Weststadt (Hildesheim)
The Weststadt is a district in Hildesheim . It is located west of the city center in the Moritzberg district .
location
The west city is separated from the city center of Hildesheim in the north and east by the Innerste , the Innersteaue and the Eselsgraben. In the south, the Ochtersum district adjoins a permanent allotment garden , while to the west the wooded Steinberg and the Katzberg with the forest called Berghölzchen form a natural border with the Godehardikamp district and the “Waldquelle” settlement. The west town is separated from the historic Moritzberg district in the northwest by the copper strand and the Berghölzchen. The largest north-south extension of the Weststadt - from the Innerste in the north to the allotment garden south of the Ahornweg in the south - is a little over 2 kilometers along the federal road 243 . The largest east-west expansion - from the eastern end of Brehmestrasse to Innersteaue - is only around 800 m.
history
In the Middle Ages, the village of Lucienvörde was located in the southern part of the western part of the city and it became a desert . The village of Lotingessem , which stretched along the Trillke in the southwestern part of the western part of the city, also became desolate - today the Trillkegut is in its place . A cross stone was found on Alfelder Strasse in 1929 , which probably dates from the Middle Ages. It was erected in 1983 in front of the cemetery in the extreme south of the western city. The Dammstadt , founded in 1196 , an episcopal town founded in the Middle Ages, which was destroyed by the Hildesheim citizens in 1332, was also located on the old trade route in the area of today's Weststadt .
The Steinberg , which borders the west and south-west of the city, was first mentioned in 1268 under its current name. At that time, however, it was bare and was used as a pasture and as a quarry. The stones for the construction of the Hildesheim town hall were taken from this quarry, which can still be recognized today as a deep depression in the undergrowth in the middle of the Steinberg. The reforestation of the Steinberg did not take place until after 1862.
After the dam city was destroyed, the area of today's Weststadt remained undeveloped and unpopulated for centuries. The old trade route, which was mentioned as a paved "stone path" as early as 1582 and then again in 1659, still ran through its northern part in the area of the damp Innerste lowland. It was first mentioned in 1673 under the name "Bergsteinweg". On a map from 1769 by Georg Wilhelm Wiehen, today's Alfelder Straße is noted as "Weg nach Alfeld", gardens are drawn between it and Bergsteinweg.
The situation only changed after the Dammtor of the Hildesheim city wall was demolished in 1818 and the bastion in front of it was leveled in 1872. In the course of the population increase during the Wilhelminian era , the city of Hildesheim needed new building land, and the partially flat terrain west of the city was just too suitable for city expansion. First of all, from around 1860, the area was built on on both sides of the Bergsteinweg. Alfelder Straße and Schützenwiese were officially given their current names on October 10, 1865. As one of the first buildings, a representative new building for the "Higher Trade School of the City of Hildesheim", founded in 1859, was built in 1865–67 on the corner of Dammstrasse and Alfelder Strasse.
On January 30, 1867, a horse-drawn tram line was inaugurated from the Hildesheim train station , which at that time was still on Kaiserstraße, to the mountain spot Moritzberg. It had its terminus at the entrance to the Moritzberg and ran once an hour on Dammstrasse and Bergsteinweg. From August 7, 1905, it was electrified as line 1 of the Hildesheim city tram . The tram connection existed until March 22, 1945, when the tram was finally shut down as a result of the destruction caused by bombing. After that, the trams were replaced by buses.
Steinbergstrasse, today one of the main traffic arteries in Weststadt, was first mentioned in writing in 1523; it was called "Tief Strasse" until 1901, due to its location in the valley of the Trillkebach . The Trillkebach was relocated to the area of today's Küchenthalstrasse in 1866 and bridged at the corner of Steinbergstrasse.
One of the oldest buildings still in existence in Weststadt is the house at Steinbergstrasse 96, on which a board shows 1885 as the year of completion. The house was a farm until 1989 and initially also housed a retail shop.
