Five million people live in the Ruhr area, almost four million in Berlin. Exactly a hundred years ago, the two grand rooms took a decisive step towards becoming what they are today. Exhibitions in Berlin and Essen also remind of this.
Berlin / Essen (dpa) – In 1919, Charlottenburg was the twelfth largest city in Germany with a good 320,000 inhabitants – just behind Nuremberg, Dsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main. Before that there were Essen, Breslau, Dresden, Leipzig, Mnchen, Cologne, Hamburg and of course Berlin.
On October 1, 1920, the city of Charlottenburg, which was considered to be the richest city in Prussia, merged with other previously independent cities and communities in the new Greater Berlin. Berlin doubled its population to 3.8 million overnight.
In terms of population, Berlin overtook Vienna, Chicago and Paris at the time and was suddenly the third largest city in the world after London and New York. In terms of area, Berlin was actually the second largest – after Los Angeles.
The urban area had more than doubled from 65 to around 880 square kilometers and now also included the areas of cities such as Schneberg, Kpenick, Neuklln, Wilmersdorf and Spandau.
“In other European capital regions, too, there were extensive incorporations during this epoch, for example in Vienna (1890), London (County of London, 1889) and Prague (1920),” according to a history website of the State of Berlin. whether other metropolises have also gone through processes like Berlin.
Regarding the Ruhr region, which was also densely populated in 1920, with cities such as Duisburg, Essen and Dortmund in the west of the young German Republic, it says: “In the Ruhr area, another industrial conurbation, there was a loose amalgamation in the form of the ‘Siedlungsverband Ruhrkohlen District’ founded in 1920. “
To this day, no such brisk policy of incorporation or merger has prevailed in the Ruhr area as it did in Berlin. If an incorporation policy like the one in Berlin had been pursued, this metropolis, known as the Ruhrstadt for example, could still be Germany’s largest city with more than 5 million inhabitants. But in the past few decades there were only smaller incorporations in the Ruhr area. For example, Kettwig became part of Essen in 1975 and Wattenscheid became part of Bochum in the same year.
The Ruhr Coal District Association, which was supposed to create settlements for tens of thousands of miners after the First World War – among other things to pay the reparations of the Versailles Treaty – became the Ruhr Regional Association (RVR). Bochum, Bottrop, Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Hamm, Herne, Mlheim / Ruhr and Oberhausen as well as the districts of Recklinghausen, Unna, Wesel and the Ennepe-Ruhr district belong to it.
Together, these municipalities, which are about five times the size of Berlin in area, do not have to fear comparison with the capital in many areas.
There are important football clubs (Schalke, Borussia Dortmund), renowned opera houses (Aalto-Theater Essen, Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen, Deutsche Oper am Rhein Duisburg) and well-known spoken theaters (Schauspielhaus Bochum, Theater Oberhausen). The Ruhr area can also boast festivals, parks and world heritage sites.
However, as before, ununited and without a supraregional political function and significance, the Ruhr area remains more of a province in the domestic and international perception.
While Essen was eighth in terms of population a hundred years ago and even fifth in the 1980s, the number has decreased noticeably for a good 30 years, while metropolises such as Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Dsseldorf and Leipzig are booming. Today Essen is only in tenth place, even behind Dortmund, the city of Dortmund in the west of the Ruhr area, which made it to ninth place.
For this reason, Germany today has four megacities – unlike in 1920, when only Berlin was a metropolis. In addition to Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, Cologne – a city with a longer history than most other German cities – has had more than one million inhabitants for a good ten years.
Large exhibitions in both regions this autumn will commemorate 100 years of (Greater) Berlin and 100 years of the Ruhr area. The most important one in Berlin (“Unfinished Metropolis – 100 Years of Urban Development for (Greater) Berlin”) takes place in the Kronprinzenpalais on the boulevard Unter den Linden near the World Heritage Museum Island.
The show “100 Years of the Ruhr Area – The Other Metropolis” runs until May in the Ruhr Museum in Essen, on the site of the former Zeche Zollverein, which Unesco has listed as a World Heritage Site since 2001.
dpa-infocom, dpa: 200923-99-674786 / 3
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