Fürst Leopold settlement

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Fountain square

The Fürst Leopold settlement is a colliery colony in Dorsten - Hervest .

history

The eponymous mine, Fürst Leopold , was founded in 1910 and mined coal from 1913. The previously rural Hervest with its almost 1000 inhabitants did not offer enough workers for the mining industry, so the union wanted to remedy this with special living space. The competition announced for such a building project and won by the architect Heinrich Wilhelm Eggeling was exceptional.

In 1912, construction work began between Halterner Strasse and Lippe, directly opposite the mine site. Due to the war, the settlement could not be completed until 1920, a total of 720 apartments were built in mostly one and a half story houses. Approaches from the garden city movement were used for the design, the houses are arranged in a projecting and recessed manner, the roof areas vary with dormers and transverse gables, many open spaces were created at the street indentations, avenues and other plantings loosened up the picture. Similar to other colliery settlements, each house got its own entrance and in the rear area a large garden with stables for self-sufficiency.

The center of the settlement is the Brunnenhof, a spacious square with closed rows of buildings on three sides, in which there were both apartments and shops. Social life took place here as a central marketplace with arcades, open spaces with tree plantings and a fountain in the middle. The rows of buildings are interrupted by a clock tower in the southern center and by hanging passages on the two side wings; today there are passages here.

From 1918 to 1930, a Catholic area with the Josefskirche and Josefsschule was built in the east of the settlement , while the Augusta School and Kreuzkirche were built in the Protestant western part. There were also other smaller residential developments. In 1920 Hervest had a population of over 6,000.

In 1943 Hervest was incorporated into Dorsten with the colliery settlement. During the war, the inhabitants found shelter in the tunnels of the mine dumps.

From 1983 to 1984 new apartments were added in Freiheitstrasse, Schollbrockstrasse and Grothuesstrasse. This was made necessary by the relocation of miners from other, now closed mines.

In 1987 part of the settlement was placed under monument protection. The owner Hoesch-Wohnungsgesellschaft modernized the apartments while maintaining the original appearance. The sculpture by the artist Reinhold Schröder was set up on the market square to complete it, it shows the pets of the miners' families: goat, pig, goose, pigeons.

Most of the apartments have now been privatized and the colliery colony has merged with the two neighboring areas of the village of Hervest and the old town of Dorsten. It has been part of the Route of Industrial Culture since 2004 . The retail trade is now concentrated on the Harsewinkel, on Brunnenplatz is the "Dorsterner Galerie" with the Tisa from the Schulenburg Foundation . The Joseph School was torn down.

  • Fountain sculpture

  • City block

  • House entrance

  • SiedlungLeopold Dorsten2012 13.jpg

Web links

Commons : Siedlung Fürst Leopold  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 40 ′ 11.4 "  N , 6 ° 59 ′ 11.5"  E