Updated: 30.09.202014:38
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Five million people live in the Ruhr area, almost four million in Berlin. 100 years ago, the two large rooms took a big step into the future – something that exhibitions are reminiscent of today.
In 1919, Charlottenburg was the twelfth largest city in Germany with a good 320,000 inhabitants – just behind Nuremberg, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. Before that there were Essen, Breslau, Dresden, Leipzig, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg and of course Berlin. 100 years ago today – 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 people 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 – behind 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 gone through processes comparable to those of the capital.
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“ Ruhr coal district settlement association ”founded in 1920. “
To this day, however, 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 five million inhabitants. However, in the past few decades there have only been 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 such as FC Schalke and Borussia Dortmund, renowned opera houses – such as the Aalto-Theater Essen, the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Duisburg – and well-known spoken theaters such as the Schauspielhaus Bochum and the Theater Oberhausen. The Ruhr area can also boast festivals, parks and world heritage sites.
However, as before, and without any 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 100 years ago and even fifth in the 1980s, the number has decreased noticeably for a good 30 years, while metropolises such as Frankfurt, 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 runs in Berlin under the title “Unfinished Metropolis – 100 Years of Urban Development for (Greater) Berlin” 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” can be seen in the Ruhr Museum in Essen until May, on the site of the former Zollverein colliery, which Unesco has listed as a World Heritage Site since 2001. (dpa)
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