Essen city association of allotment gardeners

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The Essen city association of allotment gardeners is an amalgamation of 112 allotment garden and small animal breeders' associations in Essen with around 203 allotment garden facilities (as of March 2020) .

The city association

The city association has almost 9,000 members (as of March 2020) . Of the 203 allotment gardens with around 8,500 parcels, which together have an area of ​​around 363.3 hectares, 59.6 percent are on land owned by the city of Essen, the remainder is on private leasehold land and land of the Essen allotment garden grounds gGmbH . This is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Essen city association.

94 percent of all allotment gardens in the city of Essen are organized in the city association, which finances its tasks almost exclusively from membership fees.

The board consists of five members: the 1st and 2nd chairman, the managing director and three assessors.

The 112 individual allotment garden and small animal breeders' associations are divided into the following eight districts:

history

Founded in 1919

Even before the First World War , there were some horticultural associations in the area of ​​the city and former district of Essen . As early as 1872, workers at the Krupp cast steel factory received a number of allotments in the Schederhof workers' colony . In 1895 the city of Essen built a complex with 92 gardens on Segerothstrasse, which were mostly used by workers in the steel and mining industries that were emerging in Essen. Due to a lack of food in the First World War, numerous other associations were established, so that in 1919 there were 14 independent horticultural associations. These pursued the goals of providing ordinary people with help and advice, providing helpful and necessary things for the garden and increasing yields.

Finally, on December 12, 1919, the horticultural association for the city and district of Essen was founded on the initiative of the mayor of Altenessen , Theodor Stankeit . It is the forerunner of today's city association. The establishment took place in Holsterhausen , in the Saalbau Friedrichshalle of the restaurant Kaupenhöhe. The Saalbau Friedrichshalle in Holsterhausen was built in 1912 and offered around 1200 seats. By April 1, 1920, all 14 horticultural associations had joined the horticultural association.

The first years

Initially, the individual gardens of the associations of the new garden association contributed to overcoming the consequences of the First World War, primarily the famine of the common people. That happened around the middle of the 1920s, but then many garden owners often became unemployed, who not only lived off their harvest, but also had to live in their garden, as there was often no longer enough money for rent. A technical and variety committee was set up to compile suitable fruit and vegetables for cultivation in the industrial area.

The first chairman of the horticultural association was the district administrator, Friedrich Schöne . After he was arrested by the French during the occupation of the Ruhr , District Administrator Paul Mertens took over the chairmanship in 1925.

In 1922, the horticultural association organized an allotment garden exhibition in Hall 7 of the exhibition halls, the predecessors of the Essen exhibition halls . An eight-day public autumn flower show followed there in 1926. These exhibitions contributed to the creation of the your 1929 opened Grugapark ( G reat Ru hrländische G artenbau- A at xhibition). When the district of Essen was dissolved in 1929 and many of its areas were incorporated into the city of Essen, the association of urban allotment gardeners , which existed in the previous city area, merged with the horticultural association for the city and district of Essen, which was founded in 1919, to form a central association for the now larger, entire city area. It now belonged to 34 gardening associations with around 6,500 members. Mayor Franz Bracht chaired the meeting . Managing chairman until 1933, the founding member of the city association, gardening director Rudolf Korte , who later also led the expansion and redesign of the Gruga grounds for the 1938 Reichsgarten Show . The Korte cliff on Lake Baldeney was named after him.

At the time of National Socialism

After the seizure of power was in the Third Reich , the entire German allotment gardens by the authorities into line . That means that everything was standardized and equated through laws, rules and other measures, which resulted in the restriction or even the loss of the individual personality, independence, maturity and freedom of a person. This particularly affected the allotment garden system and its traditional democratic structure, because the club or association chairmen had to give way to club, city group, provincial or state group leaders who were appointed according to the leader principle . The hierarchy was that the individual gardening associations belonged to the Essen city group, i.e. the Essen Horticultural Association, which in turn belonged to a state or provincial group that was ultimately subordinate to the Reich Association of Allotment Gardeners and Small Settlers. The Reich Association of Allotment Gardeners founded in 1921 was transformed into the Reich Association of Allotment Gardeners and Small Settlers. The propaganda magazines Der Kleingärtner und Kleinsiedler , Das deutsche Kleingartenwesen and Der Rheinisch-Westfälische Kleingärtner have now appeared . The land should be used in accordance with the blood-and-soil ideology as the basis for the state and the people. It was made impossible for Jewish allotment gardeners to lease a garden from 1937 onwards. The city of Essen, in particular the city group of allotment gardeners, and the Reichsnährstand organized the Reichsgartenschau on the grounds of the Grugapark from April 26th to October 1938.

During the Second World War , the "gardens of the little man", especially in the context of the bombing war, contributed to his relief. Makeshift homes were built in the facilities, some of which still exist today. One put the common good before self-interest, because the government obliged allotment gardeners to take care of the population.

