History of the city of Solingen
The history of the city of Solingen stretches from its beginnings in the High Middle Ages to the present-day metropolis in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The beginnings
The cultural and settlement origins in today's urban area of Solingen are unknown. It is considered certain that the so-called Bergische Land - only for a few centuries now - was heavily forested. The valley of the Wupper , which delimits today's Solingen urban area on the east and south flanks, was and is also rugged and difficult to move, which was probably the reason that the area remained untouched by Roman settlement as well as by the migration of peoples . Historians assume that today's Solingen (and Remscheid ) urban area was settled from the direction of Cologne along the course of the Wupper and the Dhünn between the 8th and 9th centuries.
middle Ages
High Middle Ages
The fortified castle Burg Berge was built on the Dhünn around 1060 , today's Altenberg , whose inhabitants were obliged to pay tribute and assistance to the Bishop of Cologne and the Deutz Abbey . The area around the river Wupper later went to a family of counts who called themselves de Berge . The later area name "Bergisches Land" comes from this count family and the name Altenberg from this first castle. It is not clear where the name Solingen comes from.
In Solingen itself, which initially only consisted of individual courtyards, a first church was built between 750 and 1000 AD, the remains of which were found in 1954; At the same time a church was built in Wald which belonged to the Archbishop of Cologne . The place is first mentioned as Solonchon in a document from 1067.
The Counts of Berg later moved to a higher location, better in terms of defense strategy, today's Solingen district of Burg an der Wupper . The newly built castle above the Wupper was not a representative castle , but was called Schloss Burg . In 1133 the counts left their ancestral seat in Altenberg to the Cistercians to found a monastery; the Bergische Dom was built there from the 13th to the 14th century . After 1156 they increasingly took over power in Deutzgau, in which the villages of Solingen and Wald were located, which until then had been under the administration of the Rhineland Count Palatine .
From 1200 the blade craft can be proven in Solingen. A prerequisite for this were the dense forests of beech and oak that surrounded the village for the extraction of charcoal . In addition, the forests were freely usable for the farmers who also operated the craft.
The village of Gräfrath , today's district of Solingen, was first mentioned in 1135 with the presumed name Greverode . Between 1185 and 1187, the abbess Elisabeth von Vilich founded the Augustinian monastery of Gräfrath. An existing count's court in Solingen is mentioned in 1303. The monastery Gräfrath received a miraculous 1309 Catherine relic that Gräfrath had become a center of Catherine's cult.
Late Middle Ages
In the 14th century there were first specializations; the craftsmen organized themselves in "brotherhoods" (= guilds ) for various professional groups. What they had in common was that - unlike the guilds elsewhere - they had no connection to the church. They adopted their statutes based on the example of the Cologne "Statute of the Gewandbruderschaft".
Over the centuries, the Counts of Berg granted city, market, guild and manufacturing privileges and promoted the region through their close contact with the trading city of Cologne. So the forging industry came to Bergisches Land and to Solingen - it was southern German, possibly also Austrian swordsmiths who came to Solingen as “guest workers” and established the world-famous blade industry with its proverbial quality.
The Counts of Berg acted as mediators and had the goods sold in Cologne, so that the trade name "Solingen" only gained national importance much later. At that time the Solingen products were traded as "Cologne swords". The prosperity of the blade industry was the motor for the settlement dynamics and development history of the city of Solingen. The ores and coal for the smithy used to be brought from Siegerland by horse carts and were also mined locally in small quantities. Only in the 19th century did the basic materials begin to be obtained from the Ruhr area .
In 1363, the first name of the place Burg as freedom and the first mention of the office of Solingen belonging to the Duchy of Berg . On February 23, 1374, Count Wilhelm von Berg also elevated the village of Solingen to freedom and thus a city and, in addition to holding weekly and annual markets, also approved the fortification of the place.
The hardeners and grinders received privileges in 1401 . They were followed in 1420 by the Reider and the Schwertfeger (Schwertfeger privilege). Gräfrath was raised to freedom in 1402 and Solingen was first named as a city in 1420, which was fortified around 1450. A wall with a moat was built for this purpose. Until the destruction of Solingen's old town in 1944 during the Second World War, the location of the fortifications could be read from the north, east, south, west and monastery walls.
