Leichlingen (Rhineland)

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coat of arms Germany map
Coat of arms of the city of Leichlingen (Rhineland)
Leichlingen (Rhineland)
Map of Germany, position of the city of Leichlingen (Rhineland) highlighted

Coordinates: 51 ° 6 '  N , 7 ° 1'  E

Basic data
State : North Rhine-Westphalia
Administrative region : Cologne
Circle : Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis
Height : 55 m above sea level NHN
Area : 37.26 km 2
Residents: 28,000 (Dec. 31, 2019)
Population density : 752 inhabitants per km 2
Postal code : 42799
Primaries : 02175, 02174 , 02171Template: Infobox municipality in Germany / maintenance / area code contains text
License plate : GL
Community key : 05 3 78 016
LOCODE : DE LLN
City structure: 13 districts

City administration address : 		Am Büscherhof 1
42799 Leichlingen (Rhineland)
Website : www.leichlingen.de
Mayor : Frank Steffes ( SPD )
Location of the city of Leichlingen (Rhineland) in the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis
Kreis Mettmann Köln Leverkusen Oberbergischer Kreis Remscheid Rhein-Erft-Kreis Rhein-Sieg-Kreis Solingen Wuppertal Bergisch Gladbach Burscheid Kürten Leichlingen (Rheinland) Odenthal Overath Rösrath Wermelskirchenmap
About this picture

Leichlingen (Rhineland) is a city in the Rheinisch-Bergisches Kreis and is located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia . Since July 8, 2013, it bears the official name affix Flower City .

geography

location

Leichlingen is located in the northern tip of the Rheinisch-Bergisches Kreis between the metropolitan areas of Cologne , Leverkusen and Düsseldorf with a flowing city border to Solingen on the edge of the Bergisches Land in the low mountain range. It is also called the flower city because of its orchards .

The urban area rises from west to east to altitudes between 54 and 250 meters above sea ​​level . In the north of the city the natural and political border is the Wupper . The Murbach and Diepentaler dams also form the southern boundary of the urban area. The city is bounded to the west and east by the A3 / E 35 and A1 / E 37 motorways .

The largest expansion of the urban area in east-west direction is about 11½ kilometers. In the north-south direction, the area is considerably narrower and is a maximum of about 4.6 kilometers.

The lowest point in Leichlingen is about 50 meters above sea ​​level on the railway bridge on the Cologne – Düsseldorf line on the Wupperschleife.

Neighboring communities

In the north Leichlingen borders on Solingen , in the southeast on Burscheid , in the south on Leverkusen and in the west on Langenfeld .

history

General

There is evidence that the history of Leichlingen begins in AD 973, when Archbishop Gero of Cologne ordered a monastery to be built in "Leigelingon", but it was never built. The place reappears as a "corpse" in a document in 1019, when Archbishop Heribert of Cologne donated the church and a yard to Leichlingen to the Deutz monastery. As a result of this donation and the associated benefices , the Deutz Monastery has acquired extensive property in the Leichlingen district since the 11th century. One of these benefices was the "Ratherhof", which was allowed to collect wood in predetermined forest districts of the municipality. In 1303, an amicable settlement was agreed between the abbey and the community with the local lower nobility for this authorization.

However, the Counts of Berg as Vogt of Deutz Abbey had also had property rights in this area since the Middle Ages. For example, in 1376, Count Wilhelm von Berg approved the Deutz Abbey to buy the “Hof zu dem Busche” in the parish of Leichlingen from the owner “Franken van me Rine”.

The center of the parish of Leichlingen was in the area between today's Protestant church and the former main courtyard of the monastery, the "Büscherhof". On the right and, above all, on the left of the Wupper, 21 smaller estates belonged to the Deutz Monastery until 1803 , some knights and manors such as Haus Vorst , Nesselrath , Leysiefen , Diepental, Eicherhof and others as well as large forest holdings in Oberleichlingen. The residents practiced agriculture and fishing.

