Germany
115-595: The occupation of the Ruhr (German: Ruhrbesetzung ) was the period from 11 January 1923 to 25 August 1925 when French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr region of Weimar Republic Germany. The occupation of the heavily industrialized Ruhr district came in response to Germany's repeated defaults on the reparations payments required under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles . The French and Belgians intended to force Germany to supply
230-415: A Roman Catholic, married Martha Berta Wirtz (born 1879), daughter of Hamburg merchant Hugo Wirtz. They had three sons and two daughters. Cuno was employed by the federal Treasury Department in 1907, initially as Regierungsassessor , was promoted in 1910 to Regierungsrat and then in 1912 to Geheimer Regierungsrat . His tasks mainly involved preparing parliamentary bills and presenting them to
345-500: A decisive role in the development of coal mining in the Ruhr. According to the Regionalverband Ruhr (RVR, Ruhr Regional Association), 37.6% of the region's area is built up. A total of 40.7% of the region's land remains in agricultural use. Forests account for 17.6%, and bodies of water and other types of land use occupy the rest. The inclusion of four mainly rural districts in the otherwise mainly industrial Ruhr helps to explain
460-667: A depreciation of the French franc . France increasingly looked towards German reparations payments as a way to stabilize its economy. Due to delays in reparations deliveries, French and Belgian troops, with British approval, occupied Duisburg and Düsseldorf in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland on 8 March 1921. In the London ultimatum of 5 May 1921, the Allies attempted to enforce their payment plan for 132 billion gold marks by threatening to occupy
575-469: A director at HAPAG. In 1926 he once again became its director general. He was involved in negotiations about the release of German property impounded in the U.S. during the war and in working towards the merger with the Norddeutsche Lloyd shipping company, which took place in 1930. During the 1925 German presidential election , Cuno was outspoken in his support for Paul von Hindenburg , rather than
690-450: A large public funeral following an incident at the Krupp works in which 13 striking workers were killed by French troops. Krupp was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined 100 million marks, but he served only 7 months and was released when passive resistance was called off. The French also set up a blockade between the Ruhr and the rest of Germany. Deliveries of food, which were not included in
805-473: A lesser extent between either club and/or VfL Bochum , MSV Duisburg or Rot-Weiss Essen ( kleines Revierderby ). With 22 universities and colleges and more than 250,000 students, the Ruhr region has the highest density of further education establishments anywhere in Germany. These include five universities alone in the cities of Bochum, Duisburg, Dortmund, Essen and Witten . In addition, Folkwang University of
920-553: A march on Berlin to overthrow the government, but on 8 November 1923 Adolf Hitler and members of the Nazi Party broke into their meeting and began the Beer Hall Putsch . They justified the attempt, which brought them wide public attention for the first time, in part by the "chaos" caused by the occupation of the Ruhr. The French occupation of the Ruhr accelerated the formation of right-wing parties. The ruling centre-left coalition
1035-613: A nationwide wave of strikes against the Cuno government , which resigned on 12 August 1923. Germany's new government, led by Gustav Stresemann of the German People's Party announced the end of passive resistance on 26 September. Two months later, the government replaced the Papiermark with the Rentenmark and restored the value of Germany's currency. In order to handle the economic fallout from
1150-420: A non-aggression pact with Germany. During World War II, the bombing of the Ruhr in 1940–1944 caused a loss of 30% of plant and equipment (compared to 15–20% for German industry as a whole). A second battle of the Ruhr (6/7 October 1944 – end of 1944) began with an attack on Dortmund . The devastating bombing raids of Dortmund on 12 March 1945 with 1,108 aircraft – 748 Lancasters, 292 Halifaxes, 68 Mosquitos –
1265-506: A party. Politically, he was quite far from the president, Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert , who selected him as chancellor. Cuno had a somewhat aloof position towards the Republic and its parliamentary system. He held the Reichstag in fairly low esteem and felt the bickering between the parties to be distasteful. Cuno formed a government composed of six non-party economists plus two members each of
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#17328483446801380-606: A policy of passive resistance and provided financial assistance to the workers and firms affected by it. The payments, made possible primarily by printing money, began the runup to the German hyperinflation of 1923. After his government resigned in August 1923, Cuno returned to the Hamburg America Line. Wilhelm Cuno was born on 2 July 1876 in Suhl , in what was then Prussian Saxony and
1495-574: A result of the occupation. The government paid for its support of idled workers and businesses primarily by printing paper money. This contributed to the hyperinflation that brought major hardships to Germans across the country. After Germany successfully stabilized its currency in late 1923, France and Belgium, facing economic and international pressures of their own, accepted the 1924 Dawes Plan drawn up by an international team of experts. It restructured and lowered Germany's war reparations payments and led to France and Belgium withdrawing their troops from
1610-505: A special status for the Rhineland and the Ruhr comparable to that of the Saar region, in which affiliation with Germany would have been purely formal and France would have assumed a dominant position. The government of the United Kingdom categorised the occupation of the Ruhr as illegal. The United States government condemned the occupation as a reprehensible "policy of force". The occupation
1725-582: A way of testing the will of the Allies to enforce the treaty. Raymond Poincaré , the French prime minister, hoped for joint Anglo-French economic sanctions against Germany but opposed military action. By December 1922, however, he saw coal for French steel production and payments in money as laid out in the Treaty of Versailles draining away. French and Belgian delegates on the Reparation Commission urged occupying
1840-573: Is now in Thuringia . He was the son of the administrative civil servant August George Wilhelm Cuno (1848–1915) and his wife Catherina Elisabeth Theresia, née Daske (1852–1878). He studied law in Berlin and Heidelberg and was awarded a Juris Doctor . He was a member of K.D.St.V. Arminia Heidelberg, a Catholic student fraternity that is a member of the Union of Catholic German Student Fraternities . In 1906, Cuno,
1955-445: Is really no uniform regiolect that justifies designation as a single regiolect. It is rather a working-class sociolect with influences from the various dialects found in the area and changing even with the professions of the workers. A major common influence stems from the coal mining tradition of the area. For example, quite a few locals prefer to call the Ruhr either "Pott", which is a derivate of "Pütt" (pitmen's term for mine ; cp.
