Grove (Siegen)
Hain is a former medieval suburb of the city of Siegen . Today Hain is a district of Siegen in the Siegen-Wittgenstein district in North Rhine-Westphalia .
history
The historic suburb of Hain was east to southeast outside of the medieval core of the city of Siegen in the valley of the river Weiß , between the Siegberg in the northwest and the Lindenberg in the southeast. He moved around the Hainer hut , which for the first time in the years 1444/1445 as a place of smelting of ore was mentioned. A map of the city of Siegen from 1736 shows both Hainer Hütte and Hainer Hammer on the banks of the Weiß . In 1798 there were 26 houses in Hain. In 1834 there were 182 people in the Hain district, in 1861 there were 180. In addition to the iron and steel works, there were two foundries in Hain . The Peipers foundry existed from 1882, and the Hainer Hütte was attached to it in 1916 . In 1927 it merged with the Gontermann foundry to form the Gontermann-Peipers company , which is now one of the largest employers in the area. The local railway Eisern-Siegener Eisenbahn with goods station Siegen-Hain secured the transport connections of the companies to the rail network of the German Reichsbahn and the Federal Railroad from 1901 to the 1970s .
The river Weiß flows through the area of the district from the northeast towards the Sieg . In Siegen, the street names Hainer Hütte , Hainer Weg and Am jähen Hain, east of the Siegen town center on the Siegberg, point to the historic suburb of Hain .
Hainer Stollen
The only remaining structure that can be assigned to the historic suburb of Hain is the Hainer tunnel (also known as the Alte Silberkaute ) under the Siegberg. From 1941 the system was expanded from disused mine tunnels into an air raid shelter and was supposed to offer protection from bombing by the Allied forces to up to 3,000 people on an area of 2,230 m².
The Hainer tunnel received special attention in 1945, at the end of World War II . In the bunker complex, accessible from the east and south-east slopes of the Siegberg via two entrances, the National Socialist rulers had stored numerous important public and private art treasures from the Rhineland and the Ruhr area valued at 3 to 4 billion gold marks around them in August and September 1944 To bring bombing to safety. For this purpose, the tunnel was equipped with a heating and ventilation system from the local company Gontermann & Peipers in order to protect the art treasures from moisture. In addition, this part, which was separated from the rest of the bunker system in the tunnel, was guarded by the police around the clock, and the condition of the art treasures was checked daily by a specially assigned art expert.
The art objects temporarily stored in the Hainer tunnel included the Aachen cathedral treasure including the Karlsschreins with the bones of Charlemagne , the cathedral treasures from Trier and Essen and the door wings of St. Maria in the Capitol in Cologne from the year 1065. Other art objects stored were original paintings by the baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens, who was born in Siegen, or came from other church treasures such as the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne and the Schnütgen Museum . In addition, 40 boxes of material from the Beethoven House in Bonn , including the original music manuscripts by Ludwig van Beethoven , were stored here. According to witnesses, a concert grand piano on which Beethoven played is said to have been housed in the Hainer tunnel. The art treasures in the tunnel were discovered by US troops in April 1945, placed under their own guard and partly returned to their homes in May 1945 thanks to the intercession of the then mayor of Siegen, Alfred Fissmer, who was dismissed on April 24, 1945 due to Nazi charges . Around 4,000 objects ended up in the newly established art goods collection point in Marburg in June at the endeavors of the American art protection officer Walker Hancock .
literature
- Joachim Stahl: Bunkers and galleries for air protection in the Siegen area . Wielandschmiede publishing house, Kreuztal 1980
Web links
- Article about the air raid shelter in the Alte Silberkaute near the Hainer Hütte on bunker-siegen.de (accessed on August 16, 2010)
Individual evidence
- ^ Lothar Irle: Siegerländer Ortverzeichnis , 1973 ( Memento of March 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Gontermann & Peipers GmbH employee newspaper, issue 20, 2007, p. 18 (PDF file, 7.0 MB.Accessed April 20, 2010)
- ^ Wilhelm Güthling (Ed.): 700 years of the castle and city of Siegen , p. 40 f .: Map of Siegens from the 18th century. Vorländer, Siegen 1959
- ^ Siegerländer Heimatkalender 1990, p. 6, 65th edition, Ed. Siegerländer Heimat- und Geschichtsverein eV, Verlag für Heimatliteratur
- ^ Genealogy.net: District of Siegen
- ↑ Ritter's geographic-statistical lexicon 1865, p. 617
- ^ Siegen city map from 1963, Vorländer Verlag, Siegen
- ↑ Steel: Bunkers and tunnels for air protection in the Siegen area , p. 50: Table of the shelters available in tunnels and tunnels in Siegen
- ↑ Steel: Bunkers and galleries for air defense in the Siegen area , p. 51
- ^ Report of the American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas. US Government Print. office, Washington 1946, pp. 126-130.
- ↑ Klaus Dietermann: Siegen under the swastika - an alternative city tour , p. 38 f .: Chapter The Hainer Stollen / Hainer Hut . Publishing house of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation Siegerland e. V., Siegen 1983
- ↑ Steel: Bunkers and galleries for air defense in the Siegen area , p. 53. With photos of US soldiers with the works of art seized
Coordinates: 50 ° 53 ' N , 8 ° 2' E