Greater areas: 100 years of Berlin, 100 years of the Ruhr area – a comparison

In 1919, Charlottenburg was the twelfth largest city in Germany with a good 320,000 inhabitants – just behind Nuremberg, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main. Before that there were Essen, Breslau, Dresden, Leipzig, Munich, 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 and was suddenly the third largest city in the world after London and New York. In terms of area, Berlin was even the second largest – after Los Angeles.

The city area had increased more than twelve-fold from 65 to around 880 square kilometers and now also included the areas of cities such as Schöneberg, Köpenick, Neukölln, Wilmersdorf and Spandau.

“In other European capital regions, too, there were extensive incorporations during this period, for example in Vienna (1890), London (County of London, 1889) and Prague (1920),” says 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 like 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, for example Ruhrstadt, 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). It includes Bochum, Bottrop, Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Hamm, Herne, Mülheim / Ruhr and Oberhausen as well as the Recklinghausen, Unna, Wesel and Ennepe-Ruhr districts.

Together these municipalities, which are about five times the size of Berlin in area, do not have to shy away from 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 supra-regional political function and significance, the Ruhr area remains more of a province in the domestic and international perception.

Essen was eighth in terms of population a hundred years ago and was even fifth in the 80s, but the number has decreased noticeably for a good 30 years, while metropolises such as Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig are booming. Today Essen is only in tenth place, even behind the Westphalian city of Dortmund in the Ruhr area, which made it to ninth place.

In return, 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.

This autumn, major exhibitions in both regions 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 cultural heritage Museum Island.

The exhibition “100 Years of the Ruhr Area – The Other Metropolis” runs until May in the Ruhr Museum in Essen, on the site of the former Zollverein colliery, which Unesco has listed as a World Heritage Site since 2001.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200923-99-674786 / 3

–