Sprockhövel is a town in the district of Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis , North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany .
82-538: Sprockhövel is located in the southern suburban part of the Ruhr area . It is 6 km southeast of Hattingen , 8 km northwest of Gevelsberg , 13 km south of Bochum and 14 km northeast of Wuppertal (centre). The town consists of the Stadtteile Gennebreck, Haßlinghausen, Hiddinghausen, Niedersprockhövel, Niederstüter and Obersprockhövel. The town was first mentioned in documents around 1000 AD. It
164-547: 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
246-685: A diplomatic test of will three years before the outbreak of the Second World War . To the west the area stretches to the borders with Luxembourg , Belgium and the Netherlands ; on the eastern side it encompasses the towns and cities along the river and the Bergisches Land area up to the Westphalian ( Siegerland ) and Hessian regions. Stretching down to the North Palatine Uplands in
328-473: 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
410-420: 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 –
492-578: A rational, simplified, centralized system controlled by Paris and run by Napoleon's relatives. The most important impact came from the abolition of all feudal privileges and historic taxes, the introduction of legal reforms of the Napoleonic Code , and the reorganization of the judicial and local administrative systems. The economic integration of the Rhineland with France increased prosperity, especially in industrial production, while business accelerated with
574-635: A tradition that continued in the naming of the current German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia . In the early 1800s, Rhinelanders settled the Missouri Rhineland , a German cultural region and wine producing area in the U.S. State of Missouri , and named it after noticing similarities in soil and topography to the Rhineland in Europe . By 1860, nearly half of all settlers in Missouri Rhineland came from Koblenz , capital of
656-445: 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.
738-779: 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
820-645: 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
902-685: 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
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#1733085805360984-729: 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
1066-659: The High Middle Ages , numerous Imperial States along the river emerged from the former stem duchy of Lotharingia , without developing any common political or cultural identity. A "Rhineland" conceptualization can be traced to the period of the Holy Roman Empire from the sixteenth until the eighteenth centuries when the Empire's Imperial Estates (territories) were grouped into regional districts in charge of defence and judicial execution, known as Imperial Circles . Three of
1148-699: The North German plain is marked by the lower Ruhr . In the south, the river cuts the Rhenish Massif . The area encompasses the western part of the Ruhr industrial region and the Cologne Lowland . Some of the larger cities in the Rhineland are Aachen , Bonn , Cologne , Duisburg , Düsseldorf , Essen , Koblenz , Krefeld , Leverkusen , Mainz , Mönchengladbach , Mülheim an der Ruhr , Oberhausen , Remscheid , Solingen , Trier and Wuppertal . Toponyms as well as local family names often trace back to
1230-553: The Rhine , chiefly its middle section . It is the main industrial heartland of Germany because of its many factories, and it has historic ties to the Holy Roman Empire , Prussia and the German Empire . Historically, the term " Rhinelands " refers (physically speaking) to a loosely defined region embracing the land on the banks of the Rhine, which were settled by Ripuarian and Salian Franks and became part of Frankish Austrasia . In
1312-564: The Rhine Province . The western part of the Rhineland was occupied by Entente forces from the end of the First World War until 1930. Under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles , German military presence in the region was banned, a restriction which the government of Weimar Germany pledged to honor in the 1925 Locarno Treaties . Nazi Germany remilitarized the territory in 1936 as part of
1394-526: 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
1476-492: 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
1558-567: 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
1640-476: 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
1722-414: 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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#17330858053601804-496: 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. Rhineland The Rhineland ( German : Rheinland [ˈʁaɪ̯nˌlant] ; Dutch : Rijnland ; Kölsch : Rhingland ; Latin : Rhenania ) is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along
1886-658: 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
1968-522: 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
2050-895: The East bank of the Rhine, between the Main and the Lahn, were the settlements of the Mattiaci , a branch of the Germanic Chatti , while farther to the north were the Usipetes and Tencteri . Julius Caesar conquered the Celtic tribes on the West bank, and Augustus established numerous fortified posts on the Rhine, but the Romans never succeeded in gaining a firm footing on the East bank. As