The sword smiths received privileges in 1472. Caspersbroich Castle was built in the same year . The city of Solingen was ravaged by a city fire in 1492.
Modern times
Early modern age
In 1515 the grinder privilege from 1401 was renewed. In the same year the construction of the town windmill began on the mill square named after it , which was finished in 1516. In 1530 Johannes Soter first printed books in the paper mill on the banks of the Wupper. In 1535 another large city fire broke out.
Having already in 1560 the Solingen city privilege was renewed, also received knife maker in 1571 privileges. They were also required to identify their products as coming from Solingen, for example with the inscription Me Fecit Solingen (Latin = Solingen made me ). In the same year Solingen was also authorized to demand road tolls . Another city fire in 1581 destroyed the city almost completely. Seven years later, Spanish troops raided the city. The city privileges were reaffirmed in 1596 by Duke Johann Wilhelm . After the plague raged in Solingen from 1614 to 1619 - around 1800 inhabitants died - the city was occupied and plundered several times during the Thirty Years' War between 1618 and 1648 , with Burg Castle being largely destroyed. In 1665 the plague also occurred in Gräfrath. The following year Solingen was hit by a red dysentery epidemic. In 1686 and 1698 Gräfrath also burned.
From 1715 the Solingen blacksmiths were allowed to purchase Reckhammer steel and therefore no longer had to forge their own steel. Nevertheless, some craftsmen emigrated to Alsace in 1730 and founded the Klingenthal iron industry. Between 1756 and 1763 troops repeatedly moved through the city, but also due to the Seven Years' War , economic life was severely disrupted at this time. In 1740, as a result of the devastating fires in the past, Gräfrath received a fire brigade for the first time.
industrialization
In 1794 the scissor makers also received privileges. The arrival of the French in 1795 resulted in looting and mistreatment; the following year one of the occupiers, the French general Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult , married the Solingen merchant's daughter Louise Johanna Elisabeth Berg. In 1801 the Meigen Male Choir was founded, making it the oldest male choir still in existence in Germany. The monastery in Gräfrath and the Johanniterkommende in Solingen also fell victim to the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss , which were repealed in 1803. In 1807 the four city gates were closed. In 1808 Napoleon dissolved the Solingen office and divided it into Mairien (mayor's offices). All privileged brotherhoods were dissolved in 1809. That same year, the first newspaper Solinger, who appeared preacher (now Solinger Tageblatt ).
Experiments by Johann Abraham Gottlieb Fries, Johann Wilhelm Thomas, Peter Kaymer and Andreas Küller from 1811 were successful and they succeeded in producing a crucible cast steel that was equivalent to British cast steel. They applied for a patent for their process and founded the Walder Gussstahlerfindungsgesellschaft and the company Andreas Küller & Co. in der Bech. The Krupp company in Essen later bought the records of the surgeon Fries. In 1813 and 1815 the Bergisches Land fell to Prussia, as a result of which Solingen was raised to the status of a district town. The ophthalmologist Friedrich Hermann de Leuw opened an ophthalmology practice in Gräfrath in 1823, whereupon a lively spa business was established, which ended in 1861 with the death of de Leuw. As a result of the revolutionary unrest of 1848 , numerous factories were destroyed in Solingen and Burg an der Wupper. In 1849 workers from Solingen took part in barricade fights and in the storming of the Graefrath armory . The first steam engine in Solingen was built in 1853.
According to the Prussian city regulations, the cities of Burg, Dorp, Gräfrath, Höhscheid, Merscheid, Solingen and Wald received city rights in 1856. On October 19, 1859, a total of 89 gas lanterns shone in Solingen for the first time. In 1863 the Solingen volunteer fire brigade was founded. Solingen was connected to the railway network in 1867. In 1882, the first waterworks in the Grunenburg was built in Solingen , and in 1887 the first telephone connection was completed. After the fire in Hackhausen Castle in 1887, it was rebuilt that same year. The reconstruction of Burg Castle began in 1887 and continued until 1914. In the same year the " corkscrew railway " was opened from Vohwinkel via Gräfrath to Wald. In 1889 the city of Dorp was incorporated. In the following year the corkscrew railway was extended to Solingen two years after its opening. Also in 1890 the newspaper Bergische Arbeiterstimme first appeared. In 1891 the city of Merscheid was renamed Ohligs. On April 1, 1896, Solingen became an independent city , but was still the seat of the district of the same name. It was not until 1914 that the seat was moved to Opladen under District Administrator Adolf Lucas .