Leichlingen was already a church in the 12th century. In the 14th century the first grinding shops were built on the Wupper and in the side valleys, followed by oil, grain and fulling mills. They were the forerunners of today's metal and textile industries. For centuries grinders, weavers, bleachers, dyers and tanners can be traced. Nevertheless, until the 19th century, the inhabitants lived mainly from agriculture and also cultivated fruit.

Leichlingen was granted city rights in 1856 and the actual development of Leichlingen into the city as it is known today began.

The construction of the Cologne – Wuppertal railway line created the traffic conditions for the first industrial settlements. For a long time, the largest local employer was the Turkish red dye works on the Wupper (“Am Hammer”) . This was moved from Elberfeld (now in Wuppertal ) to Leichlingen in 1865 under the company A. Weyermann-Söhne . The company was founded by Abraham Weyermann in Elberfeld and was now under the direction of the Kommerzienrat Rudolf Weyermann, who was also President of the Steamship Company for the Lower and Middle Rhine in Düsseldorf and a member of the Rhenish Provincial Parliament . Of the three Weyermann villas , one villa housed the town hall for a long time, another villa a hotel. The town hall is now located in this house. The dye works was sold to the Opladen dye works owner Albert Römer in 1890 . The dye works existed until it was demolished in the 1960s. Today the school center stands at this point.

At about the same time as A. Weyermann-Söhne , the Simons & Frowein weaving mill came to Leichlingen. The company was taken over by Müller-Wipperfürth AG in the 1950s and existed until 1978. It was located in Brückerfeld, where there is now a square with retail shops. Another textile company was the carpet weaving mill Otto Geller KG , whose beginnings stretched back to the 1850s, when Otto Geller's father was manufacturing hand-woven products in a house on Mittelstrasse.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Leichlingen made a name for itself as the “city of young aviation”. The "Rheinisch-Westfälische Motorluftschiff-Gesellschaft eV Elberfeld" had built an airship hangar in the Balken district in 1909, from which the Elberfeld aviation pioneer Oskar Erbslöh took test drives over Leichlingen and the surrounding area with his steering balloon. However, the Leichlingen era as "Friedrichshafen des Bergisches Land" ended again in 1910 when the airship "Erbslöh" crashed in the thick of fog on July 13 of that year and all five crew members perished.

As a company in the iron processing industry, the Walzstahlbetrieb Rosenkaimer was founded in 1896 and the Kronenberg company, which still exists today near the Leichlinger train station in 1900, now under the Kronenberg Profil GmbH company. In 1920 the Frese metal works was added.

The sanatorium, today the Roderbirken Rehabilitation Clinic, goes back to a foundation of the Elberfeld factory owner and secret councilor Wilhelm Boeddinghaus. This was Leichlingen through its extensive property in Leichlingen, including Eicherhof Castle.

The fifth day of Rheinisch-Bergische history was celebrated in Leichlingen in April 2012.

City name

There is no clear knowledge about the origin and meaning of the place name “Leichlingen” (mostly called “Leigelingon” and “Lecheling” in medieval and early modern sources). The following interpretations are known:

Leichlingen used to be a fishing village, from which the city name "Leichlingen" results, which is mainly divided into two parts:

  • Leich- ( spawn ): Leich (spawn) is called fish eggs.
  • -lingen (river loop): here: river loops (bows)

Therefore, Leichlingen could also be translated as: "Place with fish eggs in the river bend". Over the years the spelling of the city name has been changed several times, one of these names was "Fischerdorf".

On the other hand, Franz Wilhelm Oligschläger interpreted the name around 1850 as “Siedlung am Bächlein” - assuming that the Old High German “lech” or “lechan” (= small flowing body of water) was the inspiration here. To call the Wupper a “brook” is certainly absurd.

What is more interesting, however, is the assumption by J. Leithäuser (1901), according to which the name Leichlingen is to be viewed as a ligature of the Middle Low German words “leg” = low and “lingon” or “linge” = narrow strip of land and thus to be interpreted as a low-lying narrow strip of land . In any case, the geographical location of the village in the Wupper valley speaks for this .

