Remnants of Krupp company workers' colonies in Essen

Apart from the 5 vanished workers colonies located around the Krupp Steel Works discussed before there are 3 more nineteenth century company housing projects by Krupp that have for the most part disappeared. The remnants of the Siedlung Altenhof I can be found near the Grugapark. Of the Siedlung Alfredshof and Siedlung Friedrichshof, both located in Essen-Holsterhausen, only small portions remain.

As a result of financing problems Alfred Krupp stopped the house building by the Krupp company in 1874. When his son Friedrich Alfred takes over after the death of his father in 1887 it will take 4 years before work on new housing starts. Planning for new housing, however, starts almost immediately after he takes over.

Parallel with the planning of the Siedlung Altenhof the Company Housing Department draws up plans for an unnamed housing project which are publicised as the Siedlung Holsterhausen in the 1891 publication Wohlfahrtseinrichtungen der Kruppwerke in Essen (Welfare facilities of the Krupp Works in Essen). In 1893 work starts on erecting the buildings. The housing estate was renamed Alfredshof in honour of Alfred Krupp. Between 1893 and 1918 1.700 rented accommodation was built in several building campaigns. All housing in the first building phases were designed by Robert Schmohl, the head of the Baubüro Krupp.

The first section of this large estate of company housing was built between 1893 and 1899 with mainly family housing. Some were detached dwellings (for white collar workers), most consisted of several houses within one building. Schmohl included a number of Mulhouse Quadrangles that he mixed with semidetached houses. The idea was to break away from the crowded urban environment and provide the workers with air and space. Also a garden was seen as a good way to let the workers, whom had often migrated to the city from the countryside, integrate better into their new living environment. The ideal was never to create a rural idyll but rather to realise cost-effective company housing. Later this kind of loose housing is mistaken for an example of garden city movement housing. It predates the book by Ebenezer Howard so this can't be the case!

Between 1907 and 1919 the estate was doubled by the new Alfredshof built further east. This section was very urban and was comprised of Superblocks (Gartenhöfe) of middle-rise apartments in large complexes around a communal garden. A separate park was provided for relaxation and exercise. Also the Krupp family donated a plot of land to the Evangelical Church for a new church building. Parts of the Alfredshof 1 that had not been built on were developed in the same style and with long rows of terraced housing.

Alfredshof 1 and 2 around 1940 with central in Alfredshof 1 a large public square (or market) with the company store (1). Originally beyond the kolonie a school (2) was built with a house for the headteacher (3). In the Alfrespark a music hall (4) was built. On the other side of the park villa's (5) edge the central green space. On the other side a beer hall (6) was built. On this side the estate joined Luisenhof 1 (L1) and Luisenhof 2 (L2). At the heart of Albertshof 2 we find the ensemble (7) of church, community hall and vicarage. On the edge of the estate a large company store (8) and a Wirtschaft (9).

The company housing of the Alfredshof 1 and 2 was exemplary at the time of completion. Each house or dwelling had a kitchen, toilet and separate bedrooms. The front doors were located in such a way as to never face another entrance to exaggerate the individual character of each dwelling. Special functional, robust and unembellished furniture was mass-produced. Located next to the steel works both housing estates were heavily bombed during WW2. So at present only the so-called Simson-Block of Alfredshof 2 still stands. The rest of the estate was rebuilt in de late 1950s as the Siedlung Alfredspark with blocks of flats. At the same time the central Sachsenstrasse of Alfredshof 1 was replaced by a dual carriage motorway. This also required a part of the destroyed housing estate.

The change in ideas concerning social housing for workers is visible in Alfredshof 1 where a change took place from the loose layout with family housing set in private gardens to an urban setup with apartmentblocks that wrap around communal gardens. The original layout of the streets was very formal - as can be expected from nineteenth century urban design - with a central square public open space and 8 streets radiating out from here.

Of the Siedlung Friedrichshof , named after Friedrich Alfred Krupp, more sections are still standing. But these are mere remnants of this large housing estate built between 1899 and 1900 and enlarged shortly after between 1904 and 1906. On a 2,64 hectare site 525 dwellings were realised in three storey apartment blocks. The houses were comfortable for the time, with a kitchen sitting room, dining room, larder and toilet. The buildings were positioned to be flooded with daylight and had windows that could be opened to let the fresh air in. The communal facilities included a bath house, library, company shop, beer hall and schools.

The first building phase was designed in a highly ornamental Heimatstil (Homeland Style) with half-timbered walls, dormers, hipped roofs and decorative roofhoods. The high demand for housing meant that a different approach was chosen by the Baubüro to provide as many comfortable dwellings as possible on the site. So the ideal of an open housing estate (like Altenhof 1 and Alfredshof 1) was abandoned in favour of a denser development comprising of apartment blocks. The first building phase saw several multiangular blocks built around communal gardens and playgrounds. As such these blocks are predecessors of the super blocks built after 1904. These apartment buildings were basically U-shaped complexes, again 3 storeys in height, that wrapped around a communal garden. Of these Gartenhöfe built in a decorative combination of brick and roughcast a few section still remain. All other housing in this estate was to severely damaged by bombing and was replaced by blocks of flats in the 1950s.

Digging deep: the arrival of fibre optics

I was rudely awakened at 7 am some days ago. It turned out the works for laying the new optical fibre glass cables had started and my street had been cordoned off. Men in high vis jackets  were digging up the pavement assisted by a little digger that lifted the paving stones and concrete tiles. Then a large reel was brought in with lengths of orange cable on it. The work took them two days and they have now moved on to a street just around the corner...