In 1896 August Dicke , up to then alderman of the city of Elberfeld , was elected Lord Mayor of Solingen and subsequently held the office until 1928. He was regarded as “moderately liberal” and enjoyed so much recognition and respect in the city that, despite the difficult and turbulent political events that followed, he was re-elected several times, even unanimously in the midst of the revolutionary events in 1920. Although as mayor he was a civil servant, thanks to his good personal contacts with left-wing politicians and his powers of persuasion, he was able to repeatedly compensate for what became known as the "thickness system".
At the turn of the century, many buildings were built that still shape the Solingen cityscape today. The town of Wald received its new town hall in 1892, while in Solingen the construction of St. Clement's Church was completed in the same year ; it is named after the patron saint of the city, St. Clement . In 1896 construction began on the power station in Grunenburg. The inauguration of the Müngsten Bridge (at that time still called Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge ) on July 15, 1897 was celebrated as a technical masterpiece. At 465 meters, the steel structure connects the cities of Remscheid and Solingen with a height of 107 meters above the Wupper. Also in 1897, the first tram lines were introduced in Solingen, which gradually banished horse-drawn carriages from the cityscape. Solingen's first and only drinking water reservoir, the Sengbachtalsperre , was built as one of the first of its kind in Germany according to plans by Otto Intze from 1900 to 1903 south-west of Burg. This was followed by the construction of the Luther Church in today's Südstadt (1901), the Gräfrath town hall (1908) and the Halfeshof welfare institution (1910), which today houses the Halfeshof youth home. In 1906 Solingen also fell victim to a severe cyclone .
First World War
The continuous upswing of the Solingen economy since industrialization came to an abrupt end with the beginning of the First World War in 1914. On July 31st the population in Solingen was informed about the declaration of war by Austria-Hungary against Serbia. Panic broke out, people withdrew their money from the banks and stocked up on groceries. These hamster purchases resulted in exorbitant prices for even the simplest of products (such as bread). The Solinger Kriegs-Zeitung , which was introduced specifically for war reporting , became a chronicle of events, appearing once a week.
During this time, the Solingen Social Democrats were in opposition to the politics of the Reich Party and the trade unions, which worked with the Imperial War Administration; In April 1917, almost the entire party switched to the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). The city's industry was commissioned to produce various items of war. This mainly included items of equipment for the soldiers, but also fuses and grenades. A little later, the war hospitals set up in the districts admitted their first wounded. In 1915, the Solingen district established the so-called Bismarck Foundation for War Disabled. In the same year, the first food cards were introduced, and heating and fuel cards followed in 1916. In the period that followed, food in Solingen became increasingly scarce despite these efforts, so that the demand could no longer be met and in 1917 the population was even asked to use every conceivable area to grow food.
In November 1918, shortly before the end of the war, there were revolutionary upheavals in Solingen. The district commander gave his military power over to the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council (AuSRat), which from then on had the say. On December 14, about a month after the capitulation of the German Reich, the first Allied troops marched into the city; Solingen became part of the British zone of occupation. The AuSRat was dissolved and its members had to flee Solingen.
With the Versailles Treaty of June 28, 1919, bare weapons were no longer allowed to be produced.
Interwar period
In the early 1920s, many memorials to the victims of the First World War were erected in the city; several Solingen sports clubs honored their fallen members with memorial plaques. In addition, there were church services to commemorate the war and other expiatory actions, some of which were organized by the Allies.
In the following years the city developed into the “red Solingen”, the KPD was the strongest party that received twice to four times as many votes as the SPD in elections; This made Solingen a political exception among all major German cities. The NSDAP, on the other hand, generally received fewer votes than the Reich average, but so did the bourgeois parties.
On November 26th, 1920 Castle Castle fell victim to a fire; Parts of the castle were completely destroyed. Its reconstruction was completed in 1925. In 1921 the Engelsberger Hof recreation facility in Ohligser Heide celebrated its opening. The Walder Stadium, also called Jahnkampfbahn , was inaugurated in 1928.
