City forest (Essen)

Basic data
Stadtwald district of Essen

surface	4.14 km²
Residents	9818 (March 31, 2020)
Coordinates	51 ° 25 '15 " N , 7 ° 1' 27" E Coordinates: 51 ° 25 '15 " N , 7 ° 1' 27" E51.420833 7.024167 122
height	122 m
Incorporation	Apr 1, 1910
Spatial assignment
Post Code	45133, 45134
District number	14th
district	District II Rüttenscheid / Bergerhausen / Rellinghausen / Stadtwald
image
View from the northwest of Essen-Stadtwald, in front on the left the Stadtwaldplatz
Source: City of Essen statistics

Essen-Stadtwald is a district of the city of Essen south of the city center . It is located north of the Baldeneysee on the Ruhr heights , is dominated by forest and green areas and primarily serves as a residential area. Stadtwald borders the following Essen districts clockwise from the north: Rüttenscheid , Bergerhausen , Rellinghausen , Heisingen and Bredeney .

history

Stadtwald has its roots in agriculture. As the granary of the Rellinghausen monastery , today's area of Stadtwald belonged to Rellinghausen until it was incorporated into Essen in April 1910. Some names of old courtyards and cottages have been preserved in the form of street or restaurant names, such as Leveringstraße, Kellermanns Busch, Kleppes Feld, Gebrandenhof. The Vittinghoff house is located on Vittinghoffstrasse, the ground monument of a medieval moated castle , a so-called motte . According to a document issued in Rellinghausen, the son of Heinrich von Vittinghoff, Heinrich II, inherited this Vittinghoff castle in 1272. The St. Theresa branch church, built from 1956 to 1958, stands today on the site of the Leveringhof, first mentioned in 1361, a former lease of the Rellinghausen Abbey. In the listed half-timbered house of the Gebrandenhof, which was built in 1798 in the style of the Low German hall house and formerly comprised five buildings, there is now a restaurant. The farm was once called Gebrande an der Heide and was still farmed until 1940. The area of what is now the Stadtwald district was called the Heide district , which can still be found in the cadastral maps today.

When the industrialization in Essen was already well advanced in the first years of the 20th century, the then mayor Erich Zweigert , who was very committed to the urban expansion of the city, recognized that compensation areas were used as recreational areas for the rapidly growing, working people to destroy the landscape Population must be created. On his instructions, the city of Essen spent 1.9 million gold marks on a 105 hectare forest area, predominantly owned by the noble family Vittinghoff-Schell , in order to reforest it and create the trail network that still exists today. In gratitude, ten citizens had the mayor, who had already died, erected the so-called Zweigertstein in 1909 as a memorial in their city forest. And so the district got the name Stadtwald after the incorporation in 1910.

In May 1905, the Schillerbrunnen, now a listed building, was inaugurated on Wittekindstrasse on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Friedrich Schiller's death . The Essen theater director Hans Gelling donated it at the suggestion of the Essen city councilor Dr. Heinz Niemeyer. It was designed by the Munich sculptor Fritz Behn . The Uhlenkrugstadion was built by the Schwarz-Weiß Essen association in 1922 and financed exclusively from donations. The stadium, which cost 750,000 marks, originally had space for 35,000 spectators. In 1939 it was temporarily expanded to 45,000 spectators. The Eyhof housing estate was built by the non-profit building association Essen-Stadtwald from 1920 to 1924 by the Essen architect Josef Rings (* December 20, 1878 † August 7, 1957). The settlement was laid out axially symmetrically and still offers a coveted residential area with a view of the forest on the north-western edge of the forest. In 1927 there were already signed contracts between the city of Essen and the sons of the well-known Hamburg zoo director Carl Hagenbeck , Willy (1884-1965) and Carl (1888-1949), for the creation of a zoological garden in Essen-Stadtwald. But because of tight city budgets, none of the plans have been implemented. Later there was a bird park between Frankenstrasse and Eichenstrasse, the animals of which moved to Grugapark in the mid-1990s .

coat of arms

City forest coat of arms

Blazon : “In green five golden (yellow) oaks in a ratio of 3: 2; between the two lower an upright golden sword. "

The coat of arms was designed by Kurt Schweder and never had an official character. At the end of the 1980s, the heraldist created coats of arms for all of Essen's districts. They have meanwhile been well received by the Essen population.

It is a classic " talking coat of arms ", the sword stands for "city", as an attribute of the city patron Cosmas and Damian makes the reference to the Essen city arms. The oaks stand for "forest" and the five former courtyards of the Heide district , as the city forest was called until 1904.

Today's character

The Stadtwald district is now an almost purely residential area with a large proportion of green and forest areas. Nothing of the former mining has survived to this day. Only in the forest areas are there still a few pings that arose from well-like opencast mines that were later backfilled and that collapsed again over time and now form these characteristic burglaries.

Stadtwald is home to a large riding club. Its protected riding arena, designed by the architects Alfred Fischer and Richard Speidel, dates from 1929 and was built in the Bauhaus style. In addition, several tennis clubs and the martial arts department of the Essen Police Sports Club are located in the district. In a forest park, on the site of a former bird park, several educational boards offer an insight into the local flora and fauna. With the Schillerwiese there is a large sports field available. The Uhlenkrugstadion with around 20,000 seats is used by the soccer club Schwarz-Weiß Essen for home games in the NRW League .

In the area of Essen-Stadtwald there are three schools of importance beyond the district boundaries with the comprehensive school Essen-Süd, the Free Waldorf School in Essen and the Dore Jacobs vocational college, the private vocational school for gymnastics. There is also the Stiftsschule (municipal elementary school) and a branch of the Essen city library.

traffic

The most important traffic connection, the Frankenstraße, which has existed since the Middle Ages as a connection between Werden and Rellinghausen monastery , crosses the district in an east-west direction. Wittenbergstraße comes from the direction of Rüttenscheid and to the south, Heisinger Straße leads out of Stadtwald in the direction of the Essen district of the same name. All of these traffic arteries meet at Stadtwaldplatz, the center of the district, the urban redesign of which was completed in 2003. All major bus routes stop here. The Essen-Werden-Essen railway line , on which the S6 runs today , runs under the Stadtwaldplatz, through the 247-meter-long Stadtwaldtunnel . The Essen-Stadtwald S-Bahn station , which was called Rellinghausen West until December 31, 1910 , is a little off the beaten track, north of Stadtwaldplatz.