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Bielefeld

City in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

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Bielefeld , Germany: Theather
Zefram · CC BY 2.0 de

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The historical centre of the city is situated in the Ravensberg Basin north of the Teutoburg Forest hill range, but modern Bielefeld extends across the range and further south into the flat Westphalian Basin. The city is situated on the Hermannsweg, a hiking trail that runs for 156 km along the ridges of the Teutoburg Forest.

Bielefeld is home to a significant number of internationally operating companies, including Dr. Oetker, DMG Mori (former Gildemeister), Möller Group, Goldbeck and Schüco. It has a university and several technical colleges (Fachhochschulen). Bielefeld is also known for the Bethel Foundation.

History

Founded in 1214 by Count Hermann IV of Ravensberg to guard a pass crossing the Teutoburg Forest, Bielefeld was the "city of linen" as a minor member of the Hanseatic League, known for bleachfields into the 19th century. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 turned Ravensberg, from 1719 Minden-Ravensberg, into a part of Brandenburg–Prussia. When Prussia lost its western territories to French control in 1807, Bielefeld became part of the Kingdom of Westphalia. In 1813 the region reverted back to the Kingdom of Prussia, and following the defeat of France and the Congress of Vienna in 1815 Bielefeld was incorporated into the newly formed Province of Westphalia.

After the Cologne-Minden railway opened in 1849, the Bozi brothers constructed the first large mechanised spinning mill in 1851. The Ravensberg Spinning Mill was built from 1854 to 1857, and metal works began to open in the 1860s.

Founded in 1867 as a Bielefeld sewing machine repair company, Dürkoppwerke AG employed 1,665 people in 1892; it used Waffenamt code "WaA547" from 1938 to 1939 as the Dürkopp-Werke, and merged with other Bielefeld companies to form Dürkopp Adler AG in 1990.

Between 1904 and 1930, Bielefeld grew, opening a rebuilt railway station, a municipal theatre, and finally, the Rudolf-Oetker-Halle concert hall, renowned for its excellent acoustics. The Dürkopp car was produced from 1898 to 1927. After printing emergency money (German: Notgeld) in 1923 during the inflation in the Weimar Republic, Bielefeld was one of several towns that printed very attractive and highly collectable banknotes with designs on silk, linen and velvet. These pieces were issued by the Bielefeld Stadtsparkasse (town's savings bank) and were sent all around the world in the early 1920s. These pieces are known as Stoffgeld – that is, money made from fabric.

The town's synagogue was burned in 1938 during the Kristallnacht pogrom carried out against Jewish population. In 1944, Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses of the USAAF bombed the gas works at Bielefeld on 20 September and the marshaling yard on 30 September; Bielefeld was bombed again on 7 October and the RAF bombed the town on the night of 4/5 December. On 17 January 1945, B-17s bombed the nearby Paderborn marshalling yard, and the railway viaduct in the suburb of Schildesche. On 14 March the RAF bombed the viaduct again, wrecking it. This was the first use of the RAF's 10 tonne Grand Slam bomb. American troops entered the city in April 1945.

Due to the presence of a number of barracks built during the 1930s and its location next to the main East-West Autobahn in northern Germany, after World War II Bielefeld became a headquarters town for the fighting command of the British Army of the Rhine – BAOR (the administrative and strategic headquarters were at Rheindahlen near the Dutch border). Until the 1980s there was a large British presence in the barracks housing the headquarters of the British First Corps and support units, as well as schools, NAAFI shops, officers' and sergeants' messes and several estates of married quarters. The British presence was heavily scaled back after the reunification of Germany and most of the infrastructure has disappeared, with the final departure in 2020.

As a part of larger municipal reforms in North Rhine-Westphalia, the city of Bielefeld was merged with the surrounding district of Bielefeld to form the “district-free city” of Bielefeld on 1 January 1973. This created the administrative structures and borders that the city has to this day. For the first time, Bielefeld was extended to the south side of the Teutoburg Forest. The city’s population rose from 167,000 to 320,000 and its area increased more than five-fold, from 48 to 259 km².

Starting in 1994, the city has been the subject of the humorous Bielefeld conspiracy, which satirises conspiracy theories by claiming that the city does not exist.

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