Wittkulle

Wittkulle City of Solingen Coordinates: 51 ° 11 ′ 11 "  N , 7 ° 2 ′ 2"  E
Height :	about 185 m
Postal code :	42719
Area code :	0212
Location of Wittkulle in Solingen
C. Friedrich Ern at the Wittkulle

Wittkulle is a residential area in the Wald district of the Bergisch city ​​of Solingen . The headquarters of the important razor factory Carl Friedrich Ern, which was founded around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, was located on Wittkulle . The invention of the sharpening machine for razors made mass production possible in the 19th century, which made it successful worldwide.

geography

Wittkulle is located in the west of the Walder city center, the original Wittkulle court was at the confluence of Mittelitterstraße and Wittkuller Straße north of the Walder Stadium . The place is located on a ridge south of the Ittertal at about 185 meters above sea ​​level . To the north, on the banks of the Itter, is Mittelitter with its outdoor swimming pool and Ittertal ice rink. To the east are Friesenhäuschen and Rolsberg . Krausen is southeast of Wittkulle , Alten - and Wiedenhof are to the south . In the west Itterberg , Felder Hof and Adamsfeld .

etymology

The place name Wittkulle is mentioned in 1624 as Uff der Weidt Koulen, in 1727 as Auf der Witkuhlen and in 1828 as Wittkuhl . The addition of the name Auf der Wittkulle indicates the altitude of the place. A Kulle is a pit, presumably a clay pit is meant, the clay of which was of great importance for the construction of half-timbered houses . Some of these clay pits were probably still present in the Itterhöhen in the 1930s, but most of them were filled in.

In addition, willow trees often grew around the pits . It is believed that the willows were planted near the pits with the intention that their branches could be used in half-timbered construction. In the vernacular , the word Witt is used for willows . The Wittkulle is therefore probably a clay pit surrounded by willows, near which a farm was established.

history

The history of the Wittkulle can be traced back to the 15th century. In the 16th century, the Wittkulle court was probably one of the places of residence for the knife makers who worked in the Schleifkotten on the Itter. The place is recorded in 1715 in the map Topographia Ducatus Montani , Blatt Amt Solingen , by Erich Philipp Ploennies with a farm and named as Witkul . The place belonged to the Honschaft Itter within the Bergisch office of Solingen. The topographical survey of the Rhineland from 1824 lists the place as Witkul . The Prussian first recording of 1844 lists it as Wittkull, in the topographical map of the administrative district of Düsseldorf from 1871 the place is again listed as Wittkull .

After the establishment of the Mairien and later mayor's offices at the beginning of the 19th century, the place belonged to the mayor's office in Wald , where it was located in corridor I. ( Wittkull ). 1815/16 lived 40 in 1830, 48 people in a hamlet called Wittkull . In 1832 the place was part of the first village honors within the forest mayor's office. The place, which was categorized as a court town according to the statistics and topography of the Düsseldorf administrative district , had eleven residential buildings, a factory or mill and seven agricultural buildings at that time. At that time, 62 residents lived in the village, including one Catholic and 61 Evangelical denominations. The municipality and estate district statistics of the Rhine Province list the place in 1871 with 16 houses and 85 inhabitants. In the municipality lexicon for the Rhineland province of 1888, 21 houses with 132 inhabitants are given for Wittkulle. In 1895 the district had 14 houses with 101 inhabitants, in 1905 13 houses and 133 inhabitants are given.

The history of the razor factory on the Wittkulle, named after its founder Carl Friedrich Ern (1850–1924), began in 1876 when Ern moved his headquarters from Ernenkotten in the Ittertal to the Wittkulle. Ern developed the ready-to-use sharpening machine for straight razors in 1893 and was able to go over to mass production with a production of a thousand razor blades per day. With the machine developed by Ern for uniform hollow grinding of the blades, the company succeeded in breaking the supremacy of the British on the world market. In Solingen, the invention triggered a real boom in the industry. While from 1853 to 1873 only thirty workers were employed in razor manufacturing in the Solingen area, their number rose to 2,000 at the end of the 19th century. The workers trained in CF Ern's company have also often started their own business and founded their own companies. From 1913 to 1916, the successful entrepreneur Ern built an open-air swimming pool for the public at Mittelitter , the Ittertal lido , on his own initiative .

In 1895 a Protestant elementary school was inaugurated at Wittkulle . After the Second World War, the school first opened as a Catholic elementary school before it was finally re-established in 1968 as the Wittkulle municipal community elementary school . The school was closed in 2012 due to a decline in student numbers.

With the town union of Groß-Solingen in 1929, the Wittkulle became a district of Solingen. In the second quarter of the 20th century, an allotment garden was built on the slope of the Wittkulle down into the Ittertal . There is little historical building material left on Wittkulle today. In addition to the former factory building of CF Ern, which is now used as an industrial park , there are still a few slated half-timbered houses at the upper end of Mittelitterstrasse, many others have been demolished.

 Web links

Commons : Solingen-Wittkulle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

swell

1. ^ ^{A b} Heinz Rosenthal: Solingen. History of a city . From the middle of the 19th century to the end of World War II. 1975, Volume 3, Braun, Duisburg 1975, ISBN 3-87096-126-0 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Marina Alice Mutz: Wittkulle. In: Time Track Search. Retrieved March 13, 2017 . 
3. ^ City of Solingen: Street and place names in our city of Solingen , self-published, Solingen 1972
4. ^ Topographic map of the Düsseldorf administrative district . Designed and executed according to the cadastral recordings and the same underlying and other trigonometric work by the Royal Government Secretary W. Werner. Edited by the royal government secretary FW Grube. 4th rev. Edition / published by A. Bagel in Wesel, 1859 / Ddf., Dec. 17, 1870. J. Emmerich, Landbaumeister. - Corrected after the ministerial amendments. Ddf. d. Sept. 1, 1871. Bruns.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Johann Georg von Viebahn : Statistics and Topography of the Düsseldorf Government District , 1836
6. ↑ Friedrich von Restorff :  Topographical-statistical description of the Royal Prussian Rhine Province , Nicolai, Berlin and Stettin 1830
7. ↑ Royal Statistical Bureau Prussia (ed.): The communities and manor districts of the Prussian state and their population . The Rhine Province, No. XI . Berlin 1874.
8. ↑ Königliches Statistisches Bureau (Prussia) (Ed.): Community encyclopedia for the Rhineland Province, based on the materials of the census of December 1, 1885 and other official sources, (Community encyclopedia for the Kingdom of Prussia, Volume XII), Berlin 1888.
9. ↑ Königliches Statistisches Bureau (Prussia) (Ed.): Community encyclopedia for the Rhineland Province, based on the materials of the census of December 1, 1895 and other official sources, (Community encyclopedia for the Kingdom of Prussia, Volume XII), Berlin 1897.
10. ↑ Royal Statistical Bureau (Prussia) (Ed.): Community encyclopedia for the Rhineland Province, based on the materials of the census of December 1, 1905 and other official sources, (Community encyclopedia for the Kingdom of Prussia, Volume XII), Berlin 1909
11. ^ Marina Alice Mutz: Lido Ittertal. In: Time Track Search. Retrieved December 11, 2016 . 
12. ↑ Marina Alice Mutz: School Wittkulle. In: Time Track Search. Retrieved March 13, 2017 .