Kronenberg workers' colony

Kronenberg workers' colony on an overview map of the Altendorf mayor from 1898 on a scale of 1: 5000; to the east is the Krupp cast steel factory in the Essen district, not shown here

The Kronenberg workers 'colony (also: Colonie Cronenberg ) was a workers' settlement to the west of what was then the Essen district on Altendorfer territory, which the Krupp company (since 1903 Friedrich Krupp AG ) built for its workers for the most part in the years 1872 to 1874 after the establishment of the German Empire had been. Towards the end of the 1930s, the settlement was gradually closed to expand the cast steel factory . The reason was that the factory, then known as the armory of the German Empire , needed more space for further arms production facilities.

prehistory

At the beginning of the sixties of the 19th century, the company owner Alfred Krupp felt compelled to create living space himself for his steadily increasing number of workers in his rapidly expanding cast steel factory on the site of today's Krupp belt . A worsening housing shortage in Essen resulted from the immigration of workers for the Krupp industry, but also the emerging mining in the region. Thereupon Alfred Krupp set up an in-house construction office under the direction of the government master builder Gustav Kraemer .

The Kronenberg workers' colony was the last residential colony built under Alfred Krupp. Before that, Krupp's residential construction began with the construction of two so-called master houses in 1861/1862 and the workers' colony Alt-Westend in 1863. After the end of the founding period in 1874, after the construction of the colonies Nordhof , Schederhof , Baumhof and finally Kronenberg, the project had to be discontinued for financial reasons. It was not until 1891 that new activities in Krupp housing construction began under Friedrich Alfred Krupp on a new scale with the Alfredshof and Altenhof settlements .

The Kronenberg colony

This last workers' colony established under Alfred Krupp developed into his largest housing project. It extended to around 19 hectares west of the cast steel factory and to the north bordering the Bergisch-Märkische railway line , in the area of the then independent Altendorf , since 1901 a district of Essen. This free field previously belonged to the farmer Krone, after whom the Kronenberg colony was named. To the west of the workers' colony, the Bärendelle formed the border to the then agricultural areas. The stream Bärendelle (formerly: Beerenbach) originated at today's Frohnhauser Platz and flowed towards Altendorf.

Street in the former workers' colony of Kronenberg around 1900
Former beer hall, before 1902
View through street K to the south around 1910, in the back left the still pointed tower of the Luther Church
Kronenberg seen from the northeast, on the left part of the factory premises, in the back left the Luther Church; Watercolor by Jakob Scheiner
Predecessor of Essen West train station between 1898 and 1901: Altendorf Essen-Süd train station with a view of K-Strasse, later Bahnhofstrasse

The workers 'colony was planned as an independent place with leisure and community facilities, which made it different from the other existing workers' colonies to this extent. The streets had no names, but were marked with alphabetical letters.

Initially, the colony had 1,356 apartments in 221 houses. After further expansion, even after 1874, the number of apartments increased to a good 1570, which were intended for around 8,000 people. Of the 1356 apartments built by 1874, 693 were two-room, 528 three-room, 129 four-room and six five-room apartments, mostly divided into a kitchen-living room and a bedroom or additional living rooms. The houses had vaulted cellars and offered a communal attic under a roof covered with pans. There were also toilets on the landing. Around the houses there were gardens and communal bleaching areas . The outer walls of the houses were solidly bricked with exposed bricks , the inner walls consisted of stone framework.

The predominantly three-and-a-half-story houses were arranged at right angles, with long blocks of flats extending north-south on the eastern edge and in the center of the settlement and short blocks extending in the same direction on the western edge. Twelve-family houses were arranged in rows of three or two at right angles between them. There were also contiguous rows of six-family houses near the railway line.