The cities of Gräfrath , Höhscheid , Ohligs , Solingen and Wald were united on August 1, 1929 by the law on municipal reorganization to form the city of Solingen. At the same time, the Solingen district was briefly renamed the Solingen-Lennep district and finally in 1931 the Rhein-Wupper district . “Groß-Solingen” had around 140,000 inhabitants. In 1925 the population of the Solingen district was around 68 percent Protestant and around 22 percent Catholic; nine percent of the population were without religion. Solingen, like the other Bergisch towns and cities - Remscheid and Wuppertal - thus assumed a special position in the otherwise predominantly Catholic Rhine province .
On November 17, 1929, the first local elections took place after the local reorganization, according to which the "Left" made up of the SPD , KPD and KPO was able to win a two-thirds majority over the "Bürgerliche Wahlgemeinschaft", but the SPD only eight of 52 seats ( including ten women). On January 21, 1930 by these links majority the KPD member was Hermann Weber for mayor chosen by the city and would thus become the first Communist OB a German city; this process attracted considerable national and international attention. Since Weber was a communist, he was supposed to sign a declaration of loyalty to the state order presented by the SPD-led Prussian State Ministry , but he refused. As a result, his election was not confirmed, the election result was canceled and the Social Democrat Josef Brisch was appointed as acting head of administration; the SPD faction in the city council had speculated on this, as it did not have enough seats to get its own candidate through. Two months later, the State Department tried to get Brisch officially elected, but Weber won the majority again. This second election was also canceled and Brisch installed as Lord Mayor. This appointment was definitively confirmed by the Prussian state government in January 1931 and Brisch's term of office was set at twelve years. When he was inaugurated, the communists threw rotten eggs in protest.
In the Reichstag elections on September 14, 1930, the KPD in Solingen achieved over 40 percent , the NSDAP 16.3 percent, the bourgeois parties almost 15, the SPD around eleven and the Catholic Center Party 8.5 percent.
Due to a desperate budget situation, rising unemployment figures and a lack of support from the city council, Lord Mayor Brisch was only able to administer the city with the help of emergency ordinances and rigorous austerity measures, which largely undermined local self-government. Unemployment almost doubled between April 1, 1930 and April 1, 1931 from around 8,000 to around 15,000 unemployed, on April 1, 1932 it was already around 23,000; around 34,000 people from Solingen received welfare support. Homelessness increased by leaps and bounds. On the other hand, the cooperatively organized Spar- und Bauverein Solingen was able to realize its largest settlement project, the Böckerhof, in the first construction phase by 1933.
The city's indebtedness grew to 42 million Reichsmarks in 1932 , the budget for two years. Mayor Brisch came into conflict with his own party, the SPD, through authoritarian measures. The final break between Brisch and the SPD occurred because the mayor, over the heads of the city councilors, sold the building of the August-Dicke-Schule , which had been inaugurated in 1928 as a municipal secular elementary school, to the state for the construction of a lyceum due to financial difficulties . That was a bitter blow for the committed free school movement, and the SPD initiated a party expulsion process against Brisch, which was not completed by the National Socialists ' seizure of power .
Other events
On February 11, 1929, Solingen experienced a cold record of minus 32 degrees. On August 18th of the same year the "Combat Committee against the Wupper Contamination " demonstrated in Burg an der Wupper against the pollution of the river. On September 12, 1929, the Graf Zeppelin airship flew over the city early in the morning; Numerous people from Solingen watched the spectacle mostly in pajamas and dressing gowns on the streets and roofs. On November 2, 1929, the Engelbert monument was ceremoniously unveiled at Burg Castle . In 1930 the August-Dicke-School , which still exists today, was opened and the Schlagbaum traffic junction expanded with the construction of new rail systems for the tram.
The time of National Socialism
After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933 it came in late February / early March to first arrests of political opponents. A few weeks earlier there had been bloody clashes between Communists and National Socialists in Ohligs. The first so-called “ protective prisoners ” were imprisoned in the police prison in the town hall, the prison in the town hall and in the district court of Ohlig and later transferred to other prisons and to the Brauweiler concentration camp . In July 1933, in Wuppertal the Kemna concentration camp mistreatment, torture, and death set, where many suffered Solinger. The Bergische Arbeiterstimme of the KPD and the Solinger Volksblatt of the SPD were banned. The communist Emil Heyer died on April 9, 1934 after severe abuse in police custody in Düsseldorf; in March and May 1937 two other Solingen communists died while they were in custody.
