Westfalenhütte

Westfalenhütte, around 1895

Main administration entrance portal

The Westfalenhütte in the north-east of Dortmund has over 160 years of tradition as a location for heavy industry in the Ruhr area and is considered the cradle of the former Hoesch AG . It was built by the Düren iron manufacturer Leopold Hoesch , his sons Wilhelm and Albert Hoesch and his cousins Viktor and Eberhard Hoesch in 1871. At the zenith of the German economic miracle, 25,000 people were employed on it. Over the course of time, the so-called Hoeschians came up with the term Karl Hoesch , a lovingly intended declaration of respect that, as pars pro toto, stands for everything that has to do with the steel company Hoesch AG.

The Westfalenhütte had its own stop at Dortmund-Hoesch train station .

On June 15, 1989 the then President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev visited the Westfalenhütte and gave a speech in front of 8,500 steel workers in the Conti annealing plant.

As a result of the changes in the world steel market and the concentration process in the industry, which had intensified since the steel crisis of 1974, the blast furnaces, the sintering plant and the hot strip mill of the Westfalenhütte were shut down and sold to Jiangsu Shagang in 2001 . The systems were dismantled, transported to China and rebuilt there. As a result, the activities on the Westfalenhütte site are now concentrated on a few economically viable core areas, mainly on a rolling mill with sheet metal finishing and coating. Over 1000 people are still employed on the Westfalenhütte site. Hot strip from the Duisburg iron and steel works is cold-rolled, annealed and electrolytically galvanized or hot-dip galvanized. The products mainly go to the auto industry. The ThyssenKrupp Group's most modern hot-dip galvanizing line is operated in Dortmund. The Dortmund Surface Center is located on the premises. With the Dortmund Surface Center, ThyssenKrupp Steel has one of the world's leading and most modern development centers for the surface finishing of flat steel.

The ThyssenKrupp Group, in which the activities of Hoesch AG ultimately ended after the mergers, now owns the largest industrial wasteland in the middle of Europe. The plans for the subsequent use of this area were developed in close coordination with the city of Dortmund.

A reduced, industrial core area was to be retained and the site of the former sintering plant was to be marketed as a logistics area.
For Dortmund there was an opportunity for the rapid and relatively unproblematic development of a new road connection in the east-west direction that would relieve the northern inner city.

The area is enormous: in the east-west extension it is five kilometers, in the north-south extension it is almost four kilometers. This sheer size illustrates not only the urban development relevance of the Westfalenhütte for Dortmund, but also the huge development potential of this area close to the city center, which is far from the usual standards.

In May 2009, construction work began to develop the area for future use as a logistics park. In a first construction phase, Springorum-Allee was built parallel to Brackeler Straße.

The Westfalenhütte has an indirect meaning for the history of German football : For example, the former Weißes Wiese stadium in Hoeschpark in the southwest corner of the Westfalenhütte was formerly used by Borussia Dortmund . A particularly loyal fan base of the then still young Borussia was recruited from the factory employees who lived around the nearby Borsigplatz .

The Hoesch Museum is located in the former porter's house of the Westfalenhütte . The administrative building of the former Hoesch AG is registered as a monument in the monument list of the city of Dortmund .