Mount of Olives (Wuppertal)
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Olives is the local place name for a residential quarter of the Wuppertal district Elberfeld that the southern half of American Standard Northern city forms.
The name goes back to the fact that in the 1920s, in this area mainly inhabited by workers - in contrast to the bourgeois district of Briller immediately to the west - many houses were not connected to the public electricity network and the apartments were mainly illuminated with oil or kerosene lamps were.
This part of the old town is one of the largest contiguous monument areas in all of Germany. Most of the houses date from the early days of the 19th and 20th centuries, when living space had to be created quickly for the workers of the prosperous industry.
architecture
The closed development usually consists of three to four-story apartment buildings, each with its own individual decoration. The toilets were mostly halfway up the stairs in the stairwell and had to be shared by all floor residents. The apartments were heated individually with coal stoves, oil stoves and later with gas. The small backyards were separated from the neighboring houses or the houses opposite.
In order to take into account the mountain location, numerous multi-step stairs were built between the houses to the valley axis and the Briller district. The most famous from the Mount of Olives down to the city center is the so-called tap-tap-tönchen .
As a special feature, some of the workers' houses (Bergisches Fachwerk ) on the Mount of Olives were clad with wooden facades, which were supposed to imitate the magnificent, stucco-adorned villas in the neighborhood. Most of the apartment buildings, however, are built of stone, many with bay windows , balconies , some even with bell gables . Nowadays, some of the half-timbered houses are also clad with slate.
Infrastructure
The roads that were considered sufficiently wide when they were built are no longer able to cope with today's individual traffic. Due to the narrow intersections, the district is only connected to local public transport by midibuses bought by WSW mobil for this purpose . In the 1990s, permanent road closures ("bollards") divided the quarter in two. This was to deter truck drivers in particular from using the residential area with its many schools, playgrounds and kindergartens as a shortcut to the motorway. This controversial traffic control policy ultimately failed due to broad rejection from the residents.
A regular exercise by the professional fire brigade , which demonstratively crosses the district with its turntable ladder and is often prevented from driving through narrow spaces by illegal parkingers, is usually accompanied by local media . This is used to educate people about the consequences of wrongly parking in the narrow streets and is always provided with the advice to make your way in an emergency regardless of possible damage to the vehicles in question.
Sociology of the neighborhood
During the 1980s, the Mount of Olives was still seen in parts as a social hotspot with a high proportion of senior citizens, socially disadvantaged people and migrants. The condition of the building fabric was often neglected by the owners. After the onset of gentrification tendencies , the multicultural district developed into a popular residential area close to the center. In addition to long-time residents, the population structure today includes students, Turkish and German families and is also inhabited by many artists who have opened galleries along the main traffic axis on Marienstrasse . In addition to the residential development, there is also a senior citizens' home, several churches and parish halls, elementary schools, a special school, an evening school, the Catholic St. Anna grammar school , kindergartens, tradespeople, gastronomic offers and small shops.
The Mount of Olives as a film set
In the Charlotte Street scene of was Tom Tykwer's film " The Princess and the Warrior turned". Chase drives in the film “ Manta, Manta ” were also filmed there, as well as exterior shots for the series “ The Little Vampire - New Adventure ”. In the film " Alice in the Cities " by Wim Wenders (1974) many streets of the district are driven through in a longer film sequence and the typical character of the residential area is shown. In the film " Knockin 'on Heaven's Door ", Til Schweiger walks down the steep Wülfrather Straße.
literature
- Michael Magner: Elberfeld. Briller Viertel and Nordstadt . Sutton, Erfurt 2003, ISBN 3-89702-533-7 .
- Christiane Gertz: The Mount of Olives, my neighborhood . Books On Demand, Norderstedt 2013, ISBN 978-3-7322-9090-1 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Article in the Westdeutsche Zeitung from March 25, 2010 ( online )
Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ' N , 7 ° 8' E