founded in 1711, was the mouthpiece of the liberals. In the lowest strata of society, impoverishment, unemployment and bad harvests led to a restless mood in Rostock, which - unlike in other German cities - was not radicalized by the workers' association founded in November 1848 .
On March 9, 1848, one thousand Rostock citizens discussed the liberal demands for a democratization of the existing political and economic system in the Hotel "Sonne" on the Neuer Markt and passed a petition, which was repeated six days later in a more stringent form. On April 2, the Rostock Reform Committee in Güstrow was designated as its Central Committee by 173 delegates from all Mecklenburg reform associations. On April 26th, under pressure from the revolutionary forces, an extraordinary state parliament met in Schwerin, which carried out elections for October 3rd. 14 Rostock deputies took part in the constituent session of the new state parliament on October 31st. MP for Rostock in the Frankfurt National Assembly was Johann Friedrich Martin Kierulff . The old council system was also democratically reformed within the city. In the council elections on January 29, 1849, four craftsmen achieved the best results, followed by lawyers and merchants. For the first time, the 48 members of the city council included three journeymen and two workers. After 30 months, however, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin reinstated the old committee of one hundred men, the state constitution was abolished, and the press was censored and critical editors were expelled. In the spring of 1853, 14 Rostock democrats were finally sentenced to long prison terms for high treason , including Friedrich Dornblüth , Karl Türk, Julius and Moritz Wiggers . Until 1918, the political situation in Mecklenburg was considered the most backward in all of Germany.
industrialization
Rostock's sea trade grew steadily in the 19th century and remained the economic driving force of the city. In the middle of the 19th century, Rostock had the largest merchant fleet in the Baltic Sea region, the ships of which were mostly built in local shipyards. The export volume of the grain trade reached 50,000 tons for the first time in 1845.
The still empty city coffers decided about the demolition of numerous old building complexes: In the first decades of the 19th century, the council approved, among other things, the mighty five-aisled church of the Holy Spirit Hospital and the former Dominican monastery of St. Johannis for demolition. In 1830, Rostock began to outgrow the area of the medieval city wall for the first time, which is why large parts of the city fortifications were removed. The ramparts and trenches from the time of the Thirty Years' War were leveled and turned into Wallstrasse . Almost all streets were paved and paved with sidewalks, and outside the city chausseen were built as interurban roads.
Rostock was connected to the German railway network in 1850 with the connection to Bützow - Kleinen , in 1859 the connection to the Stralsund -Neubrandenburg- Berlin line was established via Güstrow and Neubrandenburg , and since 1870 a line ran from Hamburg to Stettin . The positive impulses were, however, clearly overshadowed by the losses that the port of Rostock suffered from the rail.
The compulsory guild inhibited the effectiveness of the economy considerably until 1869. Above all, the town's tobacco and cigar houses developed approaches to industrial production in the manufacturing or publishing system , and distilleries such as Krahnstöver, Lorenz or Lehment were particularly successful. It was not until the second half of the 19th century that the city gained new wealth with freedom of trade and extensive industrialization . The first German screw steamer was completed in 1852 by Wilhelm Zeltz and Albrecht Tischbein at the shipyard and machine factory . The company “Neptun” shipyard and machine factory in Rostock , today's Neptun Werft GmbH , emerged from the company as the first large industrial enterprise in Mecklenburg . Other growing branches of industry were the chemical industry, above all the factories of Friedrich Witte , the construction of agricultural machinery as well as the construction and service companies.
Warnemünde developed into one of the most important seaside resorts in Germany in the first decades of the 19th century . In 1834 the first baths were built there, which were still separate for men and women. This bathing location continued to develop, primarily thanks to the favorable transport connections by train to Berlin and the ferry to Gedser .
Empire
The two Mecklenburg Grand Duchies joined the North German Confederation on August 21, 1866 , and Mecklenburg became a member of the German Customs Union in 1869 . Rostock and Wismar were the last German cities to have given up the minting right in 1864 . Rostock's citizenship also ceased to exist and for the first time since 1350 Jews were able to settle in the city again. Between the founding of the empire in 1871 and the founder crash in 1873, Rostock also experienced a high point in the dynamic developments of the 19th century, but overall Rostock lagged behind most German cities of comparable size in its development.