The majority of the streets in the settlement were marked with alphabetical letters; there were no street names. The settlement structure was interrupted centrally by a town center. This was in front of the still preserved beer hall, built around 1910, and consisted of a market square for the weekly market, a park with a concert stage and various communal facilities. One of them was a central consumer establishment , i.e. a shop with everyday items for the workers. The weekly market has been operated by the consumer institute since 1874. In addition, especially in the Kronenberg colony, the consumer establishment had colonial goods, footwear, a slaughterhouse and so-called manufactured goods, which included haberdashery, clothing, sewing machines and the like. Other communal facilities were the beer hall with bowling alley, beer garden and adjoining meeting room for up to 1500 people, as well as a post office. The assembly hall was available for festivities and as a club room for members of the cast steel factory and also had library cabinets and a theater stage on which performances of the Essen city theater were given in the winter months. Spread across the whole settlement there were other dispensaries of the consumer institution, a pharmacy and playgrounds, and in the southeast, outside the colony, three school buildings. The Catholic school in the east on Sälzerstraße and the Protestant school in the south of the colony were set up as private schools, run by the Krupp company, to relieve the city schools and offered eight year-old classes, each separately for boys and girls. To the east of the Protestant school was the simultaneous school opened in 1877 for children of both denominations. There was also the Krämerplatz, roughly where Haedenkampstrasse meets Frohnhauser Strasse today. This was considered the gateway to the cast steel factory. There were pubs, shops, a bakery and the first Protestant parish hall. To the north of the colony, a Catholic emergency church built on Helenenstrasse from 1872 to 1873 resulted in today's Altendorfer Dom (St. Mary's Assumption), built in 1892 , which has been a listed building since 1994. The Luther Church was added south of the railway line in 1882 . In 1901 the later publisher and entrepreneur Jakob Funke was born in an apartment of the Kronenberg workers' colony .

In the years 1912 and 1913, the old station building of the Altendorf-Cronenberg and later Altendorf Essen-Süd station was replaced by the current one of the station called Essen West since 1901 . The old station, which went into operation in 1884, was then north of the Bergisch-Märkische railway line, roughly opposite the Luther Church . Also in 1912, on the occasion of the centenary of the Krupp company , Wilhelm II visited their most important workers' colony, Kronenberg.

The area at the time of National Socialism

In 1938/39, at the time of National Socialism , Krupp benefited from the rising economy, but the influence of the Hitler regime increased to such an extent that board positions were also filled by it. One consequence of this was that parts of the Kronenberg colony had to give way to a tank workshop at that time. The other parts of the settlement were also closed in these two years in order to be able to expand the cast steel factory. As a replacement for the abandoned parish hall on Krämerplatz, the current one was built by Krupp at Luther Church. The settlement built at this time between Niebuhrstrasse and the railway line was intended to replace Kronenberg.

In 2011, when work began on the Kronenberg Center east of today's Haedenkampstrasse, an air raid shelter for 540 Krupp employees of the cast steel factory was discovered in this southeastern part of the former Kronenberg colony. The approximately one hundred meters long underground facility with 30 rooms was built in the 1930s.

Current condition

Almost nothing is left of the original workers' colony. Today there is a residential area in the western area of the former workers' colony, mostly consisting of post-war buildings. In the largest area, today east of Haedenkampstrasse, there was a little retail and some fallow land until the end of 2011. The Kronenberg Center shopping center opened here on October 24, 2013 . Of the streets, Richterstraße still exists as the most westerly street in the colony, as well as the east-west connection that used to run centrally through Kronenberg, Sälzerstraße. This led through the factory premises in the east, past the United Sälzer & Neuack colliery to Westendstrasse, where it became Werksstrasse and was soon abandoned due to factory expansions in this section.

The only building of the Kronenberg workers' colony still preserved today is that of the former beer hall from around 1910 with a meeting room for around 1,500 people. It has been used by the Evangelical Free Church Community of Essen-Altendorf since 1980. The Ruhr Regional Association added the building to the Route of Industrial Culture in early 2013 .

Former beer hall of the Kronenberg colony, built around 1910
Western wall of the former air raid shelter east of today's Haedenkampstrasse
Lettering in the former air raid shelter

literature

Daniel Stemmrich: The settlement as a program . Ed .: Johann Georg Olms Verlag. 1981, ISBN 978-3-487-07064-3 .
Boris Kretzinger: Company housing construction before 1914 . Ed .: GRIN Verlag. 2007, ISBN 978-3-640-14178-4 .
ThyssenKrupp / Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (ed.): Krupp belt historically . 2010.