2070-779: Is the Klavier-Festival Ruhr in the Ruhr area with 50 to 80 events of classical and jazz music. With more than 50 museums, Ruhr has one of the largest variety of museums in Europe. Industrial Museum The city of Essen (representing the Ruhr) was selected as European Capital of Culture for 2010 by the Council of the European Union . In association football , the Revierderby is the rivalry between Borussia Dortmund and FC Schalke 04 , and to
2185-547: The Dawes Plan , which led to the withdrawal of the French and Belgian troops from the Ruhr in 1925. However, the occupation of the Ruhr caused several direct and indirect consequences to the German economy and government, including accelerating the growth of right wing parties due to the Weimar government's inability to successfully resolve the problem. On 7 March 1936, Adolf Hitler took a massive gamble by sending 30,000 troops into
2300-685: The Encyclopædia Britannica . Even after World War II, the term "Ruhr" may not have been in general use for the region: it was defined in Documents on American Foreign Relations (1948): "For the purposes of the present Agreement: (i) the expression 'Ruhr' means the areas, as presently constituted, in Land North Rhine–Westphalia, listed in the Annex to this Agreement." However, Lawrence K. Cecil and Philip Hauge Abelson still write in 1967: "In
2415-729: The European Route of Industrial Heritage in the Ruhr area. Ruhr is known for its numerous cultural institutions, many of which enjoy international reputation. Ruhr has three major opera houses and more than 10 theaters and stages. There are special classical music halls like the Bochumer Symphoniker, the Duisburg Mercatorhalle, the Saalbau Essen or the Dortmunder Philharmoniker . Each year in spring time, there
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#17328483446802530-513: The German People's Party , German Democratic Party and Centre Party , and one from the Bavarian People's Party . The government was referred to alternatively as a "business ministry", an "economic government" or "cabinet of personalities", emphasizing that it was not the result of a coalition between the parliamentary parties. Hopes were high that a government of experts, led by a man with excellent connections abroad, would make headway in
2645-577: The Nazis . On the night of Sunday, 10 June 1923, two Frenchmen were shot dead in Dortmund by unknown persons. At midday the occupying forces imposed a curfew from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Dortmund residents who had gone on an excursion into the surrounding countryside were not informed of the measure. Six men from Dortmund and a Swiss citizen were shot without warning on their return. The burial of the Dortmunders on 15 June
2760-520: The Reichstag . During World War I , Cuno was involved in organizing food supplies for all of Germany, first directing the Imperial Grain Agency from its inception in early 1915 until July 1916. It was responsible for the collection and distribution of grain and flour throughout Germany. He then was attached to State Secretary (i.e. Minister) Adolf Tortilowicz von Batocki-Friebe to help organize
2875-526: The Ruhr area , sometimes Ruhr district , Ruhr region , or Ruhr valley , is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia , Germany . With a population density of 2,800/km and a population of over 5 million (2017), it is the largest urban area in Germany and the third of the European Union . It consists of several large cities bordered by the rivers Ruhr to the south, Rhine to
2990-492: The United Kingdom . It has been claimed that immigrants came to the Ruhr from over 140 countries. Almost all their descendants today speak German as a first language, and for various reasons, they do not identify with their Polish roots and traditions, often their Polish family names only remain as a sign of their past. The Industrial Heritage Trail ( German : Route der Industriekultur ) links tourist attractions related to
3105-567: The bow echo that hit the cities on June 9, 2014, and caused tens of thousands of trees to fall which was publicly dubbed the "Pfingststurm" (German for "Whitsun storm"). Winters have become more mild which poses a risk for crops such as apples whose blooms are vulnerable to late freezes if bud break happens too early. The ten largest cities of the Ruhr: The local regiolect of German is commonly called Ruhrdeutsch ( Ruhrgebietsdeutsch, Ruhrpottdeutsch, Ruhrpottisch, Ruhrpöttisch ) although there
3220-527: The imperial city of Dortmund were concentrated along the Hellweg from the Rhineland to Westphalia . Since the 19th century, these cities have grown together into a large complex with a vast industrial landscape, inhabited by some 7.3 million people (including Düsseldorf and Wuppertal , large cities that are nearby but officially not part of the Ruhr area). The Ruhr area has no administrative centre; each city in
3335-627: The west bank of the Rhine was occupied by the Allies , and the east bank within 50 kilometres of the river – which included the Ruhr – was demilitarized (Article 42). In addition, Germany was forced to accept responsibility for the damages caused in the war and was obliged to pay reparations to the Allies. Since the war in the west was fought predominately on French soil, the bulk of the reparations were owed to France. The total sum demanded from Germany – 226 billion gold marks ( US $ 1,093 billion in 2024) –
3450-409: The 132 billion figure as impossible for Germany to pay, successfully pressured French Premier Édouard Herriot into a series of concessions to Germany. The British diplomat Sir Eric Phipps commented that "The London Conference was for the French man in the street one long Calvary as he saw M. Herriot abandoning one by one the cherished possessions of French preponderance on the Reparation Commission,
3565-414: The 1950s and 1960s, as very rapid economic growth (9% a year) created a heavy demand for coal and steel. After 1973, Germany was hard hit by a worldwide economic crisis, soaring oil prices, and increasing unemployment, which jumped from 300,000 in 1973 to 1.1 million in 1975. The Ruhr region was hardest hit, as the easy-to-reach coal mines became exhausted, and German coal was no longer competitive. Likewise