In the Reichstag elections on March 5, 1933, the NSDAP received 39.2 percent, the KPD 35.9, the SPD 8.9 and the center 8.3 percent of the vote. Five days later, the SPD Mayor Brisch was arrested in his office. In the local elections on March 12, 1933, the NSDAP received only marginally more votes. At the first meeting of the city council, NSDAP district leader Helmut Otto was elected provisional OB with the votes of the NSDAP, with the SPD and the center abstaining; the KPD representatives had meanwhile almost all been arrested. At a meeting on May 1st it was decided to make Adolf Hitler an honorary citizen of the city. In a new vote in September, Otto was unanimously elected Lord Mayor, because the SPD representatives had also "left" in the meantime. In 1937 Otto moved to Düsseldorf as Lord Mayor, and Rudolf Brückmann was appointed as his successor .
In order to improve the unemployment statistics, people from Solingen were increasingly used for "emergency work"; the number of unemployed officially fell, but the number of welfare recipients remained roughly the same.
On September 10, 1933, a truck in which Bochum SA people were sitting had an accident in Solingen , eleven of them died and 25 were seriously injured. Hitler visited the injured men in the city hospitals; this was the only time that he visited Solingen. From 1935 onwards, around 1000 Solingen residents were subjected to forced sterilizations in this hospital .
From June 1934 to March 1935, more than 100 Solingen communists were charged with resisting the Nazi regime. In a total of three trials in 1934 and 1935, around 80 Solingen residents stood trial for “ high treason ”; the majority of them were sentenced to between one and five years in prison. In 1937 there were 17 further convictions of Solingen resistance fighters and in 1938 those of members of the Solingen KPO. On October 29, 1938, the Solingen communist Ernst Bertram allegedly died of tuberculosis in the Brandenburg concentration camp after he had been sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1935. (see also: List of Nazi Victims from Solingen )
Fate of the Solingen Jews and "Gypsies"
At the beginning of the Nazi era, there were 217 religious Jews in Solingen . During the November pogroms in 1938 , the synagogue , the Jewish cemetery chapel, as well as Jewish shops and apartments were destroyed. The Jewish journalist Max Leven was tortured in front of his family on November 10th by SS member Armin Ritter and the adjutant of the district leader Otto, Arthur Bolthausen , and then downright executed by Ritter with a pistol shot. On the same day, more than 30 Jews were taken into "protective custody", several of whom committed suicide in the weeks that followed. On February 25, 1939, the city administration charged the Jewish community 7,633.48 Reichsmarks for the demolition of the synagogue.
At the beginning of the war only 50 Jews were registered in Solingen. On October 26, 1941, the first of them were deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto , none of whom survived (see also list of Nazi victims from Solingen ); On July 19, 1942, another wave of deportations of Jews from the Bergisches Land to the Theresienstadt ghetto took place . In September 1944, six women and two men who lived in “ privileged mixed marriages ” were to be brought to Theresienstadt , but two of the women managed to escape. The others were liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945 . Adolf Eichmann, born in Solingen, was one of the co-organizers of the “ Final Solution to the Jewish Question ” .
The Solingen "Gypsies" lived in two urban barracks for the homeless since November 1936. On March 3, 1943, these barracks were cleared by the criminal police and 61 people, including 27 children, were deported to Auschwitz . At least 50 of them died there; only seven men saw the end of the war.
Other events
The open-air swimming pool in Aufderhöhe , also known as the “Red Sea”, built by working-class athletes , was taken over by Nazi organizations in 1933 and renamed “ Horst-Wessel-Bad ”. Because of the poor economic situation, the Solingen Steel Goods Week was held from July 29th to August 3rd, 1934 with conferences and three exhibitions in order to strengthen contact between manufacturers and customers. On May 19, 1935, the Klingenpfad , a hiking trail around Solingen, was inaugurated. In 1935 Christel Rupke from Solingen became German swimming champion. On October 1, 1935, the orchestras from Solingen and Remscheid merged to form the “Bergisches Landesorchester Solingen-Remscheid”. On May 21, 1936, Joseph Goebbels opened the new Reichsautobahn Cologne-Düsseldorf (today A3 ), which runs at the level of Ohligser Heide over Solingen's urban area.
