History of the city of Hagen

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Hagen is an independent city on the threshold from the Sauerland to the eastern Ruhr area , North Rhine-Westphalia .

History - political and historical

Prehistory and early history

The Hagen area has been inhabited by people since the Ice Age. Numerous archaeological finds prove a "settlement" since the middle Paleolithic, the cultural stage of the Neanderthals . In caves and on the river terraces of the Ruhr , Lenne , Ennepe and Volme there are numerous land finds and traces of settlement from the Paleolithic to the Mesolithic and Neolithic to the Bronze Age , Iron Age and Migration Period .

In a side valley of the Lenne near Hagen-Holthausen , significant bone finds from Stone Age people were made in the “ Blatthöhle ”, including the skeletal remains of at least two of the earliest anatomically modern people in Westphalia and the Ruhr area . According to radiocarbon analysis at the Universities of Kiel and Oxford, these human remains are over 10,700 years old and date from the early Mesolithic of the older Holocene . In Europe, they are among the few human remains that have survived from this period.

Numerous skeletal remains of people of the Michelsberg culture were discovered in the “ leaf cave ” , including the almost complete skeleton of a young woman aged 17 to 22 years. Investigations showed an age of around 5600 years. These Neolithic human remains, which are believed to belong to burials, are among the rare archaeological relics in Europe.

The finds in the " Cave of Leaves " have been researched by an international team of scientists since 2004 and can be seen on the basis of selected objects in the Museum of Prehistory in the Werdringen moated castle , along with other important archaeological finds from the region.

middle Ages

In 775, the “Saxon” Hohensyburg (Sigiburg) , located near the Hagen city limits to Dortmund, above the mouth of the Ruhr-Lennes, was conquered by the troops of Emperor Charlemagne . With the transmission of this conquest in the "Annales Laureshamenses" (Lorsch Annalen), the Hagen area entered history.

The first written sources that refer directly to Hagen date back to the 12th century, when Hagen was owned by the Electorate of Cologne and a parish in the rule of Volmarstein .

The Johanniskirche (city center) is often associated with the (historically incorrect) idea of ​​a Carolingian “original parish” of Christianization in the 8th century. This is where the region's "early church" is said to have been. In fact, based on written sources and archaeological findings, the church can be dated to the 12th century at the earliest. There was probably no system of “original parishes”; the thesis is based on posthumously published working hypotheses by the Westphalian regional historian Albert K. Hömberg .

Until 1288, the Raffenburg near Hagen-Holthausen secured the border between the Electorate of Cologne and the County of Limburg and the County of Mark . In the spring of 1288, the Raffenburg was conquered by the troops of Count Eberhard II von der Mark and later partially razed .

After Volmarstein Castle was conquered in 1324, Hagen became part of the Grafschaft Mark, which belonged to the Dukes of Kleve-Mark at the beginning of the 15th century.

In the Middle Ages, the village and parish of Hagen was relatively insignificant and was politically, economically and socially unimportant in comparison to the Brandenburg city foundations in the surrounding area and to the neighboring county of Limburg .

Early modern age

In 1609/1666 the court and parish of Hagen became part of Brandenburg-Prussia by succession . During the Thirty Years' War numerous looting and in 1636 a great plague epidemic took place , which killed thousands of people in the parish and court of Hagen alone .

The establishment of a blade forge in Hagen-Eilpe in 1661 with the approval of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg promoted economic, social and political development.

Since 15./16. In the 19th century, several water-powered hammer mills and forges were built in the Ennepetal between Wehringhausen , Haspe and Gevelsberg and in the Volmetal between Eilpe and Dahl .

In the 17th century numerous scythe smiths were founded on the so-called Ennepestrasse between Gevelsberg and Wehringhausen, which remained a dominant branch of industry until the 19th century. The scythe smiths, like the blade smiths in Eilpe, immigrated from the Bergisches Land in the middle of the 17th century .

In 1699 a large fire destroyed numerous houses in Hagen, which in a source from 1697, which can be seen today in the permanent exhibition of the Hagen Historical Center , was still referred to as a village by the "rulers" and "residents".

Modern times

Around 1705, Hagen was a patch in the Hagen Court, Weather Office . A fire in 1724 destroyed most of the buildings. This was followed by reconstruction, which was supported and promoted by the Prussian government.

In 1717, when the area had 675 inhabitants, Hagen received an excise tax , and in 1731 a “town hall regulation”. Hagen has had city ​​rights since September 3, 1746 on the basis of a rescript confirmed by King Friedrich II of Prussia .

Since the middle of the 18th century there has been an economic and social development that was disturbed by the consequences of war, such as the Seven Years' War in 1756–1762 .

