FKK Villa Verena Dortmund [RTC] (D)

Dortmund

Name origin

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

First documented mention

882 AD

Population

588,000

Area

280.71 km²

Federal state

Nordrhein-Westfalen

Administrative region

Arnsberg

District

/

Vehicle registration

DO

River

Ruhr, Emscher

The club FKK Villa Verena is located in Dortmund-Oberdorstfeld.

"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 the Kaufingerstraße in München, the Zeil in Frankfurt am Main and the Schildergasse in Köln one of the most frequented shopping streets in Germany - as they walk within the clearly recognisable path of the Wallring through Dortmund's city centre. It no longer exists. The most traditionally rich of the three (Dortmund - Essen - Duisburg) great economic and trading centres of the Ruhrgebiet, once an important imperial and Hanseatic city along the Hellweg, had to endure the complete destruction of its city centre more so than other cities. On 12 March 1945, the heaviest conventional air offensive against a city in the entire course of the Second World War in Europe was flown; Dortmund's city centre was so massively shattered that after the war there was debate about whether it would be better to rebuild the city elsewhere. The four historic city churches in the old town - including the Reinoldikirche, named after Saint Reinoldus, the city's patron saint, who according to legend was a nephew of Karl der Große - survived miraculously, however.

Seen in this light, the once bombed-out Ruhrgebiet metropolis has developed magnificently. It is the largest city in Westfalen, a territory originally ruled by Saxon tribes which, after their Christianisation in Carolingian times, gave rise to the Duchy of Westfalen and Engern around 1180 and was incorporated into the Prussian state in 1815 as the Provinz Westfalen with its capital Münster. Meanwhile it is also the largest city in the Ruhrgebiet both in terms of area and population, and ranks far ahead of the other cities in this region in the Zukunftsaltlas Deutschland ranking. Its best-known flagship is the top-flight football club Borussia Dortmund, which alongside FC Bayern München has for years been the most successful German football club, but the city has much more to offer. Known above all for steel (Hoesch), coal (Phoenix) and beer (DAB) - Dortmund has had an established brewing tradition since the Middle Ages - Dortmund today, after a long-standing structural transformation, is a centre of the insurance industry and retail trade. At Dortmund's six universities, including the Technische Universität Dortmund, and 19 other scientific institutions, more than 50,000 students are enrolled, contributing to the city's profile as a significant centre for science and high technology. The city's landmark is the Dortmunder U-Turm, a high-rise built in 1926/1927 as a "fermentation and storage cellar" for 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 middle of the 12th century Konrad III granted Dortmund its town charter, which was confirmed in 1236 by Kaiser Friedrich II for the Free Imperial City [burgus] Tremonia - a name that is still occasionally used for the city of Dortmund in Romance-language countries today. In 1293 the city was granted brewing rights, and an unprecedented development of the beer industry within the city began.

In the Great Dortmund Feud, the Free Imperial City of Dortmund found itself subjected to attacks and a siege by troops of the Archbishop of Köln, the Märkisch counts and 20 other cities in the years 1388 to 1389. 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 in the following centuries. At the latest after the Thirty Years' War, in which the city suffered severe damage and was completely in debt, Dortmund sank into insignificance.

With industrialisation in the 19th century, a new gigantic upswing then began in Prussian times. The city became an important transport hub with the opening of the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn in 1847, a role it has retained to this day, and developed into a centre of coal mining and steel processing. Another significant contribution to economic development was made in 1899 with the opening of the Dortmund-Ems-Kanal and thus the port.

Today Dortmund is a city that has undergone a highly praised structural transformation. Between 1960 and 1994, the number of industrial employees fell from 127,000 to 37,000 people. New jobs were created mainly in the field of information processing as well as at banks and insurance companies. In spatial proximity to the university, the Technologiezentrum was 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 is now among the leading logistics locations in Germany and is a major retail centre as well as remaining one of the largest locations in Germany for plant and machinery engineering.

Dortmund's architecture is strongly shaped by post-war and postmodern style. From medieval times, practically only the Adlerturm and its adjacent watchtower, the Steinerner Turm, survive as part of the historic city wall, which is over 800 years old. Defining buildings in Dortmund today, alongside a cluster of mid-rise buildings 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 at times the largest hall building in Europe. Important city squares include the Alte Markt, the Friedensplatz, the Hansa-Platz and the Borsig-Platz; as a city park there is the Westfalenpark, opened in 1959 for the Bundesgartenschau, the venue for the summer music festival Juicy Beats (Electro, Worldbeat, Indie, Hip-Hop, House, Techno, Reggae) with more than 50,000 visitors, one of several important places for urban recreation. In keeping with its Westphalian tradition, Dortmund's city area contains numerous former aristocratic residences, including the Hörder Burg, Haus Dellwig, the moated castle Haus Rodenberg and in particular Haus Bodelschwingh.

In Dortmund's periphery, on the borders with the Sauerland and Münsterland, lie the extensive forest areas 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 quickly make one forget city life. One of the most interesting places and an important local recreation area is also the district of Syburg with its castle ruins, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Denkmal, a natural stage, a trail on mining history and of course the Spielcasino Hohensyburg, the highest-turnover casino in Germany, which sits enthroned high above the Hengstey-See and from whose halls one can let the eye wander far across the Ruhrtal near Hagen.

Among Dortmund's well-known sons and daughters are 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.