All in all, we are dealing with purely linguistic assumptions and views. In 1931 J. Bernhardt therefore preferred to forego an interpretation than to make a false explanation.

Incorporations

As part of the North Rhine-Westphalian regional reform , most of the municipality of Witzhelden and small areas of Langenfeld and Opladen were incorporated on January 1, 1975 .

Population development

year Residents
1990 25,996
2000 26,796
2003 27,319
2004 27,524
2005 27,536
2006 27,542
2007 27,480
2012 27,437
2013 27,646

(according to the State Office for Data Processing and Statistics)

Population structure

number Percentage
Female 15,160 53
male 13,963 47
Total foreigners: 1,601 5

age structure

Age group Residents Percentage
00-5 0years 1,450 5
06-15 years 3,160 11
16-20 years 1,596 6th
21–45 years 9,447 32
46–64 years 7.097 24
from 65 years 6,373 22nd

Marital status

marital status number Percentage
married 14,439 50
single 10,639 36
widowed 2,185 8th
divorced 1,860 6th

religion

Various denominations are represented in Leichlingen:

Denomination statistics

According to the 2011 census , 34.8% of the residents were Protestant , 30.2% Roman Catholic and 35% were non-denominational , belonged to another religious community or did not provide any information.

politics

City council

Allocation of seats in the
Leichlingen City Council 2020
       
A total of 32 seats
  • Left : 1
  • SPD : 12
  • Greens : 3
  • Business Administration : 2
  • FW-UG : 2
  • CDU : 11
  • FDP : 1

The 32 seats of the city council are distributed as follows:

  • SPD 12 seats
  • CDU 11 seats
  • FW-UWG 2 seats
  • FDP 1 seat
  • Citizen List Witzhelden-Leichlingen (BWL) 2 seats
  • GREEN 3 seats
  • LEFT 1 seat

(As of June 5, 2014)

mayor

Mayor: Frank Steffes (SPD)

Children's and youth parliament

Since the summer of 2000 there has been a children and youth parliament (JuPa) in Leichlingen. The 9 to 20 year olds meet at least two to three times a year. The JuPa is re-elected every year after the summer holidays.

coat of arms

The coat of arms shows the blue-crowned, blue-armored and double-tailed red Bergisch lion in the shield, which is divided by silver and blue, and a silver fish with red fins in the lower field. The fish, symbol of the former wealth of fish in the Wupper, is taken from the seal of the lay judges of Leichlingen in 1636, there the lion and fish are heraldically left, the lion without a crown, one-tailed.

Town twinning

Leichlingen maintains and maintains city partnerships with three cities in other European countries:

As a special feature, each of the Wupper bridges in Leichlingen is dedicated to a twin town and bears their name. There are also several monuments dedicated to the twin cities in the city center. Every year there are trips to the twin cities.

Culture and sights

Buildings

Eicherhof Palace, March 2012

The following buildings are particularly worth seeing in Leichlingen:

In the Witzhelden district there are two remarkable Deutsche Telekom transmitter systems in the immediate vicinity, namely:

  • a 134 meter high reinforced concrete telecommunications tower at 51 ° 7'31 "north latitude and 7 ° 6'36" east longitude
  • a 229 meter high transmission mast for broadcasting television programs at 51 ° 7'7 "north latitude and 7 ° 5'59" east longitude. This was blown up on November 7, 2017 at around 1.30 p.m. because it was no longer in use.

Regular events

Leichlinger Obstmarkt in autumn 2015

The place is also known in the wider area for the Leichling fruit market, which takes place annually in October. Just as popular is the harvest festival in Witzhelden that takes place on the same weekend , the highlight of which is a pageant on Sunday. In addition, the Leichlinger Stadtfest , which takes place every year on the third weekend in September, has gained national fame.

sport and freetime

There is a lively club system in Leichlingen, especially in the areas of carnival, sport and community. The LTV accommodates here with its many sub-departments - z. B. Basketball, athletics, tennis - most members. There is even a current European champion in 2015 in fistball. Football is currently served by VfL Witzhelden and SC Leichlingen. Other associations deal with town twinning or the preservation of culture and customs. There is also a DLRG local group in Leichlingen , which has the waters of the Wupper as a guard area and carries out its swimming training in the local flower bath.