From 1807 to 1813, during the period of French rule, Hagen was affiliated to the Ruhr Department in the Grand Duchy of Berg as the capital of the Arrondissement of Hagen . It had the rank of a municipality or sub-prefecture.

After the final transfer to Prussia, Hagen became the seat of an office and a district within the Arnsberg administrative district in 1817. In 1837 the revised town order and a magistrate were introduced.

During the revolution of 1848/49 , revolutionaries from Hagen played a major role in the uprising in Iserlohn in May 1849. After the bloody suppression of the uprising by Prussian troops, many revolutionaries fled. B. Caspar Butz , abroad.

Latest history and contemporary history

Plan of the city of Hagen from 1888

In 1887 Hagen retired from the district of Hagen under administrative law and became an independent city . The population of the city exceeded the 100,000 mark on February 13, 1928 and made Hagen a major city .

After the founding of the Reich in 1871 , Hagen experienced a heyday with high industrialization in Germany until the beginning of the First World War in August 1914 . Due to urbanization, the city ​​developed into the main center for the entire region. The First World War ended this upswing and during the Weimar Republic , Hagen was no longer able to match the situation before 1914.

During the Kapp Putsch in 1920, Hagen was the headquarters of the Red Ruhr Army . On the other hand, a local branch of the NSDAP had existed in Hagen since the spring of 1922 . Leading National Socialists such as Adolf Hitler , Joseph Goebbels and Rudolf Heß have visited Hagen several times since 1925. Hitler and Hess lived in the Busch house , an aristocratic residence near Hagen-Kabel, which until 1928 was inhabited by the later Supreme SA leader Fritz Pfeffer von Salomon .

After the seizure of power of the NSDAP also occurred in Hagen for tracking and deportation of local Jews . The mayor of Hagen, Heinrich Vetter, was also the deputy Gauleiter of the NS-Gaus Westfalen-Süd, based in Bochum , from 1936 . During the November pogrom in 1938 , the synagogue built in 1859 on Potthofstrasse was destroyed. In the course of the Second World War , the air raids on the Ruhr area , especially during the " Battle of the Ruhr " launched by the British RAF Bomber Command in spring 1943 , also completely destroyed the city center of Hagen.

Between 1943 and 1945 the Gestapo office in Hagen ran its own “education camps ” in which foreign forced laborers , Jews and “ Jewish mixed race ” as well as German resistance members were imprisoned and mistreated. Just a few hours before the US troops marched in in April 1945, Gestapo employees murdered numerous people in Hagen.

The "building sins" caused by the rapid reconstruction have been remedied since the 1990s, among other things by the Volmegalerie, the redesign of the station forecourt and the new part of the town hall that was implemented in a local referendum against the overwhelming majority of minor protests.

Current development

As of December 31, 2013, Hagen had 189,379 inhabitants. In March 2004, Hagen received nationwide media attention through the spectacular demolition of the Sparkasse tower block " Langer Oskar ". Since September 2004 German-language and international media reported several times about the unprecedented archaeological finds of some 10,700 year-old human skeletal remains that or the oldest findings represent are considered "oldest Westphalia" by anatomically modern humans in Westphalia and the Ruhr area, in a karst cave in Hagen.

Incorporations

In the course of history, the city of Hagen grew through several incorporations. These are in detail:

Population development

See also: Population development of Hagen

In 1900 Hagen had more than 50,000 inhabitants. In 1928, the city's population exceeded 100,000, making it a major city . By 1964, that number had doubled to 200,000. On January 1, 1975, after the incorporation of Hohenlimburg (27,244 inhabitants 1974) and other places, the population of Hagen reached its historical high of 231,840. On December 31, 2006, the " official population " for Hagen was 195,671 according to the data processing and statistics department of North Rhine-Westphalia (only main residences and after comparison with the other state offices ).

Economic history

Historical development of the economy in Hagen

The intensive use of water power on the Ruhr, Lenne, Volme and Ennepe in the Hagen area promoted a significant settlement of metal processing companies as early as the 15th century . Since 17./18. The textile and steel industries as well as paper manufacture followed in the 19th century. Blade smiths from Solingen settled in Eilpe (living and working building "Lange Riege" in Hagen-Eilpe from 1665).

Friedrich Harkort founded the Schlebusch-Harkorter Kohlenbahn in 1828 with a few other shareholders in order to ensure the coal supply for the iron and steel processing industry from the nearby hard coal mines in Silschede . 1836/ 38 was the "Markaner", one of the first industrially operated larger blast furnaces for iron and steel production, established. In the course of industrialization, Hagen was connected to the Bergisch-Märkische railway network in 1848 and developed into an important railway junction. The Hasper Andreas brewery was founded a year later; The Vormann brewery in Dahl , which still exists today, followed in 1877 . In the meantime, the factories grew into large iron and steel works.

