Riehler Heimstätten
The Riehler Heimstätten (today a facility of the Sozial-Betriebe-Köln GmbH) is the largest senior citizens' center and home for people with disabilities in Cologne . The system was built from 1927 on the initiative of the head of the Cologne welfare office, Hertha Kraus , on the site of the former pioneer barracks on Boltensternstrasse in Cologne-Riehl . After its completion in 1934, the Riehler Heimstätten was the largest such facility in the German Empire .
prehistory
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The Mülheimer Heide was used for military purposes by the Prussian army since 1818 . From 1890 temporary barracks were built here to accommodate the soldiers. In the years 1906 to 1908, a larger barracks for a total of 3,000 soldiers was finally built on Boltensternstrasse outside the inner fortification ring on the site of the former parade ground Mülheimer Heide. For this purpose, due to the proximity of the area to the Rhine , the area first had to be filled with Rhine gravel by around 2 meters in order to ensure a certain protection against frequently occurring Rhine floods.
On October 1, 1908, the 2nd Westphalian Pioneer Battalion 24, which was set up on April 1 of the same year, was relocated to the newly built barracks, in the buildings Boltensternstrasse 2 to 4. On April 1, 1909, the 1st Westphalian Pioneer Battalion 7 was also stationed in the barracks in Boltensternstrasse 6 to 8. In the years 1910 to 1912, the barracks to accommodate the 65th Infantry Regiment was expanded to include buildings at Boltensternstrasse 10 to 16. Over the next two years, buildings for a machine gun company and two searchlight companies followed. A large radio station was also set up on the barracks site.
The residential and service buildings were arranged around a large parade ground; the pioneers were trained in the neighboring Rheinauen and on the Rhine . At the beginning of the First World War , the Cologne battalions were immediately relocated to the Western Front in Belgium .
After the armistice in November 1918, the battalions were initially relocated to Cologne and finally demobilized in December 1918 . After the end of the war, the barracks were used by the British occupation soldiers until January 31, 1926. Since the Rhineland was demilitarized according to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty , the barracks were empty from February 1926.
Foundation of the Riehler Heimstätten
In 1923, Mayor Konrad Adenauer brought Hertha Kraus to Cologne as head of the welfare office. After a trip to America, she campaigned for the barracks to be converted into an "old town". Above all, this facility was intended to relieve the outdated and overcrowded Cologne Invalidenheim in Quentelstrasse. Two weeks after the withdrawal of the British occupation army, on February 15, 1926, the Cologne city council decided to build a facility with a residential complex, nursing homes and a supply area for people with physical and mental disabilities in the area of the barracks according to the plans of Hertha Kraus.
The founding of the Wohnstifts for older Cologne citizens was one of the measures taken by the city council to reduce old-age poverty and acute housing shortages, which u. a. caused by the longstanding British occupation of the Rhineland . For the elderly, who usually lived in larger apartments, the opportunity was created to move into the age-appropriate residential complex. When planning the Riehler Heimstätten, Hertha Kraus also campaigned for more humane living conditions in old age - especially for less well-off citizens. As a rule, the socially disadvantaged elderly and infirm lived in large mass dormitories in the so-called infirmary at this time.
The third department of the facility was the so-called supply area. Citizens with physical and psychological impairments who could not look after themselves but did not need care could live and work in the facilities, depending on their skills in the facilities' farms and workshops. The buildings of the Riehler Heimstätten were spread over a park-like area of 25 hectares, which stretched from Boltensternstrasse to the Rhine meadows. The former parade ground has been redesigned into a large meadow surrounded by trees.
The first section was inaugurated in November 1927, with nine buildings, a district heating center, a clubhouse and a laundry. 466 elderly citizens could be accommodated in the residential monastery. As early as 1927, 1145 further urgency applications had been submitted for allocation to the small apartments of the residential monastery. The care of the residents was taken over by the Vincentians , who were to carry out the task in the Riehler Heimstätten until December 31, 1974. On August 27, 1928, 419 people moved from the urban Invalidenheim Quendelstraße to the care home of the Riehler Heimstätten. The building on Quendelstrasse, built in 1883, was completely overcrowded and dilapidated at the end of the 1920s.
In March 1929, a prayer room was set up in the former infantry regiment canteen for the Protestant Christians in the Riehler Heimstätten. In order to be able to offer the residents of the facility a cultural variety, a central music place for open concerts was set up, which was inaugurated on June 26, 1932.
