Freudenhaus Holzwickede/Dortmund (D)

Holzwickede

Name origin

meaning disputed, possibly "Throtmanni" (Old Saxon, = "Trutzmänner"/"defiant men") --> Dortmund

First documented mention

882 AD

Population

588,000

Area

280.71 km²

Federal state

Nordrhein-Westfalen

Administrative district (Regierungsbezirk): Arnsberg

District (Kreis): /

Vehicle registration: DO

River: Ruhr, Emscher

The Club Freudenhaus near Dortmund is located in Holzwickede/Holzwickede.

Dortmund:

"So where's the old town, then?" the unsuspecting visitor will wonder as they stroll along and around the Westenhellweg in the heart of the city centre - alongside Kaufingerstraße in Munich, the Zeil in Frankfurt am Main and the Schildergasse in Köln one of the most frequented shopping streets in Germany - as they walk through Dortmund's city centre within the clearly recognisable line of the Wallring. It simply no longer exists. Actually the most tradition-steeped of the three (Dortmund - Essen - Duisburg) great economic and trading centres of the Ruhr region, once an important imperial and Hanseatic city along the Hellweg, Dortmund suffered a complete obliteration of its city centre even more thoroughly than other cities. On 12 March 1945 the heaviest conventional air offensive of the entire Second World War against any city in Europe was flown; Dortmund's city centre was smashed so violently that after the war there was serious debate about whether the city should simply be rebuilt somewhere else entirely. The four historic city churches in the old town, however - among them the Reinoldikirche, named after Saint Reinoldus, the city's patron saint, who according to legend was a nephew of Charlemagne - survived miraculously.

Seen in that light, this once bombed-out metropolis of the Ruhr has developed magnificently. It is the largest city in Westphalia, a territory originally ruled by Saxon tribes and which, after their Christianisation in Carolingian times, gave rise around 1180 to the Duchy of Westphalia and Engern, becoming part of the Prussian state in 1815 as the Province of Westphalia with Münster as its capital. Today Dortmund is also the largest city in the Ruhr region both in terms of area and population, and it ranks well ahead of the other cities of the region in the Zukunftsatlas Deutschland rankings. Its best-known flagship is top-flight football club Borussia Dortmund, which for years has been the most successful German football club alongside FC Bayern München, but the city has far more to offer than that. Long known chiefly for steel (Hoesch), coal (Phoenix) and beer (DAB) - Dortmund has had an established brewing tradition since the Middle Ages - Dortmund today, after decades of structural change, is a centre of the insurance industry and retail trade. More than 50,000 students are enrolled at Dortmund's six universities, including Technische Universität Dortmund, and 19 further scientific institutions, helping to establish the city's profile as a major centre for science and high technology. The city's landmark is the Dortmunder U-Turm, a high-rise built in 1926/1927 as the "fermentation and storage cellar" of the Dortmunder Union Brauerei on the western edge of Dortmund's city centre, which today houses, among other things, the Museum Ostwall and the Hartware Medienkunstverein.

Dortmund's beginnings lie in the 10th century, when the settlement developed into an imperial palatinate. The first mention of Dortmund's market rights dates from the year 990. In the 11th century, according to legend, Reinoldus became the city's patron saint. A city wall existed by 1150, and in the mid-12th century Konrad III granted Dortmund its city rights, which were confirmed in 1236 by Emperor Friedrich II for the imperial city [burgus] Tremonia - a name that is still occasionally used for Dortmund in Romance-language countries today. In 1293 the city was granted brewing rights, and an unparalleled development of the beer industry within the city began.

In the Great Dortmund Feud, the imperial city of Dortmund found itself under attack and siege from 1388 to 1389 by troops of the Archbishop of Köln, the Counts of the Mark and 20 other cities. The costs of the feud and the peace settlement, around 60,000 guilders, were so high that it is widely assumed this event triggered Dortmund's temporary decline over the following centuries. At the latest after the Thirty Years' War, in which the city suffered severe damage and was left completely in debt, Dortmund sank into insignificance.

With industrialisation in the 19th century, a new, gigantic boom began under Prussian rule. With the opening of the Cologne-Minden railway in 1847, the city became an important transport hub - a role it has retained to this day - and developed into a centre of coal mining and steel processing. A further significant contribution to economic development came in 1899 with the opening of the Dortmund-Ems-Kanal and, with it, the harbour.