Industrialization ensured that Rostock grew by around 1000 inhabitants per year. In 1806 the city still had 12,756 inhabitants, in 1900 it was 54,713, so that the city was expanded to the west by the working-class district Kröpeliner-Tor-Vorstadt and to the south by the villa district of the Steintor-Vorstadt. Development plans for the up to then wildly growing suburbs had only been available since the late 1880s. The first church in Rostock since the Middle Ages was built between 1905 and 1908 with the Holy Spirit Church in the western suburb. The rapid economic and population development forced extensive modernization of the city's infrastructure in all areas.
Politically, the election of the council was restricted to a relatively small group of citizens. The Reichstag mandate of the Rostock / Bad Doberan constituency fell regularly, alternating between representatives of the National Liberal Party (NLP) and the German Progressive Party . A local branch of the General German Workers' Association was founded among the workers in 1872 , and social democracy was gaining increasing political weight. In 1890 the 1st of May was celebrated for the first time and from 1898–1906 and from 1912 Joseph Herzfeld held the Reichstag mandate for the fifth constituency of Mecklenburg. Since 1892 the SPD had its own newspaper, the Mecklenburgische Volks- Zeitung. The Rostocker Zeitung remained the voice of the liberals, the Rostocker Anzeiger had been the newspaper of the bourgeois circles since 1881 and soon determined Mecklenburg's media landscape.
Lots of associations emerged that were active in almost all fields of public life. The Rostock Art Association from 1841 and the Rostock Antiquities Association from 1883 took care of cultural affairs. Large numbers of singing and sports clubs were founded. On the public side, cultural life was significantly shaped by the theater, which also included music theater and orchestra.
20th century
First World War and November Revolution
During the First World War , raw materials and food were to a large extent taken to the front, so that hardship and privation increased with each month, diseases such as typhus were the result of the shortage. The entire area north of the Wismar-Rostock-Ribnitz railway line was declared a special military area, so that entering Warnemünde was only possible with a special ID. From 1917, riots and strikes broke out despite drastic threats of punishment. In November, in the politicized atmosphere, within just a few days, local groups of the German Fatherland Party , the Liberal Association , the Progressive People's Party , from which the very influential German Democratic Party emerged a year later , and the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), from which later the Communist Party of Germany split off, sometimes with several hundred members. On January 30, 1918, a women's rally for peace took place in the “Philharmonie” trade union building .
Two days after naval units took control of warships in Kiel on November 3, 1918, torpedo boats with a red flag and sailors from Kiel arrived in Warnemünde. Just one day later, 1,500 sailors, infantry and founded Landsturm people a Soldiers' , the workers at the Neptun Werft, the munitions factory Dolberg and other companies expressed solidarity and a November 7 Workers formed. The Mecklenburg Grand Duke abdicated on November 14th, and red flags were now waving on Rostock's public buildings. In Mecklenburg the reformist direction of the SPD clearly dominated, aiming for a parliamentary democracy and rejecting violence. Radical forces of the USPD and the Spartakusbund , which wanted to continue the November Revolution with a Soviet republic and class struggle , could not prevail against it.
At the end of December 1918 local elections as well as elections to the constituent state parliament and the Weimar National Assembly took place. A constituent assembly was also elected for the city - for the first time in a general, equal and secret ballot and with active and passive women's suffrage. The SPD was the strongest power of the citizens' representation with 31 seats ahead of the DDP (23), the DVP (10) and the USPD (2). With the upheavals in the German Empire and in the new Free State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin , the cities finally lost their political sovereignty.