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3680-500: The A44 and the A52 have several missing links, in various stages of planning. Some missing sections are currently in construction or planned to be constructed in the near future. Wilhelm Cuno Wilhelm Carl Josef Cuno (2 July 1876 – 3 January 1933) was a German businessman and politician who was the chancellor of Germany from 1922 to 1923 for a total of 264 days. His tenure included
3795-670: The Allied Powers which would take into consideration what Germany was financially capable of paying, the Reparations Commission set up the Dawes committee, headed by the American economist Charles Dawes . It recommended that total reparations be reduced to 50 billion marks from 132 billion. Germany also received a loan of 800 million gold marks, financed primarily by American banks. British Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald , who viewed
3910-658: The Arts is an internationally acclaimed art college with its base in the Ruhr region. Furthermore, the universities are not the only places in the Ruhr region where academic qualifications can be obtained. There are 17 different universities of applied sciences which offer students to have the opportunity to undertake practice-relevant and qualified studies in various subjects, such as economics, logistics, administration or management. The Ruhr area has 5 major universities in 6 cities with about 120,000 students. The three largest universities (Ruhr University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, and
4025-645: The Dawes Plan in 1924. Despite his disagreements with the United Kingdom, Poincaré desired to preserve the Anglo-French entente and moderated his aims to a degree. His major goal was winning the extraction of reparation payments from Germany. His inflexible methods and authoritarian personality led to the failure of his diplomacy. After Poincaré's coalition lost the 1924 French legislative election to Édouard Herriot 's Radical -led coalition, France began making concessions to Germany. According to historian Sally Marks,
4140-522: The Duchies of Cleves and Berg and the territories of the bishop of Münster and the archbishop of Cologne . The region included some villages and castles, and was mainly agrarian: its loess soil made it one of the richer parts of western Germany. The free imperial city of Dortmund was the trading and cultural centre, lying on the Hellweg , an important east–west trading route, that also brought prosperity to
4255-508: The English "pit"), or "Revier". During the nineteenth century, the Ruhr attracted up to 500,000 ethnic Poles , Masurians and Silesians from East Prussia and Silesia in a migration known as Ostflucht (flight from the east). By 1925, the Ruhrgebiet had around 3,800,000 inhabitants. Most of the new inhabitants came from Eastern Europe, but immigrants also came from France , Ireland , and
4370-486: The French declared it to be a deliberate breach of the agreements and on 11 January 1923 ordered its troops (later joined by Belgians) to occupy the Ruhr . The move, widely seen as illegal even outside Germany, caused the outraged Cuno government to call for passive resistance. Reparation shipments to France and Belgium were stopped, the mines were told not to make any more deliveries to the countries, and civil servants and railroad personnel were instructed to disobey orders by
4485-546: The French was further complicated by the fact that the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syndicate moved its headquarters out of the occupied district and thus from control by MICUM. Coal taken out of the Ruhr dropped to less than the French had been receiving previous to the occupation. The Germans also stopped importing iron ore, which caused significant financial losses in the French iron mining region of Lorraine . Even though relatively little violence accompanied
4600-654: The German Reichstag, the plan went into effect on 1 September 1924. The financial burden on Germany was eased, and its international relations improved. On 3 September 1924, the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission returned control of local administration and the economy to the Germans. An amnesty was decreed, and most outward signs of the occupation largely disappeared from public view. The last French troops evacuated Düsseldorf and Duisburg along with
4715-483: The Germans' refusal to obey their orders, that proved to be impossible. They arrested the leaders of the strikes and began to bring in their own workers. Their attempt to ship out ready reserves of coal failed when German railroad officials and workers walked off the job and in some places removed signage from stations and signal boxes. The French then took control of the railroads in the Ruhr, although it took them several months to get them running properly. The situation for
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4830-523: The Germans. In order to determine the capacity of the smelters and mines to fulfil the reparations, the Inter-Allied Mission for Control of Factories and Mines (MICUM) also moved in with the French and Belgian expeditionary corps. MICUM consisted of 72 French, Belgian and Italian experts, most of whom were engineers. It is not entirely clear whether Poincaré was concerned with more than just providing reparations. According to some historians, he sought
4945-458: The Reparation Commission declared Germany in default. Particularly galling to the French was that the timber quota the Germans defaulted on was based on an assessment of capacity the Germans made themselves and subsequently lowered. The Allies believed that the government of Chancellor Wilhelm Cuno , who had succeeded Joseph Wirth in November 1922, had defaulted on the timber deliveries deliberately as
5060-624: The Rhineland . As Hitler and other Nazis admitted, the French army alone could have destroyed the Wehrmacht . The French passed the problem to the British, who found that the Germans had the right to "enter their own backyard", and no action was taken. In the League of Nations , the Soviet delegate Maxim Litvinov was the only one who proposed economic sanctions against Germany. All restraint on German rearmament
