Unionvorstadt
The Unionvorstadt , also Union-Vorstadt , was a factory settlement of the mining group Dortmunder Union . It was built in 1871 on the northern edge of what was then the city of Dortmund . With the construction of the port of Dortmund , which was inaugurated in 1899 and expanded to include additional port basins until the 1920s, the settlement of 40 buildings became a residential enclave in the middle of the port area. In the Second World War badly damaged, it was only built still provisional and again demolished in 1961 and the released land allocated to the commercial areas of the port.
Emergence
The Unionvorstadt was built according to the English model (arrangement of the parcels in block form). The settlement consisted mainly of semi-detached houses and a few, at that time hardly widespread, apartment buildings. With 40 buildings (30 residential buildings, 8 masters' houses, 1 grocery store, 1 official building) the quarter offered around 95 families what was then modern living space. Small garden plots and a shed each based on the model of the Eisenheim settlement in Oberhausen were attached to the houses.
The Unionvorstadt was formally surrounded by the new port from 1895. Behind the Port Authority ( Altes Hafenamt Dortmund ), which was newly established in 1899 , it extended to the north port. The following streets formed the boundary at that time:
- Kornweg, Landwehrstraße (later Sunderweg) in the west and south
- Kanalstrasse, Schäferstrasse in the north and east
The people
Initially, only the higher-ranking workers, such as foremen or shift supervisors, lived in the then high-quality new housing estate. With the construction of the port, the industrialization of the area and the noise of the port cranes, the "higher earners" disappeared and simple workers moved in. In the course of the 1930s there was a mixture of different nations, until the politics of the time prevented any further settlement of guest workers. Only a few testimonies are available today about the biographies of residents.
End of the settlement
After almost 90 percent of the settlement lay in ruins during the Second World War and the reconstruction in the quarter progressed slowly and provisionally, the decision was made in 1960 to demolish the Union suburb, relocate its residents and assign the vacant areas to the commercial areas of the port. The expansion of the Dortmund harbor planned in 1961 was finally taken as an opportunity to demolish the ailing settlement.
As early as 1951, VEBA Wohnstätten began building a new Union settlement in Huckarde , which is also known as the Eisheiligen settlement based on the prevailing street names . Today it belongs to Deutsche Annington .
Search for clues
Even today you can find some remains of the old Union settlement in the port of Dortmund. Old curbs, street fragments, sawed-off lamp posts and some remains of the wall are the last witnesses to this factory settlement. The former settlement area is now used by a shipping company as a storage area. Until after the year 2000 there were still gatherings of former residents.
Web links
literature
- Klaus Winter, Little History of Union-Vorstadt, in: Living and living in the shadow of the blast furnaces. On the history of steel workers housing construction at Hoesch from the beginning to the reconstruction after 1945; Exhibition in the Hoesch Museum Dortmund from May 29 to September 30, 1991, Ed .: Hoesch-AG, Public Relations Department, Red .: Karl-Peter Ellerbrock
- Karl Neuhoff: Dortmund - today, then, in the past , Dortmund, Krüger, 1990, ISBN 3-927827-02-9
- Karl-Peter Ellerbrock: Dortmund's Gate to the World , plain text, 1999, ISBN 3-88474-793-2
- Dortmunder Hafen Aktiengesellschaft, 50 Years of Dortmund Harbor , 1949, pp. 1–7
- Association for the history and archeology of Westphalia: Westfälische Zeitschrift , 1950, p. 208ff
- Atlantis in the harbor: The Union-Vorstadt, Nordstadtblogger, November 14, 2014
Individual evidence
- ^ History of the port , accessed July 8, 2014
- ^ Arbitration Office newspaper 1954 (online archive), obituary
- ↑ Fidy vonne Ruhr, Wohnen then and now , accessed on April 20, 2014