Weimar Republic
In Rostock, too, the Weimar Republic was marked by economic crises, mass unemployment, inflation and the fragmentation of political parties, demonstrations and strikes were the order of the day. Above all, aircraft construction in Warnemünde with the two Heinkel and Arado companies founded in the early 1920s gave impetus to the economy . With the airfield Hohe Düne , the pilot school of the Reichsmarine operating under the cover name "Seeflug GmbH" , a private flight school and a night mail airline of Junkers Luftverkehr AG , the place had become the center of the aircraft industry.
The most important industrial company remained the Neptun shipyard. The number of Rostock steamers reached its low in 1921 with 18 ships. In 1933, 51.75% of the working population worked in the trade and transport sector. The manufacturing industry and the port adjusted entirely to the export of agricultural products.
In order to meet the general housing shortage, the Kröpeliner-Tor-Vorstadt was expanded and five new settlements were built in front of the city gates: The Garden City , Stadtweide, Reutershagen , Brinckmansdorf and the expansion of the Bramow industrial area with residential houses. Around 1928, the Hansaviertel and other quarters were opened up to include additional housing developments.
The 1920 Kapp Putsch , which was led by Major General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck in Mecklenburg, was met by the workers 'parties with a workers' armed forces and a general strike . They were supported by the DDP. From around the crisis year 1923, both the left and the right political spectrum became radicalized. Since December 1922, the Deutschvölkische Freedom Party had become a gathering point for right-wing radical forces in Mecklenburg, which published the Mecklenburg waiting party in Rostock .
Disguised as a National Socialist Association, the first local group of the NSDAP Mecklenburg was established on March 5, 1924 in Rostock . For reasons of electoral tactics, they initially joined the DVFrP, and from the beginning of 1925 an independent party organization was established. In November 1930, the NSDAP, with 16 members, became the second largest parliamentary group after the SPD. In January of the following year, the National Socialists were able to elect a first and in October a second councilor to the council. In the state elections in June 1932 in Rostock, 40.33% of the votes cast went to the National Socialists. The district leadership provided appropriate propaganda , the highlights of which were two election events with Adolf Hitler as the speaker. In the period that followed, the National Socialists' presence on Rostock's streets increased aggressively and demonstratively. Shortly afterwards, the first arrests and house searches were made in order to actively intimidate political opponents. Especially from the ranks of the SA there were riots and arbitrary attacks beyond all legal bases.
time of the nationalsocialism
On the eve of the 1933 Reichstag election , 21 Rostock communists were taken into " protective custody ". All parties were allowed to run for elections, but the ban on the press, house searches, and the ban on demonstrations and rallies considerably restricted the election campaign of the left groups. The NSDAP became the strongest party in Rostock with 35.5%, but only in association with the German national black-white-red front (20.3%) did a majority of around 56% of the Rostock voters agree with the National Socialist-conservative cabinet To be able to arrange Hitler. In this last election, which was no longer free, the SPD was able to maintain its November result with 30.8%, while the KPD received 8.7% of the vote.
With the DC circuit of the states with the Reich, all KPD mandates were canceled and re-assembled the City Council on the basis of the most recent general election results. Since some bourgeois parties boycotted the election staging over the occupation of the assigned mandates and the DVP and the Christian Social People's Service transferred their mandates to the NSDAP, the new city council consisted of 15 members of the NSDAP, 12 of the SPD and 8 of the black and white fighting front -Red together.
On the basis of the law to restore the civil service , 31 offices were filled with politically reliable persons. The fire brigade was particularly affected, and 14 sympathizers of the SPD or KPD were removed from their service. Five officers were dismissed from the police force. Since the NSDAP lacked suitable administrative experts, the number of those affected only increased to 39 by November 1939. For the same reason, the conservative Lord Mayor Dr. Robert Grabow initially not be replaced until Walter Volgmann took over his office in April 1935. At the same time, the German municipal code eliminated the city council as a municipal decision-making body.
On March 16, 1933, all social democratic associations in Mecklenburg, as well as institutions and associations related to them, were banned, and four days later several functionaries were arrested. Prominent union leaders were imprisoned on May 2, 1933. After the SPD was banned across the whole of Germany on June 22, 1933, the city council consisted entirely of National Socialists. The book burning of the works of bourgeois-humanist, Marxist and Jewish authors organized throughout Germany on May 10, 1933 took place in Rostock on Vögenteichplatz. In front of the university stood a so-called stake on which students had posted examples of allegedly corrosive literature.