The Weststadt developed into an upscale residential area. It first grew northwards from the Bergsteinweg. The Nikolaistrasse, which got its name in 1878 after St. Nikolaus church in the former dam town, and Michelsenstraße was laid out, the latter getting its name in 1907. Since there was more free space in the Weststadt than in the densely built-up Hildesheim city center, several representative buildings were erected here for which there was no space in the city center. The Michelsenschule was built in 1878 on Schützenallee. With the construction of the agricultural exhibition hall on the poplar avenue laid out around 1915, Weststadt received another representative building in 1911.
In the 1920s, the western city expanded significantly to the south. Detached and multi-family houses were built in a relaxed style on Gerlandstrasse and Brehmestrasse. Around 1925, the civil servants' housing association built a representative, horseshoe-shaped residential complex made up of multi-storey apartment buildings on Alfelder Straße. A construction cooperative founded in 1926 built single-family row houses on Ulmenweg around 1927.
During the Second World War , bombs fell on the Weststadt for the first time at noon on November 26, 1944. They met an undeveloped area at the corner of Hachmeisterstraße / Göttingstraße, the eastern slope of the Steinberg and the Matthiaswiese, here a house was destroyed (Matthiaswiese 1). On March 22, 1945, the exhibition hall on Pappelallee, the building of the "Higher Trade School of the City of Hildesheim" and numerous houses on Bergsteinweg, in Dinklar-, Bleicher- and Dammstraße and on Schützenwiese were destroyed by explosive and incendiary bombs. The Michel school was badly damaged and rebuilt after the war. A storage building of the Trillkegut burned out. Heavy damage was caused in Bleckenstedter, Nikolai- and Michelsenstraße, but houses were also preserved here. Because of the loosened construction method, however, there was no extensive destruction in most of the streets of the Weststadt. In many places - e.g. B. in Steinbergstrasse - the resulting fires could be extinguished so that the damage remained minimal.
On December 31, 2005, 15,562 people lived in Weststadt on an area of around 579 hectares. In 2011 the Weststadt was combined with the Moritzberg district .
architecture
Because of its location on the slopes of the wooded Katzberg and Steinberg as well as several bodies of water - Innerste , Trillkebach and Blänkebach - the Weststadt with its relaxed architecture has always been a popular residential area. Almost exactly in the middle runs the representative Mittelallee with its large green areas planted with roses, which was created in the 1920s. It is not only in it and its cross streets that villas in the style of classicism from the 1920s and 1930s rise . Some of them are listed , z. B. Bergsteinweg 28 A, built in 1928, was one of the few houses on this street to survive World War II. Another striking street is Küchenthalstraße, so named in 1910, with its well-preserved houses from the 1920s: the Trillkebach flows over a length of around 500 m in its center.
In the southern part of Weststadt you can find single and multi-family houses from the 1920s and 1930s, while in the northern part functional buildings and multi-family houses from the 1950s and 1960s predominate due to the significant war damage. On Alfelder Straße you can still see the typical architectural style of the Wilhelminian era with brick buildings, bay windows and ornate facades.
Only one church was built in the Weststadt - the relatively small, Protestant St. Mark's Church on Ulmenweg with its 23 m high tower. It was inaugurated on March 22, 1964, the 19th anniversary of the heaviest bombing of Hildesheim. The fact that there are no other churches could be due to the fact that at the time of the expansion of the Weststadt there were already churches in the neighboring districts that were easily accessible on foot.