2132-508: 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
2214-746: The Frankish heritage. The lands on the western shore of the Rhine are strongly characterized by Roman influence, including viticulture . In the core territories, large parts of the population are members of the Catholic Church . At the earliest historical period, the territories between the Ardennes and the Rhine were occupied by the Treveri , the Eburones and other Celtic tribes , who, however, were all more or less modified and influenced by their Germanic neighbors. On
2296-678: The Rhine and within 50 kilometers east of the Rhine. In 1920, under massive French pressure, the Saar was separated from the Rhine Province and administered by the League of Nations until a plebiscite in 1935, when the region was returned to Germany. At the same time, in 1920, the districts of Eupen and Malmedy were transferred to Belgium (see German-Speaking Community of Belgium ). In January 1923, in response to Germany's failure to meet its reparations obligations , French and Belgian troops occupied
2378-626: 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
2460-448: The Rhineland and other regions along the Rhine. German territory west of the Rhine had been off-limits to the German military. In 1945, the Rhineland was the scene of major fighting as the Allied forces overwhelmed the German defenders. In 1946, the Rhineland was divided into the newly founded states of Hesse , North Rhine-Westphalia , and Rhineland-Palatinate . North Rhine-Westphalia
2542-568: The Rhineland disintegrated into numerous small independent principalities, each with its separate vicissitudes and special chronicles. The old Lotharingian divisions became obsolete, and while the Lower Lorraine lands were referred to as the Low Countries , the name of Lorraine became restricted to the region on the upper Moselle that still bears it. After the Imperial Reform of 1500/12,
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2624-450: The Rhineland until 1814 and radically and permanently liberalized the government, society and economy. The Coalition of France's enemies made repeated efforts to retake the region, but France repelled all the attempts. The French swept away centuries worth of outmoded restrictions and introduced unprecedented levels of efficiency. The chaos and barriers in a land divided and subdivided among many different petty principalities gave way to
2706-522: The Ruhr district, strictly controlling all important industrial areas. The Germans responded with passive resistance, which led to hyperinflation , and the French gained very little of the reparations they wanted. French troops left the Ruhr in August 1925. The occupation of the remainder of the Rhineland ended on 30 June 1930. On 7 March 1936, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, German troops marched into
2788-472: 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
2870-583: 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
2952-592: 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
3034-746: 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,
3116-508: 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
3198-427: 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
3280-514: 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
3362-577: 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
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3444-607: 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
3526-408: 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
3608-465: 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
3690-410: 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
3772-414: 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
3854-415: 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
3936-410: 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
4018-588: 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
4100-429: 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
4182-412: 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
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#17330858053604264-420: The east of the river fell to East Francia , while that to the west remained with the kingdom of Lotharingia . By the time of Emperor Otto I (d. 973) both banks of the Rhine had become part of the Holy Roman Empire , and in 959 the Rhenish territory was divided between the duchies of Upper Lorraine , on the Mosel, and Lower Lorraine on the Meuse. As the central power of the Holy Roman Emperor weakened,
4346-489: 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
4428-407: 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
4510-432: 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
4592-403: 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
4674-406: 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
4756-429: The intelligentsia demanded the maintenance of the Napoleonic Code (which stayed in effect for a century). A Prussian influence began on a small scale in 1609 by the occupation of the Duchy of Cleves . A century later, Upper Guelders and Moers also became Prussian. The Congress of Vienna expelled the French and assigned the whole of the lower Rhenish districts to Prussia, who left them in undisturbed possession of