5175-507: The Ruhr as a way of forcing Germany to pay more, while the British delegate favoured lowering the payments. The conflict was brought to a head by a German default on coal deliveries in early January 1923, which was the thirty-fourth coal default in the previous thirty-six months. After much deliberation, Poincaré decided to occupy the Ruhr on 11 January 1923 in order to exact the reparations. Poincaré knew that it would cost France as well as Germany and told reporters on 29 January 1923: Paralyzing
5290-407: The Ruhr by August 1925. The occupation of the Ruhr contributed to the growth of radical right-wing movements in Germany. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party used the occupation as part of their justification for the Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, which brought them wide public attention for the first time. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) which formally ended World War I ,
5405-452: The Ruhr if Germany refused to accept the terms. The German government of Chancellor Joseph Wirth accepted the ultimatum on 11 May and began its "policy of fulfilment" ( Erfüllungspolitik ). By attempting to meet the payments, it intended to show the Allies that the demands were beyond Germany's economic means. As a consequence of Germany's failure to make timber deliveries in December 1922,
5520-472: The Ruhr is structured differently from monocentric urban regions such as Munich , which developed through the rapid absorption of smaller towns and villages by the most significant city among them. Instead in the Ruhr, the individual city boroughs and urban districts of the Ruhr grew in a rapid and parallel fashion independently of one another during the Industrial Revolution . The population density of
5635-583: The Ruhr occupation, Stresemann made extensive use of a second enabling act of 13 October. Chancellor Stresemann returned to the policy of fulfilment introduced by Joseph Wirth. Stresemann's goal, however, was to improve international relations by making a good faith effort to comply with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles . He ordered striking workers (from the Cuno strikes) back to work and announced Germany's intention to once again make reparations payments. The moves restored enough international confidence in Germany so that when Stresemann sought discussions with
5750-583: The Ruhr steel industry went into sharp decline, as its prices were undercut by lower-cost suppliers such as Japan. The welfare system provided a safety net for the large number of unemployed workers, and many factories reduced their labor force and began to concentrate on high-profit specialty items. As demand for coal decreased after 1958, the area went through phases of structural crisis (see steel crisis ) and industrial diversification, first developing traditional heavy industry, then moving into service industries and high technology. The air and water pollution of
5865-592: The Ruhr" was published in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States . The 1926 Encyclopædia Britannica , in addition to its article on the river Ruhr, has a further article on "RUHR, the name given to a district of Westphalia, Germany". Thus the name "Ruhr" was given to the region (as a short form of "Ruhr District" or "Ruhr Valley") only a few years before the publication of this edition of
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#17328483446805980-746: The Ruhr's coal and steel industries, was created as a condition for the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany . During the Cold War , the Western allies anticipated that any Red Army thrust into Western Europe would begin in the Fulda Gap and have the Ruhr as a primary target. Increased German control of the area was limited by the pooling of German coal and steel into the multinational European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. The nearby Saar region , containing much of Germany's remaining coal deposits,
6095-508: The Ruhr, who were known as Ruhrpolen since. The Poles were treated as second class citizens. In 1899 this led to a revolt in Herne of young Polish workers, who later established a Workers' Union. Skilled workers in the mines were often housed in "miners' colonies", built by the mining firms. By 1870, over 3 million people lived in the Ruhrgebiet and the new coal-mining district had become the largest industrial region of Europe. During World War I
6210-427: The Ruhr. By 1950, after the virtual completion of the by-then much watered-down "level of industry" plans, equipment had been removed from 706 manufacturing plants in the west, and steel production capacity had been reduced by 6.7 million tons. Dismantling finally ended in 1951. In all, less than 5% of the industrial base was dismantled. The Ruhr was at the centre of the German economic miracle Wirtschaftswunder of
6325-514: The Ruhrgebiet functioned as Germany's central weapon factory. At a big Essen company, F. Krupp A.G., the number of employees rose from 40,000 to 120,000 or more, in four years. They were partly women, partly forced labourers. In the March 1920 Kapp Putsch , nationalist and monarchist elements with the armed support of Freikorps units attempted to overthrow the government of the Weimar Republic . It
6440-577: The Transport and General Workers Union (London 1923). Yet "The report of a deputation from the Transport and General Workers' Union which spent a fortnight examining the problems in the Ruhr Valley", published in The Economic Review , Volume 8, 1923, is still using the traditional term. In the same year, "Objections by the United States to discriminatory regulations on exports from the occupied region of
6555-449: The University of Duisburg-Essen) opened an alliance called " UA Ruhr ". Students enrolled at one of the UA Ruhr universities can attend lectures and seminars at all three institutions without having to pay a visiting student fee. Consequently, they have many options to specialize in and to explore their chosen disciplines in depth. The UA Ruhr has three liaison offices for interested students in New York City , Moscow and São Paulo . With
6670-408: The Versailles Treaty. The German government responded with a policy of passive resistance, letting workers and civil servants refuse orders and instructions by the occupation forces. Production and transport came to a standstill and the financial consequences contributed to German hyperinflation . After passive resistance was called off in late 1923, Germany implemented a currency reform and negotiated
