The history of the city of Gelsenkirchen

Although Gelsenkirchen is documented as early as 1150, the city is nevertheless a product of 19th-century industrialisation. Only a handful of historic buildings, such as the castles of Horst, Berge and Lüttinghoff, serve to commemorate the city’s pre-industrial past.

At the beginning of the last century, the region was still sparsely populated and largely agricultural. At this time, only 6,000 or so people lived there. It was not until the transport revolution brought about by the railways and, above all, the arrival of coal mining that the area took on a whole new appearance. “Black gold” was discovered in 1840, and seven years later construction work began on Gelsenkirchen railway station, on the Cologne to Minden line. Before very long, the community had developed into a centre of heavy industry, leading to a sharp rise in the population and, in turn, the signing of the town charter in 1875. From this point on, constant expansion of the town boundary by the incorporation of numerous smaller districts saw the population rise from 11,000 to 138,000 by 1903, lending Gelsenkirchen city status.

Up until the First World War, large numbers of people came to the city to work, recruited mostly from the east of the German empire (East and West Prussia, Posen and Silesia). This expansion was repeated in the years of reconstruction after the Second World War, when the workforce in coal mining and the iron and steel industries was increasingly drawn from southern Europe and Turkey. The city, which came to be known as “the town of a thousand fires”, grew into an industrial metropolis, home to almost 400,000 and at one time the most important mining town in Europe.

The current city boundary dates back to 1928, when Gelsenkirchen was joined together with the town of Buer and the district of Horst as part of a local authority restructuring, after which point there were 340,000 people living in the whole of Gelsenkirchen-Buer (officially known after 1930 as Gelsenkirchen). For many decades to come, coal and steel were very much a mixed blessing. After the sweeping job losses caused by the ruthless streamlining of the mining industry in the 1920s, for instance, came the full employment of the 1930s under the National Socialists’ rearmament programme. Indeed, the city became a focal point of the wartime economy under the Nazi regime, making Gelsenkirchen a preferred target for allied bombers, with the result that, at the end of the war in May 1945, around three quarters of the city’s homes and public buildings had been destroyed.

The mining industry continued to play a key role as a source of energy and jobs in the years of rebuilding after the war. But even the so-called post-war economic miracle could not hide the fact that the coal, iron and steel industries were in their death throes. The coal crisis in the late 1950s brought about a structural change away from coal and steel towards service industries and new technologies such as solar power, and it is a transformation which still has a long way to go before it will be complete.

Today, Gelsenkirchen is home to almost 300,000 people and boasts an advanced infrastructure, attractive housing and a large number of green spaces and recreation areas. In addition, there’s a wealth of cultural, sporting and leisure activities on offer and, in the shape of FC Schalke 04, a football team whose national and international successes have really helped put the city on the map.

The economic structure has become more diversified in recent years, resulting in job opportunities in a variety of pioneering commercial sectors. In late 1999, for instance, Shell opened Europe’s largest and the world’s most modern solar cell production plant on the site of the former Dahlbusch colliery in Rotthausen, proving once again that, when old and new come together, jobs and quality of life are the result.

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