Economy and Infrastructure

traffic

Leichlingen train station

railroad

Leichlingen is on the Gruiten – Cologne-Mülheim railway line and is served every half hour by the regional train RB 48 . From the beginning of 2011 to December 2013, the Leichlinger Bahnhof was rebuilt by Deutsche Bahn AG .

Transportation

There are regular bus connections to Leverkusen (line 255, final stop Chempark ), Leichlingen-Witzhelden (line 255 in the opposite direction), Cologne (line 250, final stop central station), Solingen-Mitte (line 250 in the opposite direction), Solingen-Ohligs ( VRR line 694 , Final stop Ohligs, bus station / Solingen main station - in the opposite direction the line ends in Leichlingen), Langenfeld (line 254, last stop Langenfeld, S-Bahn - in the opposite direction the line ends in Leichlingen) and Leverkusen-Hitdorf via Bergisch Neukirchen, Opladen (line 253 , Final stop Concordiastraße - in the opposite direction the line ends in Leichlingen).

Leichlingen belongs to the tariff area of ​​the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Sieg (VRS).

Road traffic

Leichlingen is close to the Autobahn 3 in the direction of Oberhausen - Frankfurt am Main and therefore has good transport links to the Ruhr area and other metropolitan areas as well as Cologne . Leichlingen also has a junction with the A 542 feeder motorway to the A 59 , via which the cities of Düsseldorf and Cologne can be reached.

On January 1, 2018, 20,912 motor vehicles were registered in Leichlingen, of which 17,744 were cars.

air traffic

The international airports Cologne / Bonn and Düsseldorf can be reached via the motorway within 30 to 45 minutes.

education

At the end of the 1960s, the Leichlingen school center was built on the former blacksmith's hammer on the Wupper, with the municipal grammar school, secondary school and secondary school in adjacent buildings. In the 2015/16 school year, the Leichlingen secondary school opened as part of the urban school development process. In the 2007/08 school year, the municipal high school exceeded the number of 1,000 students.

There are also five primary schools: Uferstraße, Kath. Primary school Kirchstraße, Am Büscherhof, Bennert, as well as the primary school Flamerscheid, which is located in Witzhelden.

Personalities

(in chronological order)

Born in Leichlingen

Associated with corpses

literature

Web links

Commons : Leichlingen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Leichlingen  - Explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Population of the municipalities of North Rhine-Westphalia on December 31, 2019 - update of the population based on the census of May 9, 2011. State Office for Information and Technology North Rhine-Westphalia (IT.NRW), accessed on June 17, 2020 .  ( Help on this )
  2. ↑ Theodor Joseph Lacomblet: Document book for the history of the Lower Rhine and the Archbishopric of Cöln, document 29. 1853, part 3, 1301–1400, p. [43] 23.
  3. ^ Theodor Joseph Lacomblet: Document book for the history of the Lower Rhine and the Archbishopric of Cöln, document 757. 1853, part 3, 1301–1400, p. [664] 652.
  4. ↑ Hans-Werner Hinrichs: Leichlingen, a reading book. Self-published by the city of Leichlingen, 1978.
  5. ^ 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. 298 .
  6. ↑ Population figures according to the State Office for Data Processing and Statistics ( Memento from September 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) at www.it.nrw.de
  7. ^ Leichlingen (Rhineland), Stadt Religion , 2011 census
  8. ↑ Official final result of the 2014 council election
  9. ↑ Congratulations on the fistballers website
  10. ↑ Leverkusener Anzeiger from December 10, 2013: The station will open on Sunday, accessed on April 5, 2015
  11. ↑ Mobility in North Rhine-Westphalia - data and facts 2018/2019. In: Road traffic. Ministry of Building, Housing, Urban Development and Transport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, p. 66 (PDF; 14.2 MB, holdings on January 1, 2018).
  12. ↑ www.gymnasium-leichlingen.de