The Michels School , which was rebuilt after being badly damaged in the Second World War , is still one of the most striking buildings in Weststadt . Not far from it is the new police headquarters building, which can be seen from afar and was put into operation at the end of the 1960s. On the site of the "Higher Trade School of the City of Hildesheim" at the corner of Dammstrasse and Alfelder Strasse, which was destroyed in the war, a striking new building was inaugurated on May 18, 1955, which is now used by the University of Applied Sciences and is still known by many Hildesheimers as the "Carpenter College" or "Werkkunstschule" is known. The former sports hall on Pappelallee, built in 1957 with seats for 900 spectators, was converted into an event center with 2,435 seats and 400 standing places in 2006–2007. At the eastern end of Mittelallee , the simple functional building of the Lower Saxony State Audit Office has risen since the mid-1960s, while the “Vier Linden” cultural and event center with its historic hall, known far beyond Hildesheim, can be found at the southern end of Alfelder Straße.
Infrastructure
The Weststadt has no historical center or a street that fulfills the function of a "main street". Various shops, restaurants, offices, practices, craft and service businesses are scattered around Schützenwiese, Bergsteinweg and Dammstrasse, Alfelderstrasse and Steinbergstrasse. Schools or kindergartens were hardly founded in Weststadt, as existing facilities in neighboring districts were easily accessible. Because of the loosened up construction, the population density was never as high as, for example, on the Moritzberg, in the inner city or in the north of the city.
The western part of the city is well developed in terms of traffic: from north to south it is crossed by the federal highway 243, while the federal highway 1 in the northern part of the western city runs from east to west. The "Dammtor" intersection is one of the busiest intersections in Hildesheim. The city bus lines 1, 3, 5 and 6 connect the Weststadt with the city center of Hildesheim, the main train station and all other parts of the city. At the stops "Dammtor" and "Vier Linden" there are also several bus routes that go from Hildesheim to villages in the area.
There are several permanent allotment gardens in the Weststadt area. Tennis courts were laid out on the eastern slope of the Steinberg.
The fact that Weststadt is a popular residential area is not only due to its relatively central location, but also to its proximity to nature: The Innersteaue is accessible via several hiking and cycling trails, and there are also numerous in the forests on the Katzberg and Steinberg Well-developed hiking trails and vantage points that offer a delightful view of the Weststadt and all of Hildesheim with its many different church towers. Particularly noteworthy here is the eastern edge of the Berghölzchen, here a memorial to the expellees created by the artist Kurt Schwerdtfeger was erected in 1962. The "Entenbrunnen" at the Bergholzwiese is also a popular destination for walkers because of the beautiful view.
Medieval cross stone on Alfelder Strasse
Former farm Steinbergstr. 96
St. Mark's Church
Vier Linden event center
Steinbergstrasse
One of the few houses destroyed in the war: Matthiaswiese 1
literature
- E. Bode: Our beautiful city . Hildesheim 1964.
- Ingrid Pflaumann: The Steinbergviertel in Hildesheim. In: Hildesheim calendar: year book for history and culture. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 2009, pp. 32-44.
- Hermann Seeland: Destruction and fall of old Hildesheim. Lax, Hildesheim 1947, OCLC 34341095 .
- Christiane Segers-Glocke: Architectural monuments in Lower Saxony. Volume 14.1: City of Hildesheim. Niemeyer, Hameln 2007, ISBN 978-3-8271-8262-3 .
- Rudolf Zoder: The Hildesheimer streets. Hildesheim 1957, DNB 455831351 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ E. Bode: Our beautiful city. 1964, p. 29.
- ^ R. Zoder: The Hildesheimer streets. 1957, pp. 84f.
- ^ R. Zoder: The Hildesheimer streets. 1957, p. 85.
- ↑ I. Pflaumann: The Steinberg district Hildesheim. 2009, p. 51ff.
- ↑ I. Pflaumann: The Steinberg district Hildesheim. 2009, p. 92.
- ↑ H. Seeland: Destruction and fall of old Hildesheim. 1947, p. 8.
- ↑ I. Pflaumann: The Steinberg district Hildesheim. 2009, p. 69ff.
- ↑ Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung. August 9, 2016, p. 7.
- ^ SVHI Stadtverkehr Hildesheim: daily line network. Retrieved February 9, 2020 .
Coordinates: 52 ° 9 ' N , 9 ° 56' E