The start of the “ Jewish boycott ” took place in Rostock on March 30, 1933 with the posting of SA people in front of Jewish shops and continued on the following day with a large rally on the Reiferbahn. The boycott of a total of 57 Rostock shops, medical practices and law firms was enforced with intimidation and violence. In 1938 the persecution of the Jews reached a new dimension. Measures such as increased tax claims and deletion from the commercial register forced Jewish business owners to give up their companies. The displacement of Jewish companies came to an end in mid-1939. In Rostock a total of 37 Jews were arrested on October 28, 1938 as part of the “ Poland Action ” and deported to Poland. In the course of the pogrom unleashed by the National Socialists, the synagogue on Augustenstrasse burned on November 10, 1938. The arson attack was immediately followed by a wave of violence. SA and SS troops occupied houses, apartments and shops, destroyed furnishings and tyrannized Jewish citizens. 64 Jews arrested by the Gestapo were sent to Altstrelitz Prison, where they were exposed to more difficult conditions. The head of the Jewish community, Arnold Bernhard, supported the emigration of the remaining Jews with the proceeds from the forced sale of the synagogue property.
Living conditions stabilized by the end of the 1930s. Military rearmament brought Rostock and Warnemünde, as important locations for the armaments industry, a significant economic upswing. The main factory of Heinkel, which was inaugurated on December 3, 1934 and originally planned for 2,100 workers, employed around 15,000 workers in 1941, the number of employees at the Arado aircraft factory in Warnemünde had grown from 100 in 1933 to 3,500 in 1937/38. The Neptun shipyard, which in 1933 employed a workforce of only 90 and was on the verge of ruin, again offered 1,800 jobs in 1938.
In 1935 Rostock had 100,000 inhabitants for the first time and could thus call itself a large city , in May 1939 the population was already 121,192. In order to respond to this enormous increase, the city promoted housing and road construction, in particular with job creation measures. The city was expanded primarily to the west, where the Heinkel works were also located. The settlements of Dierkow and Reutershagen emerged outside the city .
Second World War
The shortage of personnel in the armaments factories caused by recruiting was compensated for by service obligations of the local population and by foreign forced laborers and prisoners of war , of whom around 14,500 were living in 19 camps under catastrophic conditions in October 1943. The situation was even worse for around 2000 prisoners from the Ravensbrück concentration camp who were deployed in the Heinkel works.
→ Main article: Air raids on Rostock
As the center of the armaments industry of the Third Reich , Rostock was a target of air raids by the Royal Air Force as early as 1940 . Particularly heavy area bombing with incendiary bombs as part of the Area Bombing Directive hit the city on the nights of April 23rd to 24th and April 26th to 27th 1942, in which the armaments factories and the city center were equally the target. The Heinkel and Arado plants and a submarine shipyard were badly hit. In the medieval city center, the Nikolaikirche , the Jakobikirche and the Petrikirche with almost all of the furnishings of the three churches burned out. Likewise, only the surrounding walls of the stone gate , the cow gate and the petritor gate remained . On administrative buildings were u. a. the district office, the district court and the higher regional court, the post and telegraph office, the city theater, as well as two clinics, eight schools and utilities such as the gas and waterworks destroyed or seriously damaged. Entire streets, especially north and northeast of Neuer Markt to Grubenstrasse, but also in many other corners of the city center, were wiped out. In the four attacks in April 1942 alone, 221 people were killed and 30,000–40,000 were left homeless. At that time, Rostock was the most severely damaged city in Germany. The historic city center was particularly hard hit. At the end of the war, 2611 of the 10,535 houses here were completely destroyed and another 6,735 were damaged. That was 47.7% of the apartments and 42.2% of the commercially used buildings.