The expansion of the Riehler Heimstätten was completed in 1934. The facilities could accommodate 800 people each in the residential complex and in the nursing home and 550 people in the supply area. The complex was supplemented by gardens and pastures for self-sufficiency. When it was completed, the facility was the largest such facility for the care of elderly and disabled people in the German Reich.
The Riehler Heilstätten under National Socialism
After the National Socialists came to power , both Hertha Kraus and the head of the Riehler Heimstätten, Bernhard Weltring, were deposed. Numerous residents of the supply area of the Riehler Heimstätten became victims of the National Socialist "racial hygiene" . From July 1942 the residents of the retirement home were transferred to the psychiatric hospitals in the area, u. a. relocated to Düren , Kloster Hoven and Herbesthal , whose residents were murdered beforehand. In the course of the Second World War , the conditions in the old people's and infirmary homes of the German Reich deteriorated .
The Riehler Heimstätten were bombed several times during the Second World War - due to its proximity to the strategically important Mülheim Bridge . On September 27, 1944, the former P2 nursing home, which was used as a makeshift hospital after the residents had been evacuated , was hit by bombs . 90 people were killed in this bomb attack. During the air raid on Mülheim Bridge on October 14, 1944, numerous buildings in the Riehler Heimstätten were badly damaged or destroyed. In the same month the area west of the Rhine was declared a combat zone and the civilian population had to be evacuated in front of the advancing front. The Riehl homesteads were gradually evacuated during the last two years of the war and the residents were relocated to Silesia , Thuringia , Dassel and the former Altenberg monastery . The Vincentian Sisters accompanied the residents of the homesteads during the evacuation.
At the end of the Second World War, almost half of the buildings and the infrastructure were destroyed and the water, electricity and heat supply collapsed. Numerous apartments were looted and devastated. After the end of the war, forced laborers were housed in one building (today House B) who were waiting for their return to their homeland, other houses were occupied by bombed out people.
reconstruction
After the end of the war, the former director of the facility, Bernhard Weltring, was commissioned to organize the construction of the destroyed infrastructure and residential buildings. Partially destroyed houses, such as houses G, K, O and V1, were quickly rebuilt. In July 1945, 200 people could be accommodated again in the Riehler Heimstätten. The war-torn buildings V6, P2, the church and the sister house were replaced by new buildings. Gradually, the occupancy of the rooms could be reduced from six people to four. In 1948 Hermann Roggendorf took over the administration of the Riehler Heimstätten; in 1952 he was appointed director. In the same year, the Riehler Heimstätten could be connected to the district heating network again after the living rooms had to be heated with individual wood stoves since the end of the war .
The newly built St. Anna Church according to plans by Hans Hansen was consecrated on May 27, 1959; a year later, in July 1960, the new church bells were consecrated. The new organ for the church was manufactured by the Mülheim company Willi Peter and inaugurated in September 1961.
In October 1963, the Federal Republic of Germany waived its claims to the barracks town of Riehl and the area came into the possession of the city of Cologne. After the takeover, numerous renovation, conversion and new building measures were started. As one of the first measures, the barracks wall was laid down in order to do justice to the character of a senior citizens' housing complex.
In the course of the construction of a new clubhouse, a branch of the city library was opened, which was opened on November 2, 1964 and which had specialized in particular in the lending of large print books . In 1965, the city of Cologne presented a target plan study for the development of the Riehler Heimstätten, which particularly took into account modern requirements for the care, support and living conditions of older people. Two modern arcade houses (houses C and D), which replaced the older buildings of the residential monastery, were part of the implementation of the plan. On July 10, 1969, the Cologne City Council decided to build a nursing home for the elderly with a medical and physiotherapeutic department and an exercise pool . On September 27, 1976, the new senior hospital with 240 places was opened.
In 1969, the first home advisory board in the Federal Republic of Germany was set up in the Riehler Heimstätten, in which the residents were given a say in the planning and organization of home life. On August 11, 1994, Silberdistel-TV went on air as the first television station in a senior citizens' residence . The self-produced programs offer residents information from the facility and reports on Cologne's history. Today the program can be received around the clock via cable in the facility.
In 1985 the target plan for the development of the entire system was updated. In particular, the old, ailing buildings were converted into modern, age-appropriate apartment buildings. In the 1980s, the high-rise buildings R and S as well as House F were built.