6785-493: The Versailles treaty. Finally, Poincaré argued that once the chains that had bound Germany in Versailles were destroyed, it was inevitable that Germany would plunge the world into another world war. Between 11 and 16 January 1923, French and Belgian troops under the command of French General Jean Degoutte , initially numbering 60,000 men and later climbing to 100,000, occupied the entire Ruhr area as far east as Dortmund . The French immediately took over civil administration from
6900-448: The War Office of Food ( Kriegsernährungsamt ). In late 1916, Cuno was put in charge of the department of war-related economic issues at the Treasury Department. At the request of Albert Ballin , general director of the Hamburg America Line (HAPAG), Cuno quit the civil service to join the shipping company as a director in November 1917. After Ballin committed suicide in November 1918 in despair over Germany's defeat in World War I, Cuno
7015-437: The action would push Germany into a closer alliance with the Soviet Union . When on 12 July 1922 Germany demanded a moratorium on reparation payments, tension developed between the French government of Poincaré and the coalition government of David Lloyd George . The British Labour Party demanded peace and denounced Lloyd George as a troublemaker. It saw Germany as the martyr of the postwar period and France as vengeful and
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#17328483446807130-465: The area are largely a thing of the past although some issues take a long time to solve. In 2005 Essen was the official candidate for nomination as European Capital of Culture for 2010. The Ruhr has an oceanic climate in spite of its inland position, with winds from the Atlantic travelling over the lowlands to moderate temperature extremes, in spite of its relatively northerly latitude that sees significant variety in daylight hours. A consequence of
7245-410: The area has its own administration, although there is a supracommunal Ruhr Regional Association [ de ] institution in Essen. For 2010, the Ruhr region was one of the European Capitals of Culture . The 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica has only one definition of "Ruhr": "a river of Germany, an important right-bank tributary of the lower Rhine". The use of the term "Ruhr" for
7360-407: The arms used by adherents of right-wing paramilitary groups were clandestinely supplied by the Reichswehr , the German armed forces of the Weimar Republic. In one incident of sabotage that gained wide public attention, the National Socialist Albert Schlageter was executed by the French for destroying a section of railroad track. He became a martyr figure in Germany, most notably to Adolf Hitler and
7475-414: The article, "Exports from the Ruhr district of Germany". In 1924 the English and American press was still talking of the "French occupation of the Ruhr Valley" or "Ruhr District". A 62-page publication seems to be responsible for the use of "Ruhr" as a short form of the then more common "Ruhr District" or "Ruhr Valley": Ben Tillett, A. Creech-Jones and Samuel Warren's The Ruhr: The Report of a Deputation from
7590-403: The beginning of the occupation of the Ruhr by French and Belgian troops and the period in which inflation in Germany accelerated towards hyperinflation . After beginning his career in the civil service, Cuno helped organize Germany's food supply during the early years of World War I before he went to work for the Hamburg America shipping company in 1917. Because of his economic expertise, he
7705-415: The bigger European cities as Amsterdam , Brussels , Paris , Vienna or Zürich . The Ruhr area also contains the longest tram system in the world, with tram and Stadtbahn services from Witten to Krefeld as well as the Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn network. Originally the system was even bigger, it was possible to travel from Unna to Bad Honnef without using railway or bus services. The Ruhr has one of
7820-405: The blockade, were nevertheless so badly disrupted that between 200,000 and 300,000 undernourished or starving children were evacuated from the Ruhr. Acts of sabotage were carried out by both nationalists and communists. They blew up train tracks and canal bridges to stop the delivery of reparations material to France, attacked French and Belgian posts and killed at least eight collaborators. Some of
7935-410: The borders of the present-day city of Oberhausen . Moreover, the urbanization also boosted the expansion of railroad connections. At the beginning of the 1880s, agricultural regions did not benefit from the newly built transport facilities as much as non-agricultural regions did. This in its turn increased inequality, and made anthropometric measurements, e.g. height, more dependent on wages . In
8050-588: The central Ruhr is about 2,100 inhabitants per square kilometre (about 5,400 per square mile)—not too high compared to other German cities. Between the constituent urban areas are relatively open suburbs and even some open land with agricultural fields. In many places however, the borders between cities in the central Ruhr are unrecognizable, blending into one urban landscape due to continuous development across them. The replanting of brownfield land has created new parks and recreation areas in recent decades. The Emscher Landschaftspark (Emscher Landscape Park) lies along
8165-440: The city's important harbour in Duisburg- Ruhrort on 25 August 1925. The French invasion of Germany did much to boost sympathy for the German republic internationally, although no action was taken at the League of Nations since the occupation was technically legal under the Treaty of Versailles. France's allies Poland and Czechoslovakia opposed the occupation because of their commercial links with Germany and their concern that
8280-447: The coal and other raw materials that were part of the reparations. With the active support of the German government, civilians in the area engaged in passive resistance and civil disobedience which largely shut down the economy of the region. Acts of sabotage and retaliation took place as well. An estimated 137 civilians were killed and 600 injured during the occupation. The ongoing economic crisis in Germany worsened considerably as