Opponents of the regime and the war were dealt with with extreme severity: in 1942 alone, 19 of 78 special court proceedings ended with the death penalty. The death penalty was also incurred for those who stooped to find abandoned objects, that is to say "plundered". Of the 70 Jews who were still living in Rostock at the beginning of the war and who no longer had the opportunity to leave Germany, only 14 survived. Most of them were deported to the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps in 1942 and 1943 and murdered there.
End of war
In the spring of 1945 Rostock was flooded by fleeing Wehrmacht members and by refugees moving westward. From the end of March 1945, the NSDAP district leadership decreed that all Rostock residents capable of working should dig trenches and build anti-tank barriers in front of the city gates in order to develop Rostock into a fortress. Explosive charges were installed on the bridges over the Warnow. All vital businesses were also prepared for demolition. Every evening the Rostockers were called by radio to hold out to the utmost. Fear and chaos reigned in the city, which culminated in a tumult on April 30th when Rostock citizens ransacked grocery stores and shops to get supplies. The fear of the Red Army was great after the destruction of the cities of Friedland, Demmin, Neubrandenburg, Penzlin and Malchin and subsequently led many Rostock residents to flee westwards, partly by land but also by sea. Many greats from politics and business used the departure of the last eleven ships on April 30 and May 1 to flee. Several NSDAP functionaries committed suicide , including Mayor Volgmann and his deputy Robert Grabow . The NSDAP district leader Otto Dettmann was later found shot dead near Wismar by the Allies. Police chief Sommer, who fled with him, escaped to Hamburg.
At lunchtime, tanks of the 65th Army of the 2nd Belarusian Front drove across the Ticino Road into the city. The excursion restaurant at the White Cross was destroyed by tanks because it was flagged with a swastika flag. When the first vehicle passed the Mühlengrabenbrücke, the explosive charge underneath was detonated and a tank was destroyed. Then the bombardment of the adjacent urban areas began, with an ammunition train exploded. The demolition of the Petri Bridge was prevented at the last minute by a firefighter. Since the route over the Mühlendamm was destroyed, the units entered the city via the connecting route and the Petri Bridge almost without a fight.
Post-war period and GDR
At the end of the war, only 69,000 people remained in Rostock. However, as a result of war returnees and the influx of displaced persons , of whom Rostock took in 33,000 in the first years after the war, the population rose again to the pre-war level by 1950. The remains of the largely destroyed aircraft factory fell to the Soviet Union as reparations. The Neptun shipyard was rebuilt and the Warnow shipyard was built in Warnemünde in 1945/46 . In the beginning, both shipyards almost exclusively carried out reparation orders. Many buildings, including the city theater, could no longer be saved after the war damage, others, such as the Jakobikirche and the Petritor , were demolished for ideological or urban planning reasons. In 1949, the reconstruction of the almost completely destroyed urban area between Marienkirche and Grubenstrasse began, whereby the historic streets were only partially reconstructed.
In the first free election in the Soviet occupation zone , the local election on September 15, 1946, the SED received 48.87%, the LDPD 27.7%, the CDU 20.5% and the Women's Committee 1.98% of the votes. How little local self-government was possible in relation to the dominant position of the Soviet military administration and the power claims of the communists is shown by the arrest of Rostock's mayor, Albert Schulz , who, although a member of the SED, came from the SPD and rejected the forced union with the KPD . Ideological and economic repression such as the establishment of the Agricultural Production Cooperatives (LPG) or the Aktion Rose, which was particularly striking in Warnemünde, as well as the massive flight to the West led to dissatisfaction, which also culminated in strikes and workers' demonstrations in Rostock on June 17, 1953 .
Since 1952, Rostock was by the administrative reform district town . The city was systematically upgraded, for example with the Baltic Sea Week , which began in 1955 and became the most important major event in the GDR with an international focus after the Leipzig trade fair . The first prestige reconstruction projects were tackled from 1953 with the Langen Strasse in the city center and a new building area in Reutershagen in the style of socialist classicism . To be first class in football, in 1954 unceremoniously from the small Saxon village Lauter the local first division club delegated to the Warnow and played there under the name Empor Rostock, resulting in 1965 Hansa Rostock emerged.