In July 1937, the Solingen district of Rüden was named one of twelve “model villages” in the Reich. The so-called "triangle", which is still popularly known today, was given the name Graf-Wilhelm-Platz in October 1937 . Also in 1937, numerous municipal offices moved into the " WKC building ", the former administration building of the Patria WKC company in downtown Solingen. In the same year, the city received its first full-time city archive, which was initially also housed in the WKC building and was relocated to the Gräfrath Monastery in 1941 for reasons of space . On October 9, 1937, the cellist Ludwig Hoelscher was awarded the city's honorary prize. On July 25, 1938, the Solingen Ordinance for the protection of cutlery was issued from Solingen. In 1939 the first station built in Solingen in Solingen was closed in 1939, as it had lost its importance as a freight yard with the bankruptcy of the nearby Siegen-Solinger Gussstahl-Aktien-Verein . On June 1, 1939, the new Solingen Municipal Orchestra was founded and the previous collaboration with Remscheid was terminated. Werner Saam took over the musical direction .
Second World War
In the course of war preparations, Solingen became the location of a military registration office and a district command of the Wehrmacht in 1937 . In 1938 the construction of one of a total of twelve bunkers in the city began. The first blackout exercise with the Solingen population was carried out as early as 1934 . The preparations for war brought the Solingen economy a new boom: on June 30th, 30 unemployed were counted in the city. At the beginning of the war, forced laborers came to Solingen; on November 1, 1944, around 10,000 foreign workers were in the city. It is estimated that there were around 16,000 foreigners in Solingen during the war, more than half of whom came from the Soviet Union .
On June 5, 1940, the first bombs fell in the city in the course of the air raids on Solingen . The first Solingen war death caused by a British air raid occurred on October 12, 1940 in Merscheid. From March to June 1943 there were massive air raids, which mainly targeted the Ruhr area, but which also affected Solingen. In the largest air raids on November 4th and 5th, 1944, almost the entire city center was destroyed. On November 4th, 170 British airmen dropped their bombs over Solingen within 18 minutes. The next day, 165 British bombers again attacked the Solingen inner city area with high-explosive and incendiary bombs. In these attacks, around 1700 people from Solingen were killed as well as 150 forced laborers. On February 16, 1945, there was a targeted bomb attack on the armaments company Rautenbach . At the end of the Second World War in 1945, Solingen had over 5000 dead.
On April 15, the first American soldiers arrived in Oberburg, the higher part of Burg an der Wupper . The commander of the German troops in Unterburg had two bridges over the Wupper blown up and the roads between the two districts destroyed to prevent their advance. On April 14, occupied antifascists the town hall in Solingen-Wald and founded the Anti-Fascist People's Front Solingen , led by Paul Kaiser and Willi Dickhut that after the entry of the 94th US - Infantry - Division was entrusted with police duties. On April 17, US troops marched into Solingen without a fight. On May 22, 1945, the former Mayor Josef Brisch, who had been deposed by the National Socialists, was reinstated by the military government.
A total of around 5,000 Solingen residents died during the Second World War.
Other events
Especially in the first years of the Second World War, numerous cultural and entertainment events took place in Solingen. The Quartetto di Roma performed in Solingen on January 30, 1941 , the Italian cellist Enrico Mainardi on February 27 , the German pianist Erik Then-Bergh on March 9, and the chamber singer Peter Anders on April 20 . On July 31, 1941, Camilla Mayer's high wire troop performed in front of 15,000 spectators. In September, the Solingen theater was reopened after a two-year break and in the same month the Singing, Sounding Week was held with drama and music performances.
post war period
Just four days before the end of the war in Solingen, on April 13, 1945, 71 political prisoners, mostly from the prison in Remscheid-Lüttringhausen, were executed with pistol shots in the gorge on Wenzelnberg in Langenfeld , near the city limits of Solingen, as part of an end- stage crime and buried in a mass grave. On April 17th, on the day the US troops marched in, the mass grave was discovered after indications from the population. 40 known by name NSDAP - members had to dig 71 dead again, who were buried on May 1 before the town hall in Solingen-Ohligs. 3,000 people took part in the funeral service at the express request.