Todays use
After the senior and handicapped areas were separated from each other in the facility in Riehl in 1994, one year later the Riehl facility was incorporated into the newly established centers for senior citizens and the disabled in the city of Cologne (SBK). The city's senior citizens' and disabled facilities have been combined in the SBK. In 1996, the Alzheimer Forum in Cologne was founded in the Riehler Seniors Center as a counseling center for those affected and their families.
On January 1, 2006, the centers for the elderly and the disabled in the city of Cologne were converted into the non-profit Sozial-Betriebe-Köln GmbH. In the past five years, six new houses have been built on the site - preferably for people with dementia and people with restricted mobility or seriously ill people. Today 1300 elderly and disabled people can be accommodated and cared for in the facility in Riehl. In addition to the living and therapy facilities, there are two cafés, a ballroom, a library, a conference center, the Internet café Später Mausklick and a grocery store that is run independently. The therapeutic offer is supplemented by the senior fitness studio KölnVital . Various cultural and service offers can be found on the site, which can also be used by older citizens of Cologne who do not live in the facility. These include the mobile social service , the Cologne-based R (h) beaded , the voluntary assistance Op Jöck and SenioAss , who support older people in their home environment and with everyday errands as well as their caring relatives.
Park
The residential complex is located on a 25-hectare park with partly old trees, most of which are grouped around the meadow that was laid out on the former parade ground. A plane tree has been designated as a natural monument by the city of Cologne (NDI 503.01).
Some trees in the park serve as sleeping trees for the Little Alexander Parakeet , of which a large number of the approximately 3,000 Cologne specimens spend the night here. Every evening the birds fly up to 15 km to their sleeping trees in Riehl. There is also a larger population of wild rabbits in the park , who find good living conditions here.
Plane tree (natural monument)
Meadow on the former parade ground
Rabbits in the big meadow
Plucked ring-necked parakeet's sleeping tree
literature
- SBK Sozial-Betriebe-Köln non-profit GmbH (publisher): 85 years of Sozial-Betriebe-Köln 1927–2012. Cologne 2012 , 62 pp.
- Joachim Brokmeier: Cologne-Riehl - a district with a long tradition. Sutton, 2016, ISBN 978-3-86680-283-4 , pp. 46-51.
- The new pioneer barracks on the Mülheimer Heide near Cologne on the Rhine . In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung . Year 1913, No. 94 (November 26, 1913), urn : nbn: de: kobv: 109-opus-47495 , pp. 638–643. (With illustrations, floor plans and plans)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Joachim Brokmeier: Cologne-Riehl - a district with a long tradition . Sutton, 2016, ISBN 978-3-86680-283-4 , pp. 46-51 .
- ↑ Sabine Hering, Berteke Waaldijk: The history of social work in Europe (1900-1960): Important pioneers and their influence on the development of international organizations . Leske & Budrich, Opladen 2002, ISBN 3-8100-3633-1 , p. 54 .
- ↑ SBK Sozial-Betriebe-Köln non-profit GmbH (Ed.): 85 Years of Sozial-Betriebe-Köln 1927–2012 . Self-published by SBK, Cologne 2012, p. 10 .
- ↑ a b Joachim Brokmeier: 1945 to 1966 - Reconstruction and beginning redesign - From six to four-bed rooms. In: Echo - The magazine of the social enterprises Cologne. SBK, June 1, 2017, accessed July 24, 2017 .
- ↑ Joachim Brokmeier: Riehl yesterday. Retrieved July 26, 2017 .
- ↑ Joachim Brokmeier: 1945 to 1966 - reconstruction and beginning redesign. From six to four-bed rooms. In: Echo. SBK, 2017, accessed July 26, 2017 .
- ↑ SBK Sozial-Betriebe-Köln non-profit GmbH (Ed.): 85 Years of Sozial-Betriebe-Köln 1927–2012 . Cologne 2012, p. 36 f .
- ↑ Natural monuments and protected landscape components - Natural monuments Riehl. City of Cologne, accessed on July 26, 2017 .
- ↑ A. Kahl-Dunkel & R. Werner: Winter distribution of Ring-necked Parakeet Psittacula krameri n Cologne . In: Vogelwelt . tape 123 , 2002, pp. 17-20 .
Web links
- sbk.de: Homepage
- Silberdistel TV: The social enterprise Cologne
- Silberdistel TV: The five new nursing homes in the Riehl senior center
Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′ 56.2 " N , 6 ° 58 ′ 53" E