In the years that followed, the city developed into the shipbuilding and shipping center of the GDR and not least because of this it gained growing importance within the GDR . In addition to the shipyards, the diesel engine plant was established in 1949 , the later Fischkombinat in 1950 and the Deutsche Seereederei Rostock (DSR) in 1952 . As a result of the war and the division of Germany, the GDR initially had no major seaport and had to switch to Hamburg and Stettin . This is how the Rostock overseas port was created between 1957 and 1960 . The university landscape also followed the maritime orientation: the university opened a department for shipbuilding in 1951, later a technical faculty. The engineering school for shipbuilding technology Warnemünde was merged with the seafaring school Wustrow.
The economic upturn caused many immigrants to pour into Rostock. By 1988 the city had grown to over 250,000 residents. In the north-west, north-east and south, more and more of the new parts of the city were built on green fields using industrial panels . Initially, construction was carried out on areas that were planned for residential construction as early as the 1930s. In the years from 1959 to 1965, the districts of Reutershagen with 9,772 apartments and the Südstadt with 7,917 apartments were built. This was followed by the designation of building areas that were no longer directly adjacent to the inner city area. In the northwest, between the built-up urban area of Rostock and Warnemünde, the large housing estates Lütten Klein with 10,631 apartments and Evershagen with 8,732 apartments were built between 1965 and 1974 , followed by Lichtenhagen with 6,925 apartments from 1974 to 1976 , Schmarl with 4908 apartments and Groß from 1976 to 1979 Small with 8,200 apartments in the years 1979 to 1983. In order to return the focus of urban development more to the center of Rostock, the next areas in the northeast of the city were planned. From 1983 to 1989, the Dierkow housing estates with 7,530 apartments and Toitenwinkel with 6,549 apartments were created. A total of 54,000 apartments were built during the period of industrial construction, in which more than half of all Rostock residents lived.
However, the development of the infrastructure and of leisure and shopping opportunities could hardly keep up. In addition, many old buildings in the city center were left to decay. The northern old town, where the war damage had only been poorly repaired, was almost completely demolished in the early 1980s and replaced by prefabricated buildings a few years later. At least elements of north German gable construction were taken into account.
Inadequate investment led, as in many parts of the GDR, to a visible stagnation of the economy in Rostock and to supply gaps. The lack of political freedom and opportunities to influence continued to grow dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, the demonstrations that broke out in 1989 - in contrast to the south of the republic - only reached a larger public relatively late. During the time of upheaval in 1989 , the Rostock churches were contact points for oppositional forces who gathered in the Marienkirche for reminder services under the direction of Pastor Joachim Gauck . The first Thursday demonstration took place on October 19th. At the end of November a round table was set up in Rostock to actively help shape the political upheaval.
German unity
With the political change in 1989 and the German reunification in 1990, the city experienced important changes. Most noticeable, however, was initially a sharp decline in population of around 50,000 inhabitants, which only came to a standstill almost 15 years later. At the same time, as in the entire region, many people lost jobs and new ones could not be created quickly enough due to a lack of economic structures.
The xenophobic riots in Lichtenhagen in August 1992 must be seen as a low point of this period . From August 22 to 26, 1992, there were violent attacks on the central reception center for asylum seekers and a dormitory for former Vietnamese contract workers , which was set on fire with Molotov cocktails . The riots in Lichtenhagen, in which several hundred rioters, some of them right-wing extremists, and up to 3,000 applauding spectators took part, were the most massive xenophobia-motivated attacks in German post-war history. Rostock's social response to this was the “Colorful instead of brown” initiative.
A lot has been and is being built in the city since 1990: The historic city center has been thoroughly renovated with funds from urban development funding and the program for urban monument protection . Buildings that were about to decay have been saved. The infrastructure was renewed and as an important, visible sign of the new beginning, St. Petri received its newly built spire, which has been financed with urban development funds, church funds and donations from many Rostock citizens. A careful renovation and demolition in the prefabricated building areas (especially in the districts of Dierkow, Toitenwinkel, Evershagen, Groß-Klein and Schmarl) was carried out together with improvements in the living environment within the framework of the programs “Upgrade”, “ Urban Redevelopment- East” and “ The Social City “Carried out to counteract vacancy in apartments, among other things.