4838-434: 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,
4920-441: The liberal institutions to which they had become accustomed under the French. The Rhine Province remained part of Prussia after Germany was unified in 1871. The occupation of the Rhineland took place following the Armistice with Germany of 11 November 1918. The occupying armies consisted of American , Belgian , British and French forces. Under the Treaty of Versailles , German troops were banned from all territory west of
5002-489: 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
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#17330858053605084-427: 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
5166-556: The most recent mayoral election on 13 September 2020, Noll won with 57.9% of votes against Volker Hoven, who was supported by the SPD , FDP , and WfS-FW. The Sprockhövel city council governs the city alongside the Mayor. The most recent city council election was held on 13 September 2020, and the results were as follows: Ruhr area The Ruhr ( / ˈ r ʊər / ROOR ; German : Ruhrgebiet [ˈʁuːɐ̯ɡəˌbiːt] , also Ruhrpott German pronunciation: [ˈʁuːɐ̯pɔt] ), also referred to as
5248-403: 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
5330-475: The new efficiency and lowered trade barriers. The Jews were liberated from the ghetto. There was limited resistance; most Germans welcomed the new regime, especially the urban elites, but one sour point was the hostility of the French officials toward the Roman Catholic Church, the choice of most of the residents. The reforms were permanent. Decades later workers and peasants in the Rhineland often appealed to Jacobinism to oppose unpopular government programs, while
5412-409: The power of the Roman empire declined the Franks pushed forward along both banks of the Rhine, and by the end of the 5th century had conquered all the lands that had formerly been under Roman influence. By the 8th century, the Frankish dominion was firmly established in western Germania and northern Gaul. On the division of the Carolingian Empire at the Treaty of Verdun the part of the province to
5494-487: 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
5576-406: 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
5658-419: 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 ,
5740-435: The south, this area, except for the Saarland , more or less corresponds with the modern use of the term. The southern and eastern parts are mainly hill country ( Westerwald , Hunsrück , Siebengebirge , Taunus and Eifel ), cut by river valleys, principally the Middle Rhine up to Bingen (or very rarely between the confluence with the Neckar and Cologne ) and its Ahr , Moselle and Nahe tributaries. The border of
5822-441: The ten circles through which the Rhine flowed referred to the river in their names: the Upper Rhenish Circle , the Electoral Rhenish Circle and the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle (very roughly equivalent to the present-day German federal state of North Rhine Westphalia ). In the twilight period of the Empire, after the War of the First Coalition , a short-lived Cisrhenian Republic was established (1797–1802). The term covered
5904-519: The territory was part of the Lower Rhenish–Westphalian , Upper Rhenish , and Electoral Rhenish Circles . Notable Rhenish Imperial States included: In spite of its dismembered condition and the sufferings it underwent at the hands of its French neighbors in various periods of warfare, the Rhenish territory prospered greatly and stood in the foremost rank of German culture and progress. Aachen
5986-478: 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
6068-506: 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
6150-587: The whole French conquered territory west of the Rhine (German: Linkes Rheinufer ), but also including a small portion of the bridgeheads on the eastern banks. After the collapse of the French empire , the regions of Jülich-Cleves-Berg and Lower Rhine were annexed to the Kingdom of Prussia . In 1822 the Prussian administration reorganized the territory as the Rhine Province ( Rheinprovinz , also known as Rhenish Prussia),
6232-632: 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,
6314-836: 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
6396-614: 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
6478-453: 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
6560-534: 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
6642-570: Was part of the County of Mark , but close to the Duchy of Berg , whose cultural influence is still visible today in the historical part of town. The current administration of Sprockhövel is a result of the local government reform on 1 January 1975. Sprockhövel is twinned with South Kirkby , West Yorkshire. The current mayor of Sprockhövel is Sabine Noll, an independent endorsed by the CDU and Greens , since 2020. In
6724-531: Was the place of coronation of the German emperors, and the ecclesiastical principalities of the Rhine played a large role in German history. At the Peace of Basel in 1795, the whole of the left bank of the Rhine was taken by France. The population was about 1.6 million in numerous small states. In 1806, the Rhenish princes all joined the Confederation of the Rhine , a puppet of Napoleon. France took direct control of
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