Today Dortmund is a city that has undergone a much-praised structural transformation. Between 1960 and 1994, the number of people employed in industry fell from 127,000 to 37,000. New jobs were created mainly in information processing as well as at banks and insurance companies. Close to the university, the Technologiezentrum opened in 1984 as one of the first of its kind in Germany. With initiatives such as the Stadtkrone-Ost project or the dortmund-project, new leading industries were developed for the city; Dortmund now ranks among the leading logistics locations in Germany, is a major retail centre, and remains one of the largest locations in Germany for plant and machinery engineering.

Dortmund's architecture is strongly shaped by post-war and postmodern styles. From medieval times, practically only the Adlerturm and its adjoining watchtower, the Steinerne Turm, survive as remnants of the historic, more than 800-year-old city wall. Defining buildings in Dortmund today, alongside a cluster of mid-rise structures such as the Dortmunder U, RWE Tower, IWO-Hochhaus, Sparkassen-Hochhaus, Telekom-Hochhaus, Harenberg City-Center, Ellipson and Westfalentower, include the Konzerthaus Dortmund, the Thier-Einkaufsgalerie and, of course, the Westfalenhalle, built in the 1920s, which was for a time the largest hall building in Europe. Important city squares include the Alte Markt, the Friedensplatz, the Hansa-Platz and the Borsig-Platz; as for city parks, the Westfalenpark, opened in 1959 for the Bundesgartenschau, is one of several key spots for urban recreation and is the venue for the summer music festival Juicy Beats (electro, worldbeat, indie, hip-hop, house, techno, reggae), which draws more than 50,000 visitors. True to its Westphalian tradition, Dortmund's city area contains numerous former noble seats, including Hörder Burg, Haus Dellwig, the moated castle Haus Rodenberg and, in particular, Haus Bodelschwingh.

On Dortmund's outskirts, on the borders with the Sauerland and Münsterland, lie the extensive woodland areas of Bolmke, Stadtwald Bittermark, Schwerter Wald, Niederhofer Wald, Grävingholz, Kurler Busch, Rahmer Wald and the Wannebachtal. These are excellently accessible via hiking and cycling paths and make it easy to forget you're in a big city. One of the most interesting spots and an important local recreation area is also the district of Syburg, with its castle ruins, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Denkmal, an open-air stage, a nature trail on mining history and, of course, the Spielcasino Hohensyburg, Germany's highest-turnover casino, which sits high above the Hengstey-See and from whose halls you can gaze far across the Ruhr valley near Hagen.

Well-known sons and daughters of Dortmund include Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, Wilhelm Overbeck, Gustav Mallinckrodt, Wilhelm Canaris, Helene Wessel, Rudolf Platte, Arnold Marquis, Dettmar Cramer, Hans Tilkowski, Lothar Emmerich, Siegfried Held, Dieter Pfaff, Dietmar Bär, Yasemin Şamdereli, Annegret Richter, Jörg Thadeusz, Peter Thorwarth, Michael Zorc, Thorsten Fink, Christian Nerlinger, Lars Ricken, Kevin Großkreutz and Marco Reus.

Holzwickede:

Holzwickede is a municipality within the Kreis Unna. It borders directly on the south of Dortmund Airport's grounds and is easily reached by car via the Kreuz Dortmund/Unna interchange on the A1/A44 motorways and the B1 feeder road. Holzwickede station lies on the Dortmund-Soest and Hagen-Hamm rail routes.

Holzwickede's development is closely tied to the industrial history of the Ruhr region, and in particular to that of Dortmund. The settlement, a strategically important point between the Ruhr and the Lippe, was already occupied by the Romans; according to legend, the Nibelungen followed the so-called Römerweg over the ridge of the neighbouring Ardeygebirge, and since the High Middle Ages a section of the Way of St James to Santiago de Compostela has also run through here.

The name of the district of Opherdycke first appears in documents of Werden Abbey near Essen around the year 1100; in this district, the first coal deposits were discovered in 1575. Holzwickede's mining history lasted until 31 May 1951, when the Zeche Caroline mine was finally shut down. A residential area has been developing on the former mine site since 2006, while a new commercial area is being developed near the airport.

The Emscherquellhof in Holzwickede is a former farmstead built around 1800. It is the source of the Emscher, which flows right across the Ruhr region and joins the Rhine at Duisburg. Today the farmstead serves as a seminar and exhibition venue. Other excursion destinations in this town on the edge of the Ruhr valley, also known as a hiker's paradise, include the Hilgenbaum, the moated castle Wasserschloss Opherdycke as well as the church of Opherdycke, the Bachtal, the woodland area Schöne Flöte, the allotment garden site am Oelpfad and the 130er Denkmal at the Kellerkopf.