The 1990s were marked by economic consolidation, but also by emotional debates with state and federal politics to cut funding, especially in the education system and in culture. The university was forced to close traditional faculties. The city is heavily indebted and is fighting for its administrative autonomy. Therefore, some extensive structural reforms were undertaken in the city, but also in the administration of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania , which should lead to more efficiency. This process is still ongoing.
The major maritime event Hanse Sail plays an important role in increasing the population's identification with their city . Warnemünde was upgraded as an important sailing area in the joint application with Leipzig to host the 2012 Summer Olympics , even if the candidacy failed. In 2003 Rostock hosted the International Garden Show (IGA).
Rostock came into the focus of the international public at the beginning of June 2007 with the world economic summit of the G8 in the western seaside resort Heiligendamm . A large part of the accompanying events took place in Rostock, such as the alternative summit and numerous demonstrations. On the sidelines of the opening demonstration on June 2, there were riots by radical autonomists of the Black Bloc , in which, according to official information, around 1,000 people were injured, mainly through stone throwing and the use of water cannons.
literature
- Harald Hückstädt, Erik Larsen, Reinhart Schmelzkopf, Hans-Günther Wenzel: From Rostock to See. The history of Rostock steam shipping from 1850 to 1945 . Oceanum Verlag, Wiefelstede 2011, ISBN 978-3-86927-074-6 .
- Karsten Schröder: There is harmony and general well-being within your walls. A history of the city of Rostock from its origins to 1990 . Ingo Koch, Rostock 2003, ISBN 3-929544-68-7 .
- History workshop Rostock e. V., Thomas Gallien (editor): Landeskundlich-historical Lexikon Mecklenburg-Vorpommern . Hinstorff, Rostock 2007, ISBN 978-3-356-01092-3 .
- Ernst Münch , Ralf Mulsow: The old Rostock and its streets. Redieck & Schade, Rostock 2006, ISBN 3-934116-57-4 .
- Ernst Münch, Wolf Karge, Hartmut Schmied: The history of Mecklenburg. Hinstorff, Rostock 2004, ISBN 3-356-01039-5 .
- Helge bei der Wieden , Roderich Schmidt (Hrsg.): Handbook of the historical sites of Germany . Volume 12: Mecklenburg / Pomerania (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 315). Kröner, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-520-31501-7 .
- Association for Meklenburg History and Archeology: Meklenburg Document Book . 24 volumes. Schwerin 1863-1913. (Supplementary volumes 1936 and 1977)
- Walter Kempowski : German Chronicle . Nine novels. 1971-1984. (In the autobiographical novels, Kempowski processed the Rostock city history of the 19th and above all the 20th century literarily)
- Frank Betker: Insight into the necessity !. Municipal town planning in the GDR and after the fall of the Wall (1945–1994). (= Contributions to urban history and urbanization research. Volume 3). Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-515-08734-6 . (with case study Rostock and Halle / Saale)
- Arno Krause: Rostock district. In: Götz Eckardt (ed.): Fates of German architectural monuments in the Second World War. Volume 1, Henschelverlag, Berlin 1978, pp. 57-75. (Rostock)
Web links
- Hans Ulrich Römer: The Rostock patriciate until 1400. In: Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher. Volume 96, 1932, pp. 1-84.
References and comments
- ↑ www.rostock800600.de for the 2018/19 double anniversary
- ^ Dieter Warnke: Rostock - Petribleiche. A Slavic princely castle from the 12th century. In: Manfred glasses (ed.): Archeology of the Middle Ages and building research in the Hanseatic region. (= Writings of the Cultural History Museum in Rostock. Volume 1). Konrad Reich Verlag, Rostock 1993, pp. 155-160.