Development after the Second World War

The newly elected chairmen of the allotment garden associations had to determine by May 31, 1945 which allotment gardener had been forced by the NSDAP to give up their allotment garden simply because they were members of a left party or Jews. Those who could still be identified and who in the meantime did not belong to the NSDAP themselves were immediately given their old rights back. On January 20, 1946, the district association's first meeting of representatives took place.

In the post-war period, the situation was similar to that after the First World War. Even now the allotment gardens contributed to the alleviation of the famine, because the time of the so-called emergency gardeners began. Returnees who had fled to the countryside often came without a roof over their heads and converted their arbours into year-round emergency shelters, the highest number of which was around 660 in the city of Essen. In addition, the need for permanent allotment gardens had long since made itself felt, which in 1946 triggered a flood of allotment garden disputes. The number of allotment gardens in Essen grew to well over 30,000 until the currency reform in 1948 . Some allotment gardeners have been approved by the city administration to create small allotment parcels on the edge of public green spaces in order to alleviate the greatest need. But these were quickly terminated a little later. But that was not the main reason why at the end of the year of the currency reform in 1948 the number of allotment gardens was just over 17,000, it was mainly the rapidly improving situation of some people and the associated end of the emergency gardeners. The hunger decreased and there was much to buy again. Further allotment gardens then fell victim to road and housing construction as part of the reconstruction, whereby the previous allotment garden law reached its limits. The city of Essen designated replacement land for new allotment gardens. In 1955 there were 9,768 members registered in 37 allotment garden associations in the district association.

Around 60 percent of the allotment gardens in Essen are still urban today, and the city administration also took care of that. The remaining 40 percent were in the hands of the association.

Since the 1980s

After 1980, there were cuts in the city administration, so that the Green Space Office had also deleted posts without replacement. As a result, the public green spaces around the allotment gardens, the so-called accompanying greenery, were no longer maintained, and local taxes were also passed on to the allotment gardeners. No new allotment gardens were created, with the exception of three, which the city association built entirely with its own resources. The allotment garden system was no longer a basic task for urban development for the city administration, but served more as normal contract fulfillment, which resulted in stagnation in the development of the allotment gardens. The city association held against it.

In 1983 the Federal Allotment Garden Act came into force, which protects gardens on urban land. However, since 40 percent of the allotment gardens in Essen belonged to private owners, mostly companies such as Krupp , Hoesch or Mannesmann , and since the mid-1980s they increasingly wanted to cede their land because the industry in Essen declined significantly, many of these allotment gardeners were left without protection . The area of ​​their gardens was at risk of property speculation. The city of Essen refused to buy this property. So in 1991 the Kleingartengrund und -boden gGmbH was founded , which bought up these areas so that they could be used as property for the allotment gardeners.

The association has been publishing the magazine Der Grüner Bote since 1993 . As early as the end of the 1930s, Der Westdeutsche Kleingarten was published for a short time , which also represented a certain degree of independence, but which the National Socialists did not want. Therefore the publication was stopped. Today's Green Messenger appears every two months for the purpose of public relations in modern allotment gardens.

On June 14, 2013, not only Heinz Schuster was re-elected as chairman of the association at the Essen allotment gardeners association day. It was decided almost unanimously to change the name of the association from Stadtverband Essen der Kleingärtnervereine e. V. in the umbrella organization of allotment gardening associations in Essen e. V. This renaming was later withdrawn.

Chair since it was founded in 1919

  • 1919 - 1925: District Administrator Friedrich Schöne
  • 1925 - 1929: District Administrator Paul Mertens
  • 1929 - 1935: the Lord Mayors Franz Bracht , Heinrich Maria Martin Schäfer and Theodor Reismann-Grone
  • January 1, 1936 - August 30, 1936: Rector Franz Mauermann
  • August 31, 1936 - May 6, 1945: Party comrades Wulff and Schedel
  • 1946 - 1953: Franz Mauermann
  • 1953 - 1964: Otto Buse
  • 1964 - 1978: Heinz-Josef Sous
  • 1978 - 1984: Heinz Detering
  • 1984 - 1989: Wolfgang Gorski
  • 1989 - 2014: Heinz Schuster
  • 2014 - today: Holger Lemke

literature

  • Special edition Der Grüne Bote Edition 4/2009, chronicle 1919 to 2009, 90 years of the Essen municipal association of allotment gardeners e. V.

Web links

Commons : Garden trail run by the Essen municipal association of allotment gardening associations  - a collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Grün und Gruga presents the current status of the allotment development concept; In: Press release of the City of Essen from March 3, 2019
  2. ^ Umbrella association of allotment gardeners Essen e. V .: Renaming of the association's name ( memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 8 kB); Retrieved September 4, 2014  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kleingaertner-essen.de