Hessische Strasse settlement

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Hessische Strasse 2012. Typical row of houses
Hessische Strasse 2012. Green connecting routes
Hessische Straße 2012. Tenant council office sign
Hessische Strasse 2012. Showcase office tenants' council

The settlement Hessian street in Dortmund district Eving was from 1949 to 1951 by the Federal Republic of Germany, represented by the state Finanzbauamt Dortmund , for " homeless foreigners built". Because of the coincidence with the Korean War , it is colloquially also called the Korean settlement or Little Korea. Various sources cite funding from the Marshall Plan , the federal budget and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees , but this does not have to be a contradiction in terms. After extensive modernization in the 1980s, 274 apartments are located in the structurally identical 28 buildings with 56 entrances. When the Ministry of Finance, represented by the Hagen Federal Property Office and the Münster Regional Finance Directorate, put the estate up for sale in 1988, the residents and their supporting associations and politicians succeeded in addressing the special moral obligation and the still lively Polish-Catholic culture the purchase by the state-owned Ruhr-Lippe housing company , now LEG NRW . The apartments have been freely rented since 1961. Today, family members with a German passport and Germans without the special historical background also live there. In 2001, the 50th anniversary of its existence, 60 percent of the 370 residents were of Polish descent.

background

The term “homeless foreigners” is the official adaptation of the term displaced persons (DPs) created by the Western Allies before the end of the Second World War . This was the name given to people who had been deported to the German Reich but were unable to return to their mainly Eastern and Southeastern European home countries after the end of the war and were housed in DP camps . According to calculations by the Western Allies, there were almost nine million DPs in the territory of the German Reich. By 1949, the priority repatriation to the countries of origin had largely been completed and it had been clarified that around 411,000 people were to be regarded as non-repatriable for various reasons. The initially about 900 "homeless foreigners" in Eving were Estonians, Latvians, Yugoslavs, but mostly Poles. According to Allied decrees, the German authorities had to take care of this clientele without restriction, so that after the dissolution of the DP camps, the Federal Republic of Germany took full responsibility for the people as “homeless foreigners”. (For the German Democratic Republic (GDR), this topic did not officially exist.) In 1951, the Federal Government passed the Law on the Legal Status of Homeless Foreigners in the Federal Territory (HAuslG), which precisely regulated social policy. A special social welfare office for foreigners took care of this group of people. Housing construction and mental support were the priority. The North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs was responsible for the area of ​​displaced persons, refugees and resettlers. The state social welfare process is documented in the files of the State Archive of North Rhine-Westphalia, which can be viewed and also as copies ordered online.

Settlement development

From today's perspective, it is difficult to assess whether the living conditions were appropriate at the time the settlement was built. Sources complain about a low standard of living that is not appropriate for the mental stress of the residents: “[...] Nevertheless, one tried not to let the aids turn out too luxurious. The living situation of these people remained rather unsatisfactory. They found themselves in settlements whose houses had been rushed up. G (h) ettos and slums quickly emerged, with the inhabitants of which the German population wanted to have as little as possible to do with. ”A contemporary or today's situation was only achieved in 1979 and 1983 through extensive modernization, including the installation of bathrooms, insulating glazing and heat-insulating external facades, manufactured. However, old buildings and post-war social buildings were usually only modernized in the 1980s.

Cultural maintenance

The most important chapter in the history of the settlement is the formation and cultivation of a Catholic-Polish culture, which, although it was based on the Polish language as the everyday language, did not mean any exclusion because the Ruhr Poles were already familiar as industrial immigrants in the region. The Polish Catholic Mission was headquartered in Eving until 2004. A German-Polish-Catholic center, dance, costume and singing groups and advice centers still partly exist. Family, neighborly and cross-generational cohesion are not a unique selling point, but they are still formative everyday experiences.

Tenant participation

As a result of the collapse of the union's own housing company Neue Heimat in 1988, a housing policy initiative was created for the contractually secured participation of tenants in company decisions. For the model project tenant co-determination that the Wohnbund -verbund in Bochum, the Werkstatt e. V. in Eving and the Deutscher Mieterbund NRW on the one hand and the state development company NRW , which had acquired the NRW portfolio of the Neue Heimat, and the state government of NRW on the other hand, the Hessische Strasse settlement also belonged after the purchase the Ruhr-Lippe housing company (since 2008 LEG NRW). In a written agreement, an elected tenant council was granted extensive information rights and co-decision-making powers, including the occupancy of vacant apartments, which still exist today.

literature

  • Oliver Willnow: Searching for Traces - “Displaced Persons” and “Homeless Foreigners” in Dortmund . In: Historical Association for Dortmund and the Grafschaft Mark e. V. (Ed.): Contributions to the history of Dortmund and the county of Mark . tape 88 , 1997, ISSN  0405-2021 , pp. 209 ff .
  • Joachim Boll (Ed.): Tenants have a say . A tenant participation model for housing company settlements. Verlag for scientific publications, Darmstadt 1993, ISBN 3-922981-76-3 (publication of the model project co-determination and self-administration of tenants).
  • Little Korea: Living in a Parallel Society. In: Westfälische Rundschau. Local edition Dortmund Nord-Ost, April 4, 2008, accessed on July 25, 2014.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung . September 8, 2001, ZDB ID 973929-4 .
  2. ^ Hermann-Ulrich Koehn: Protestantism and the public in the Dortmund area . 1942 / 43–1955 / 56 (= Recklinghausen Forum for the History of Church Districts  . Volume 4 ). Lit, Berlin / Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-0948-5 (also a dissertation at the Ruhr University Bochum).
  3. ↑ a b Hans-Jörg Kühne: What are "homeless foreigners"? A brief history of the concept. (PDF; 90 kB) In: The Beckhofsiedlung - home for “homeless foreigners”. Main Bethel Archives, accessed January 14, 2013 .
  4. ^ Law on the legal status of homeless foreigners in the federal territory
  5. ↑ 370.41.00 Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs NRW, displaced persons, refugees, resettlers. In: Archives in North Rhine-Westphalia. North Rhine-Westphalia State Archives, accessed on January 14, 2013 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 33 ′ 0.9 ″  N , 7 ° 28 ′ 34.8 ″  E