8395-429: The densest motorway networks in all of Europe, with dozens of Autobahns and similar Schnellstraßen (expressways) crossing the region. The Autobahn network is built in a grid network, with four east–west ( A2 , A40 , A42 , A44 ) and seven north–south ( A1 , A3 , A43 , A45 , A52 , A57 , A59 ) routes. The A1, A2 and A3 are mostly used by through traffic, while the other autobahns have a more regional function. Both
8510-459: The difficult talks with the Allies. They were, however, disappointed. Cuno's plan to settle the reparations issue and to stabilise the German mark in the foreign exchange market was rejected by the Allies at the urging of French prime minister and foreign minister Raymond Poincaré . When Germany defaulted on its shipments of wood and coal (made as reparations in lieu of the gold currency that it lacked),
8625-578: The districts of Wesel , Recklinghausen , Unna and Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis . The most populous cities are Dortmund (with a population of approximately 612,065), Essen (about 583,000) and Duisburg (about 497,000). In the Middle Ages, the Hellweg was an important trade route from the region of the Lower Rhine to the mountains of the Teutoburg Forest . The most important towns of the region from Duisburg to
8740-612: The exception of public transport companies serving Hamm and Kreis Unna , all such companies in the Ruhr region are run under the umbrella of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr , which provides a uniform ticket system valid for the entire area. The Ruhr region is well-integrated into the national rail system, the Deutsche Bahn , for both passenger and goods services, each city in the region has at least one train stations. The bigger central stations have hourly direct connections to
8855-399: The extraordinary nature of the event could not be met using normal parliamentary measures, passed an enabling act on 24 February. It gave the Cuno government the power to use all necessary measures to resist the French, but Cuno made relatively little use of it. The French initially thought that they could achieve their goals by simply overseeing the work in the mines and steel plants. Given
8970-460: The first place, the average person uses the term 'Ruhr' indiscriminately as the Ruhr River or the Ruhr district, two entirely different things. The Ruhr River is only one of half a dozen rivers in the Ruhr district, in addition to the Rhine. The Rhine itself runs through the heart of the Ruhr district." According to Merriam Webster's Geographical Dictionary , a standard reference on place names around
9085-511: The government in Berlin called an end to passive resistance to the Ruhr occupation, the government of Bavaria declared a state of emergency and named its minister president, Gustav Ritter von Kahr , state commissioner general with dictatorial powers. In response, German President Friedrich Ebert instituted a state of emergency throughout the country and transferred executive power to Minister of Defence Otto Gessler . Kahr and two associates advocated
9200-499: The government. Since it lacked any other means to meet the enormous costs, it printed more and more paper money. The move helped spark the hyperinflation of 1923 , during which Germany's currency, the Papiermark , fell from 17,000 to the US dollar at the beginning of the year to 4.2 trillion at the peak of the inflation. Germany's financial system broke down. There were food riots in the Ruhr and
9315-432: The hills, highly skilled workers manufactured knives, tools, weapons and harnesses, using water, coal and charcoal. As the machines became bigger and moved from water power to steam power, locally mined coal and charcoal became expensive and there was not enough of it. The Bergische industry ordered more and more coal from the new coal mining area along the Ruhr . Impressive and expensive railways were constructed through
9430-403: The hilly Wupper region, to bring coal, and later steel, in from the Ruhr, and for outward transport of finished products. By 1850, there were almost 300 coal mines in operation in the Ruhr area, in and around the central cities of Duisburg, Essen, Bochum and Dortmund. The coal was exported or processed in coking ovens into coke , used in blast furnaces , producing iron and steel. In this period
9545-663: The industrial region started in Britain only after World War I, when French and Belgian troops had occupied the Ruhr district and seized its prime industrial assets in lieu of unpaid reparations in 1923. In 1920, the International Labour Office published a report entitled Coal Production in the Ruhr District . In 1923, the Canadian Commercial Intelligence Journal , Volume 28, Issue 1013, includes
9660-434: The large proportion of agricultural and forested land. In addition, the city boroughs of the Ruhr region have outlying districts with a rural character. Seen on a map, the Ruhr could be considered a single city, since there are no visible breaks between the individual city boroughs. Thus the Ruhr is described as a polycentric urban area, which shares a similar history of urban and economic development. Because of its history,
9775-489: The long run, however, effects of the railroad proximity diminished. Consequently, the population climbed rapidly. Towns with only 2,000 to 5,000 people in the early 19th century grew in the following 100 years to over 100,000. Skilled mineworkers were recruited from other regions to the Ruhr's mines and steel mills and unskilled people started to move in. From 1860 onwards there was large-scale migration of Polish speakers from Silesia , Pomerania , East Prussia and Posen to
9890-427: The marine influence is a cloudy and wet climate with low sunshine hours. Summers normally average in the low 20s, with winters being somewhat above the freezing point. From the onset of the 21st century, the effects of global warming have become more profound. The area has been affected by severe droughts (like 2018), heat waves with temperatures above 40.0 °C (104.0 °F) (2019) and severe weather events like
10005-568: The mark to go into free fall. Attempts by the government to resume talks about reparations in May and June 1923 failed as Poincaré refused to negotiate unless passive resistance was ended first. A wave of strikes against the government began in August 1923. On 12 August 1923, Cuno and his cabinet resigned in the face of a vote of no-confidence initiated by the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Cuno retired from politics and returned to serve as