- ^ Dörte Bluhm: Rostock - My City. WIRO, Rostock 2005, p. 2ff.
- ^ Saxo Grammaticus : Gesta Danorum . Myths and legends of the famous medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus. Translated, retold and commented by Hans-Jürgen Hube. Marix-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-937715-41-X . See also: Gesta Danorum in full Latin text at the Danish Royal Library
- ↑ AF Lorenz later pointed out that it was unlikely that there was, for example, a threefold expansion of the border of the Mittelstadt and also that Koßfelderstrasse and Krämerstrasse were cut through the city limits (cf. on the history of Rostock city fortifications. In: Contributions on the history of the city of Rostock. Volume 20, 1935)
- ↑ K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 14f.
- ↑ G. Baier: The Marienkirche in Rostock. Union-Verlag, Berlin 1988, p. 2.
- ^ Ortwin Pelc: Rostock around 1200. From the Slavic castle to the German city. In: Rostock in the Baltic Sea region in the Middle Ages and early modern times. University of Rostock, Department of History, Rostock 1994, ISBN 3-86009-093-3 , p. 21.
- ↑ Handbook of Historic Places in Germany. Mecklenburg, Pomerania. 1996, p. 99.
- ↑ Matthias Puhle: The Vitality Brothers. 2nd Edition. Frankfurt am Main / New York 1994, p. 36f.
- ↑ Matthias Puhle: The Vitality Brothers. 2nd Edition. Frankfurt am Main / New York 1994, p. 52ff.
- ↑ Cf. inter alia: Karsten Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being . Chapter: A University of the Hanseatic League. P. 47f. Konrad Reich, Rostock 2001, ISBN 3-86167-102-6 .
- ^ Ingo Ulpts: The mendicant orders in Mecklenburg. (= Saxonia Franciscana. Volume 6). Werl 1995, pp. 34-43, 80-86.
- ↑ K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 80f.
- ↑ K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 81.
- ^ Surrender of the city of Rostock to Wallenstein . Rostock 1628 (on Wikisource ).
- ↑ Alexander Pries: The Swedish customs in Warnemünde in the years 1632-1654. Inaugural dissertation . Wismar 1914.
- ↑ Figures according to K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 94f.
- ↑ Handbook of Historic Places in Germany. Mecklenburg, Pomerania. 1996, p. 102.
- ↑ compare: Discussion: Friedrich Dornblüth # on the high treason trial
- ↑ Information according to K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 119f.
- ^ Neptun share from 1927
- ↑ a b See population development of Rostock (with indication of the sources).
- ↑ K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 181.
- ↑ K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 190.
- ↑ K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 223f.
- ↑ K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 225.
- ↑ Information according to K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 248.
- ↑ Campaign Diary of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command (listing of aircraft used and lost as well as presentation of planned and achieved goals): April 1942 and May 1942 ( Memento from September 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Information according to K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 249.
- ↑ Information according to K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 255.
- ↑ Karsten Schröder (Ed.): Rostock's city history from the beginnings to the present. Hinstorff, Rostock, 2013, ISBN 978-3-356-01570-6 , pp. 281–283.
- ↑ K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, pp. 255ff.
- ↑ K. Schröder: Within your walls there is unity and general well-being. 2003, p. 291.
- ↑ On the organizations and institutions of urban planning in Rostock from 1945 to the first years after the fall of the Wall, cf. the Rostock case study in: Frank Betker: “Insight into Necessity!” Municipal town planning in the GDR and after the fall of the Wall (1945–1994) . Stuttgart 2005, especially parts III, IV and V
- ↑ On urban planning for the northern old town, the construction of the five-gabled house on Uni-Platz and the conflicts over urban renewal in Rostock and Halle / Saale in the 1980s, see Frank Betker: “Insight into necessity!” Municipal urban planning in the GDR and after the fall of the Wall (1945–1994) . Stuttgart 2005, pp. 311-340.
- ^ Photo galleries: Comment: The violence of the hooded men - FAZ.net ( Memento from May 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), Flickr.com
