Official housing estate Bliersheim

One of the preserved villas in Bliersheim

Empty villa, behind a renovated property

The civil servants' settlement in Bliersheim was built between 1903 and 1910 on the outskirts of the small village of Bliersheim, which today belongs to the city of Duisburg , Rheinhausen district, Friemersheim district, for the employees of the Krupp steelworks in Rheinhausen . Casino Krupp also belonged to the settlement .

history

Krupp's architect Robert Schmohl , who by then had already been responsible for the first phase of construction of the Altenhof in Essen , designed the spacious villa colony. It was on the other side of the factory, where the Margarethensiedlung workers' settlement was also being built. The immediate proximity to the factory meant that the iron and steel works gradually expanded around the residential area and finally completely enclosed it. The mansions of the executive staff, lavishly and individually designed in the English country house style, are grouped around the director's building with the coach house and carriage depot in the center. The villas had numerous rooms on up to 400 square meters of living space, including a salon on the ground floor for representation. They were richly decorated with half- timbered gables, loggias constructed in wood, as well as bay windows and elaborate roof shapes. The mansions of the operations directors were single houses, those of the operations assistants were semi-detached houses. No two villas are alike. 22 buildings were planned, 17 were built, nine of which are still preserved today.

Further away were the apartment buildings for foremen and administrative employees on Gaterweg; likewise the bachelor dormitory "Wilder Mann". The factory, known as Friedrich-Alfred-Hütte from 1904 to 1947 , employed around 8,300 workers and around 1,000 employees in 1914. Residence obligation prevailed until the 1950s , i. H. the executives had to live in the immediate vicinity of the workplace.

The casino Krupp was within the 4,300-square-foot squares of the villas and was used as a restaurant for executives and guests, as well as for representation purposes. It has been used as a restaurant and event center since 2006. In addition, a plant nursery and a consumption establishment belonged to the settlement; both are no longer preserved today.

The villas, uninhabited since the mid-1970s and threatened with decay, were placed under monument protection in 1988 and made weatherproof and secured in 1996 by the new owner Landesentwicklungsgesellschaft (LEG). The plan was to convey these buildings to new users in the course of the conversion of the iron and steel works premises (see: Logport ). Three of the villas were sold to an undisclosed buyer in 2009. One of the villas at the entrance to the colony has been renovated as an office building. The central director's villa belongs to the Krefeld “Linh Kieu project development”. The only used building of the villa settlement is the former factory inn / casino.

By June 2018, all villas in the neighborhood had been renovated.

literature

Hans-Werner Wehling: Factory and cooperative settlements in the Ruhr area 1844-1939, Volume 2: Duisburg-Rheinhausen, Duisburg-Homberg , Ruhrort . Klartext, Essen 1994