Westend workers' colony
The workers colony Westend was the first company town of the company Krupp in Essen . It was built in two construction phases from 1863.
history
At the beginning of the 1860s, Alfred Krupp felt compelled to create living space for the steadily increasing number of workers in his rapidly expanding cast steel factory on the site of today's Krupp belt in the west quarter . A housing shortage in Essen that was worsening at the time resulted from the immigration of workers for the Krupp factories, but also for the up-and-coming mining industry in the region. Alfred Krupp then set up an in-house construction office under the direction of the architect Gustav Kraemer . After the construction of two so-called Masters 'Houses in 1861/1862, about 300 meters from Westend, the Krupp workers' colony Westend was built in two phases, Old Westend 1863 and New Westend 1871/1872 , for simple workers who, due to the barrack-like simplicity and monotony was also popularly called New Berlin .
Alfred Krupp had the Westend colony followed by more until 1874: the workers' colonies Nordhof , Schederhof , Baumhof and Kronenberg . After 1874, Krupp's residential construction was discontinued because of the onset of recession and, among other things, the resulting near bankruptcy of the Krupp company. After Alfred Krupp's death in 1887, his son Friedrich Alfred Krupp and the manager of the Krupp construction office, Robert Schmohl , took up residential construction again, which took on completely new dimensions from 1891 with the Alfredshof and Altenhof settlements .
Old West End
In the summer of 1863, Krupp had nine rows of two-story open-plan houses erected on its own factory premises on Frohnhauser Strasse at the corner of Westendstrasse, within walking distance of the cast steel factory. These first residential buildings, later called Alt-Westend , were arranged in parallel and moved a few meters to the rear of both streets. In the area in front of it, further houses up to both streets should be built in further construction phases. Overall, the houses of contained Alt-West 136 apartments, while the eight rows of houses were set up larger homes for families in one. All other apartments consisted of an approximately 15 square meter eat-in kitchen , a bedroom and a toilet. Probably some of the houses were initially planned as single-family houses, but the housing shortage forced a conversion for two parties with a shared toilet in the lower stairwell when the houses were built. Here the stairwell also served as a connecting corridor between the rooms of an apartment. The nine blocks were structurally very simple with a brick ground floor, a half-timbered upper floor, a rather flat roof covered with tar paper without attics and half a basement.
After 1865, the economic situation of the Krupp company deteriorated to such an extent that there were no further residential construction activities for about eight years.
New West End
Only after the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 did the situation noticeably improve. In autumn of the same year, work began on five new rows of houses, which were built across the Alt-Westend , parallel to Frohnhauser Strasse. Three of these apartment blocks were directly on the street, the other two in the second row behind it, with a green settlement center between these two with trees. In the winter of 1871/1872, the newly built 96 apartments in the Neu-Westend were occupied by Kruppians. Since these houses were supposed to provide cheap living space for the workers as quickly as possible, they were architecturally based on the previous buildings in Alt-Westend . Two different types of apartments with toilets were created in the stairwell. The smaller version with a kitchen-living room and bedroom was located in the two rows of houses in the second row. In the three apartment blocks directly on Frohnhauser Strasse, the larger, approximately 55 m² apartments with kitchen, living room and bedroom separated from it, were located on three floors: mezzanine, first floor, top floor. The attic, covered with roof tiles, was initially planned as an attic, but was expanded due to a lack of housing. The houses were completely basement with a vaulted cellar.
The Westend was given the character of a workers' colony through expansions with a consumer establishment , a shop where workers could shop cheaply on the corner of Frohnhauser Strasse and Westendstrasse, and a beer hall on the opposite street corner. Adjacent to Westendstrasse, almost parallel to the rows of houses in Alt-Westend, a row of so-called officials' houses with larger apartments for senior executives was built.
Current condition
There is nothing left of the former workers' colony today. Between October 1954 and February 1955 the printing company Graphische Anstalt Krupp moved to the site, which is still active there today under the name Westend Druckereibetriebe GmbH and has been spun off from the ThyssenKrupp group since 2005 .
literature
- Daniel Stemmrich: The settlement as a program . Johann Georg Olms Verlag, 1981, ISBN 978-3-487-07064-3 .
Web links
- Krupp settlements - from workers' houses to Margarethenhöhe , PDF file 580 kB; accessed on July 11, 2018
Coordinates: 51 ° 27 '18 " N , 6 ° 59' 34.8" E