10120-469: The mining industry in the Ruhr may inflict hardships on France as well as Germany, but Germany is the greater loser and France will show the endurance necessary to outwit the German Government. ... French metallurgy is ready to suspend all operations, if necessary, to prove to the Germans that we are in earnest and intend to pursue our policy even if we suffer also. According to historian Sally Marks ,
10235-558: The name Ruhrgebiet became common. Before the coal deposits along the Ruhr were exhausted, the mining industry moved northward to the Emscher and finally to the Lippe, drilling ever deeper mines as it went. Locks built at Mülheim on the Ruhr led to the expansion of Mülheim as a port. With the construction of the Cologne-Minden railway in the late 19th century, several iron works were built within
10350-400: The occupation authorities. The Ruhr economy, the industrial heartland of Germany, came almost to a complete stop. Financial support payments by the German government to the Ruhr businesses and to the inhabitants of the occupied zone affected by firm closures, deportations and arrests quickly added up to vast sums, mostly financed by printing money. This caused inflation to increase rapidly and
10465-402: The occupation of the Ruhr "was profitable and caused neither the German hyperinflation, which began in 1922 and ballooned because of German responses to the Ruhr occupation, nor the franc's 1924 collapse, which arose from French financial practices and the evaporation of reparations". Marks suggests that the profits, after Ruhr-Rhineland occupation costs, were nearly 900 million gold marks. After
10580-454: The passive resistance, French authorities imposed between 120,000 and 150,000 sentences against resisting Germans. Some involved prison sentences, but the overwhelming majority were deportations from the Ruhr district and the Rhineland to the unoccupied part of Germany. Among those arrested were Fritz Thyssen of the Thyssen steel company for his refusal to deliver coal and Gustav Krupp , who held
10695-405: The post of foreign minister in the autumn of 1922 and minister of finance after Matthias Erzberger 's resignation in 1920, but he agreed to form a cabinet after the resignation of Joseph Wirth 's second cabinet . Cuno was appointed chancellor on 22 November 1922 by presidential decree and without a vote in the Reichstag. He was the first chancellor in the Weimar Republic who was not a member of
10810-514: The principal threat to peace in Europe. The tension between France and the United Kingdom peaked during a conference in Paris in early 1923, by which time the coalition led by Lloyd George had been replaced by the Conservatives . The Labour Party opposed the occupation of the Ruhr throughout 1923, which it rejected as French imperialism. The British Labour Party believed it had won when Poincaré accepted
10925-516: The real issue during the Ruhrkampf (Ruhr campaign), as the Germans labelled the resistance to the French occupation, was not the German defaults on coal and timber deliveries but the sanctity of the Versailles Treaty. Poincaré often argued to the British that letting the Germans defy Versailles in regards to reparations would create a precedent that would lead to the Germans dismantling the rest of
11040-545: The rebellion in early April 1920 and re-established the Weimar Republic's control of the district. An estimated 1,000 insurgents and 200 Reichswehr soldiers were killed in the battles. In March 1921, French and Belgian troops occupied Duisburg , which under the Treaty of Versailles formed part of the demilitarized Rhineland . In January 1923 the whole Ruhr district was occupied after Germany failed to fulfill part of its World War I reparation payments as agreed in
11155-406: The region is defined by coal -bearing layers from the upper Carboniferous period. The coal seams reach the surface in a strip along the river Ruhr and dip downward from the river to the north. Beneath the Lippe, the coal seams lie at a depth of 600 to 800 metres (2,000 to 2,600 feet). The thickness of the coal layers ranges from one to three metres (three to ten feet). This geological feature played
11270-528: The right of sanctions in the event of German default, the economic occupation of the Ruhr, the French-Belgian railroad Régie, and finally, the military occupation of the Ruhr within a year". Under heavy Anglo-American financial pressure as well – the decline in the value of the franc made the French open to pressure from Wall Street and the City of London – the French agreed to the Dawes Plan . Following approval by
11385-519: The river Emscher , formerly virtually an open sewer, parts of which have undergone natural restoration. This park connects strips of parkland running from north to south, which were developed through regional planning in the 1920s, to form a green belt between the Ruhr cities from east to west. During the Middle Ages, much of the region that was later called the Ruhrgebiet was situated in the County of Mark ,
11500-535: The town of Duisburg . Both towns were members of the Hanseatic League . The development of the region into an urbanized industrial area started in the late 18th century with the early industrialisation in the nearby Wupper Valley in the Bergisches Land . By around 1820, hundreds of water-powered mills were producing textiles, lumber, shingles and iron in automated processes here. In additional workshops in
11615-506: The west, and Lippe to the north. In the southwest it borders the Bergisches Land . It is considered part of the larger Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region of more than 10 million people, which is the third largest in Western Europe , behind only London and Paris . The Ruhr cities are, from west to east: Duisburg , Oberhausen , Bottrop , Mülheim an der Ruhr , Essen , Gelsenkirchen , Bochum , Herne , Hagen , Dortmund , Hamm and
11730-413: The workers idled by the shutdown of factories and mines. Ruhr industrial firms agreed not to lay off their employees and have them stay on to repair and maintain equipment. The government in return provided the firms with low interest loans and direct compensation. It also paid the salaries of civil service employees who were not working. From 60 to 100 percent of all wages in the Ruhr were in the end paid by