Adolph Müller founded Büsche & Müller in Wehringhausen in 1887 , which became Accumulatoren Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft Berlin-Hagen (AFA) in 1890 . The company, renamed VARTA Batterie AG in 1962 , developed into one of the world's largest manufacturers of lead-acid batteries .

Another success story began in 1912: This was the year of the birth of Brandt - rusk in Haspe - although the company has only been producing in Ohrdruf in Thuringia since 2003 due to high subsidies for resettlement . The company headquarters remained in Hagen.

Important employers today are one of the largest paper mills in the world, Stora Enso in HA-Kabel, the printing center of the WAZ newspaper publishing group in HA-Bathey and the universities ( FernUniversität in Hagen , Fachhochschule Südwestfalen , Hagen location).

Stick and iron according to DIN 21800.svg Mining and steel history Stick and iron according to DIN 21800.svg

Like many other cities in the Ruhr area, Hagen also has a corresponding mining history:

In the Ruhr Valley, the oldest coal seams (Sengsbank seam) in the Ruhr area come to light, for example on the Kaisberg in Hagen-Vorhalle and on the Hohensyburg . Since the early modern small mines are occupied in the north of Hagen, in the tunnels - and Pingenbau the extraction operated by coal.

In addition to coal mines, there were mines for iron ore, copper ore, zinc ore, lead ore, alum shale and pyrites. However, the output and quality of these numerous mining operations was rather low compared to other cities. A more detailed list can be found on the list of former collieries in Hagen .

From 1766 to 1780 the "Westphalian Mining Authority" was located in Hagen, until it was then relocated to Wetter . Among other things, Friedrich Karl vom Stein worked there as a mountain ridge.

Due to the migration of hard coal mining to the north combined with the low value of the coal seams, which are only rarely extracted, however, in contrast to other mining towns, the extraction was stopped relatively early. It was only after the Second World War that, due to the acute shortage of raw materials, the production of hard coal began again, but only for a few months.

At times much more important than the paper, accumulators and rusk industry in the industrial history of Hagen was the more than 130 years of steel production. An example of this is the Hagen Klöckner factory, which was shut down in 1982 and known locally as Hasper Hütte , where over 7,000 people worked at five blast furnaces at times. Due to the high density of companies in the steel and iron industry, Hagen became an important industrial location in the Ruhr area in the 1830s. This also explains the sudden increase in the population from 10,000 inhabitants in 1865 to 100,000 inhabitants (1928) up to a large city with over 200,000 inhabitants in the early 1960s.

Even today, the former "steel town" of Hagen is one of the leading locations in Europe for steel strip production.

However , the financial strength of the city of Hagen is still suffering today due to the decline of heavy industry in the course of the "steel crisis" with the closure of Hasper Hütte and other large industrial branches. The renovation of the former smelter site and the expansion of new commercial areas in the Lennetal have created space for new companies to settle in since the 1970s. However, despite the steel crisis and structural change in comparison to the Ruhr area, most of the skilled metal workers are still employed in Hagen (besides Gelsenkirchen ).

literature

Basic literature on the history of the city of Hagen

A detailed bibliography on the city and regional history can be found on the website of the Historisches Centrum Hagen.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Vetter
  2. ^ Klaus-Dieter Alicke: Lexicon of the Jewish communities in the German-speaking area. 3 volumes. Gütersloher Verlagshaus , Gütersloh 2008, ISBN 978-3-579-08035-2 ( online edition )
  3. ^ History of downtown Hagen, Battle of the Ruhr
  4. ↑ Forced labor in detention centers and camps
  5. ↑ District data 2014 ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Statistical Office of the City of Hagen, accessed on March 17, 2015  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hagen.de
  6. ↑ Statistical Yearbook 2018 . Hagen 2018, p. 17 ( hagen.de [PDF; 19.5 MB ]).
  7. ^ A b c Stephanie Reekers: The regional development of the districts and municipalities of Westphalia 1817-1967 . Aschendorff, Münster Westfalen 1977, ISBN 3-402-05875-8 , p. 240 .
  8. ↑ Martin Bünermann: The communities of the first reorganization program in North Rhine-Westphalia . Deutscher Gemeindeverlag, Cologne 1970, p. 112 .
  9. ^ Federal Statistical Office (ed.): Historical municipality directory for the Federal Republic of Germany. Name, border and key number changes in municipalities, counties and administrative districts from May 27, 1970 to December 31, 1982 . W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Mainz 1983, ISBN 3-17-003263-1 , p. 329 .