From mid-September 1945 the British military government allowed the formation of political parties. The SPD was constituted on September 22nd, the KPD on October 7th, the CDU on November 18th , and on December 4th several local groups, including one from Solingen, joined forces in Düsseldorf to form the FDP .
Due to the hot summer of 1947, there were considerable problems with the water supply for the population, as a result of which the remaining water in the Sengbach dam had to be rationed. The ruins of the city center were cleared away in 1950. The tram was replaced by a trolleybus from 1952 on the first section between Graf-Wilhelm-Platz and Ohligs station . In 1954 the German Blade Museum was inaugurated in the former Graefrath town hall; In 1991, however, it moved to the building of the former Gräfrath monastery. Also in 1954 the road world championships in cycling took place in Solingen, which were severely affected by the never-ending rain: the spectators sank into the mud, the grandstands threatened to collapse. In 1957 Solingen signed its first town twinning with the Dutch city of Gouda . In November 1959 the last Solingen tram drove to Burg; all tram lines had been converted to trolleybus traffic by then.
At the beginning of the 1960s, further town twinning followed with Chalon-sur-Saône in France (1960) and with Blyth in Great Britain (1962). From 1960 to 1963, the theater and concert hall was built on Konrad-Adenauer-Straße in the city center as a central cultural venue. The waste-to-energy plant was completed in 1969. With the opening of the 1st Zöppkesmarkt in 1969, a new tradition was established.
In 1973 the Klingenhalle, a swimming pool in downtown Solingen, was opened. Walter Scheel , who later became an honorary citizen of Solingen , became Federal President in 1974 . On January 1, 1975, the municipal reorganization in North Rhine-Westphalia took place. With the so-called Düsseldorf law , Burg an der Wupper and Höhrath were incorporated into the city of Solingen. Höhrath was previously part of the city of Wermelskirchen, while the city of Burg lost its independence. The Rhein-Wupper-Kreis was dissolved. The Solingen area now belonged, with the exception of the independent cities, to the Mettmann district in the north and west and to the Rheinisch-Bergisches Kreis in the south. In 1978 the Solingen Prize of Honor, the sharpest blade , was awarded for the first time . As a section of the formerly planned Autobahn 54 , the so-called Viehbachtalstraße was built along the Viehbach brook in 1979 and thus established a direct expressway connection from the turnpike to the Ohligser Heide; However, there were no connections to the rest of the trunk road network. The plans for Autobahn 54 were later discarded for cost reasons.
In 1986, the Hendrichs drop forge in Merscheid became the LVR-Industriemuseum (until 2008 Rheinisches Industriemuseum ), Solingen branch of the Rhineland Regional Association . Deutsche Bahn finally stopped freight traffic on the railway line between Vohwinkel and Gräfrath (northern section of the corkscrew railway) in 1989. In the 1980s, Solingen also formed a friendship between cities with Jinotega in Nicaragua (1986) and a city partnership with Ness Ziona in Israel (1986).
globalization
After German reunification, a town partnership was established with Aue in Saxony in 1990 ; 1991 followed a friendship with the Senegalese Thiès . In 1993, the overhead line network was extended to Solingen-Aufderhöhe, and two new electrically operated lines were created.
In a xenophobic arson attack in 1993, five Turkish women lost their lives and eight people were seriously injured. The assassination attempt in Solingen caused a stir throughout Germany; the following demonstrations ended in riots. The four perpetrators came from the Solingen neo-Nazi scene and were sentenced to long prison terms.
The remaining stretch of the corkscrew railway was finally closed in 1995. The route was re-used as a hiking trail. A first part of the route (Lagerstraße at the main station - Kasinostraße) was released in 2004 and the second part (Kasinostraße - Carl-Russ-Straße) in 2005. The Art Museum Baden was opened in 1996 in the former Gräfrath town hall. In 1997 the COBRA cultural center was opened as a new event location for culture in the Merscheid district of Solingen. In 1998 the city council decided to reduce the number of boroughs from seven to five. In 2000, the Clemens Galleries, Solingen's new center, opened as a new shopping center in the north of the pedestrian zone.