11845-688: The world, the name "Ruhr" refers to the river. The name preferred for the region in this dictionary is "Ruhrgebiet", followed by "Ruhr Valley". The urban landscape of the Ruhr extends from the Lower Rhine Basin east to the Westphalian Plain and south to the hills of the Rhenish Massif . Through the centre of the Ruhr runs a segment of the loess belt that extends across Germany from west to east. Historically, this loess belt has underlain some of Germany's richest agricultural regions. Geologically,
11960-788: Was a record to a single target in the whole of World War II. More than 4,800 tons of bombs were dropped through the city centre and the south of the city. In addition to the strategic bombing of the Ruhr , in April 1945, the Allies trapped several hundred thousand Wehrmacht troops in the Ruhr Pocket . After the war, the region fell within the British occupation zone , and Level of Industry plans for Germany abolished all German munitions factories and civilian industries that could support them and severely restricted civilian industries of military potential. The Ruhr Authority , an international body to regulate
12075-556: Was able to defeat the putsch by advocating a general strike that all but shut down Berlin. The work action effectively ended the putsch, but in the Ruhr it was the instigation for an armed revolt whose aim was to replace the Weimar Republic with a soviet-style council republic . In the Ruhr Uprising , the Ruhr Red Army was able to take control of the Ruhr industrial area. The Reichswehr , with assistance from Freikorps units, put down
12190-468: Was an important negotiator in talks between German shipping firms and the government regarding compensation for the merchant ships delivered to the Allies under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles . In 1920, Cuno led HAPAG into an alliance with United American Lines , helping to re-establish HAPAG as a passenger line. He also unofficially represented Germany's foreign policy interests during his travels abroad. Cuno rejected several proposals to assume
12305-438: Was attended by 50,000 people. Acts of violence and accidents caused by the occupying forces had resulted in 137 deaths and 603 injuries by August 1924, shortly before the passive resistance was called off. Monetary damages to the economy of the Ruhr caused by the occupation were estimated at between 3.5 and 4 billion gold marks. In addition to calling for passive resistance, Chancellor Cuno and his government undertook to support
12420-496: Was determined by the Inter-Allied Reparation Commission . In 1921, the amount was reduced to 132 billion (at that time US $ 31.4 billion; US $ 442 billion in 2024). Since part of the payments were in raw materials, some German factories ran short and the German economy suffered , further damaging the country's ability to pay. France was also suffering from a high deficit accrued during World War I, which resulted in
12535-645: Was discredited by its inability to address the crisis, while the far left Communist Party of Germany remained inactive for much of the period under the direction of the Soviet Politburo and the Comintern . Disoriented by the defeat in the war, conservatives in 1922 founded a consortium of nationalist associations, the Vereinigten Vaterländischen Verbände Deutschlands (VVVD, "United Patriotic Associations of Germany"). Their goal
12650-404: Was handed over to economic administration by France as a protectorate in 1947 and did not politically return to Germany until January 1957, with economic reintegration occurring two years later. Parallel to the question of political control of the Ruhr, the Allies tried to decrease German industrial potential by limitations on production and dismantling of factories and steel plants, predominantly in
12765-479: Was involved in a number of important post-war negotiations with the victorious Allies . When he was appointed chancellor of Germany in November 1922, he formed a "business ministry" made up primarily of men who were, like himself, political independents. His plans to handle the war reparations issue and stabilise the currency were derailed by the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923. Cuno instituted
12880-470: Was met by a campaign of both passive resistance and civil disobedience from the German inhabitants of the Ruhr. Chancellor Cuno immediately encouraged the passive resistance, and on January 13, the Reichstag voted 283 to 12 to approve it as a formal policy. Officials were told not to cooperate with the occupying forces, and deliveries of reparation material were stopped. Protests against the occupation broke out across Germany. The Reichstag, recognizing that
12995-581: Was now removed. France's eastern allies (the Soviet Union , Poland , Czechoslovakia , Romania and Yugoslavia ) concluded that since the French refused to defend their own border, they certainly would not stand up for their allies in the East. Hitler could now continue eroding the alliance system that France had built since 1919. On 16 October 1936, Belgium repudiated the 1921 alliance with France and declared its absolute neutrality. In October 1937, Belgium signed
13110-470: Was promoted to HAPAG's general director in December. As an economic expert, Cuno participated in the post-war negotiations on the armistice, reparations and peace terms and in other international conferences, including the Genoa Economic and Financial Conference . He left it in protest after Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo , which normalised relations with the Soviet Union . In 1921 and 1922, Cuno
13225-801: Was to forge a united front of the right. In the climate of national resistance against the French Ruhr invasion, the VVVD reached its peak strength. It advocated policies of uncompromising monarchism , corporatism and opposition to the Treaty of Versailles. However, it lacked internal unity and money and so never managed to unite the right. It had faded away by the late 1920s, as the NSDAP (Nazi party) grew in strength. Ruhr The Ruhr ( / ˈ r ʊər / ROOR ; German : Ruhrgebiet [ˈʁuːɐ̯ɡəˌbiːt] , also Ruhrpott German pronunciation: [ˈʁuːɐ̯pɔt] ), also referred to as
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