Solingen took part in the 2006 Regionale together with Wuppertal and Remscheid . The motto for the city was "Living and working close to the city with lots of green" . The Müngsten Bridge Park was opened and a transporter ferry was released. The disused central station was given a new role as a product design forum . Its function and, since December 2006, its name Solingen Hauptbahnhof, took over the Solingen-Ohligs station, which has always been of greater importance in terms of traffic volume. Instead of the old train station, the Solingen-Grünewald and Solingen-Mitte stops were built in the southern part of the city; the latter was awarded the Renault Traffic Future Award in November 2007 . On April 1, 2007, the Plagiarius Museum was opened in the west end of the freight hall of the former Solingen main station. Product plagiarism from all over the world is exhibited there; The Solingen cutlery industry has been dealing with the problem of product piracy for centuries.
As part of the Regionale 2006, Graf-Wilhelm-Platz and Neumarkt were also redesigned. The renovation was completed in September 2007; Since then, weekly markets have taken place there again after 30 years. With the opening of the new town hall in 2008, a central administration building was built in the city center for the first time. After the Karstadt department store on Neumarkt was closed in August 2008, the high-rise building that had dominated the cityscape was blown up on December 18, 2011. The new Hofgarten shopping center , which opened on October 24, 2013, was built in its place.
Individual evidence
- ↑ altenberger-dom.de
- ^ A b c Heinz Rosenthal: Solingen. History of a city . Walter Braun Publishing House. Duisburg 1973
- ↑ J. Beese, K. Dörken: 625 years of Solingen - a handout for the city anniversary. 1999.
- ^ Theodor Joseph Lacomblet, in: Document book for the history of the Lower Rhine or the Archbishopric of Cöln, certificate 754 , 1853, part 3, 1301–1400, p. [660] 648.
- ↑ a b c d e Volker Wünderich: Labor movement and self-administration. KPD and local politics in the Weimar Republic. With the example of Solingen . Wuppertal 1980, ISBN 3-87294-160-7 .
- ^ The First World War in Solingen at www.zeitspurensuche.de
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Ralf Rogge, Armin Schulte, Kerstin Warncke: Solingen. Big city years 1929-2004 . Edited by the Solingen City Archives and the Solinger Tageblatt . Wartberg-Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-8313-1459-4 .
- ↑ Hermann Weber on home.wtal.de
- ↑ 1931: J. Brisch appointed mayor on solinger-tageblatt.de v. June 5, 2009
- ↑ Solingen - Chronik 1949, July 21 ( Memento of the original from May 6, 2014 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. (PDF; 629 kB)
- ↑ British documentation of the bombing raids
- ↑ Timeline of Solingen's history on www.solingen.de ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Background information on the commemorative event on Wenzelnberg in 2010
- ^ Rolf Müller, Stadtgeschichte Langenfeld Rheinland , Verlag Stadtarchiv Langenfeld 1992.
- ^ Report of the Solinger Morgenpost on the opening, accessed on November 6, 2013
Remarks
- ↑ Especially in older literature, the Keldachgau is often cited as part of the old settlements of the Bergisches Land. However, this information is based on a scientifically outdated false assumption that the Keldachgau also included areas on the right bank of the Rhine.
literature
- Heinz Rosenthal : The beginnings of the labor movement in Solingen 1849-1868. Edited by the SPD sub-district of Solingen. Printing: Ernst u. Walter Ofen, Langenfeld (Rhld.) 1953.
- Heinz Rosenthal: Solingen. History of a city. 3 volumes. Braun, Duisburg.
- Volume 1: From the beginning to the end of the 17th century. 1969, DNB 457973358 .
- Volume 2: From 1700 to the middle of the 19th century. 1972, ISBN 3-87096-103-1 .
- Volume 3: From the middle of the 19th century to the end of the Second World War. 1975, ISBN 3-87096-126-0 .
- Ralf Rogge, Armin Schulte, Kerstin Warncke: Solingen - Big City Years 1929–2004. Wartberg, 2004, ISBN 3-8313-1459-4 .
- Wenke: My Solingen (www.solingen-internet.de)