Pedestrian were directed to the pavement on the other side of the street (left) as the pavement had been lifted for digging a trench. In the middle of the street a connective trench was dug between both sides of the street. The result was a tiny linear dune of sand on the curb, the spoils of digging the trench for the fibre optic cables.

A large reel on a cart held the cable (left). As the cart was pulled forth the cables were laid down along the trench. This trench was about 2 feet deep. The cables are laid at the bottom and it is than back-filled with sand (middle).You can clearly see a house connection sticking out. Finally the pavement was resurfaced by levelling the sand and placing the concrete pavement slabs back and stabilising them with a vibratory plate that presses the surface. More sand was swiped between the joints to add more stability, thus creating a half-open pavement that lets rain water permeate -to some extent- into the ground.

Examples of vanished workers colonies: Westend, Schederhof and Kronenberg

From an ideological as well as a well understood business perspective the Krupp family advocated good housing for its workers. Thus the housing was better than what could be expected in the regular tenements (Mietskasernen). The earliest housing was built as so-called Mulhouse Quadragles or as rows of tenements with a central kitchen, washroom, communal toilets and a family room in every dwelling. From the 1870s amenities such as schools, a church, a post office, a park, a playing field, a market square and community hall were included in the schemes. They thus can be seen as forerunners of workers housing along the lines of the Garden City Movement. There is however, a very big difference! This housing was provided by the employer and was also aimed at tying the worker and his family to the company. This was done by providing clubs and decent housing but also by truck systems for instance with a company store (Konsumanstallt) where all employees should buy their essentials.

Every workers colony was in principle a company town. They were all located outside of the city in the Dreibauernschaft of Altendorf, Frohnhausen and Holsterhausen. The local politicians were overwhelmed by the effects of the rapid urbanisation and were very thankful to the Krupp family for arranging for urban plans and the provision of housing and amenities. By the end of the nineteenth century a Krupp city had been built next to the old city of Essen.

The workers colony Kronenberg (K) on the edge of Altendorf (A) and the workers colony Schederhof (S) in Holsterhausen (H) were both located adjacent to the Krupp Steel Works. Workers colony Westend (W) was located within the confines of the plant, mostly within the boundary of the city of Essen. Kronenberg was situated directly north of the station (Bahnhof - B) and a goods depot (G) on the Essen-Mülheim railway line. The town hall of the Burgemeisterei Altendorf (H) stood in between Altendorf and Holsterhausen. The resident from these colonies had the Lutherkirche (C), a large church located in Frohnhausen, built for them by the Krupp company in 1881.

The three workers colonies on the west side of the steel works were dwarfed by the factory buildings. This was especially true of Westend (1863 + 1870) the first of these colonies built by Krupp. It comprise of two building phases with in the northern half long barracks arranged in parallel fashion at some distance to a street. The second phase has a small garden square at its heart with more  tenement blocks around it. At the side a block was built for office workers with a large company shop and a Bierhalle (a drinking hall that is more or less equivalent to a community hall).

Schederhof (1872) is similar to Westend. It also comprises of two spatial ideas. In Schederhof the first building phase consisted only of simple timber framed houses that could be best described as barracks. These are built along two old rural lanes in parallel rows to fill the available plot. The second phase comprised of brick tenement blocks with covered wooden stairs on the outside. These were all arranged along a pre-existing road around a market square and a park. Again the plot was completely developed with gravel paths in between. Amenities were included along the edged, with a large park for recreation. At some distance allotment gardens were also provided for the residents of this colony.

Next to it a free school (fS) was built. Another non-denominational school was the Haushaltschule or domestic service school (dS).All other schooling provided was either an evangelical school (eS) or a catholic school (kS). These three colonies were different in their architecture and number of houses. At the centre of each colony lay an open space, in Kronenberg this was a central market square (4) with a post office (1), a company store (2), a beer hall (3) and a concert hall (5) on the edge of a park (P). Around the edges bleaching greens (6) were provided. Schederhof also had a large central square next to a park (P). On this square a large company store with bakery (7) was built. On the edges of this colony further amenities such as a boarding house for apprentices (8), a pharmacy (9) and a plant nursery (10) were provided. Westend only had a company store (2) and a beer hall (3).

The largest workers colony Kronenberg (1874) has affinity with the other colonies in layout, but shows more maturity in the design ideas. Kronenberg was given a very clear structure of streets planted with trees with building either positioned along or perpendicular to these streets. Most tenement blocks were accessed from the streets from both sides, thus allowing for greater density and flexibility in the layout of each dwelling. Only 4 types were built. This is however double the number in comparison to the other two workers colonies shown here.  

Kronenberg had 8.000 residents in brick-built 3 storey blocks on orthogonal alphabetical streets. At the heart of this settlement all amenities were located around a central market square. This greatly improved the sense of place, which is the biggest problem in grid layouts with similar housing. Schools were located around the edges of the workers colony, as these also served neighbouring workers colonies.

These colonies were a vast improvement for the resident at the time they were built. But only two decades later in 1893 the head of the company Friedrich Alfred Krupp decides that low-rise family housing is the more desirable option for workers housing and he commissions Altenhof I from the Krupp Housing Bureau. Around 1900 his wife has become a fervent supporter of the garden city ideals which ties in neatly with Altenhof. Thus the old colonies were deemed old-fashioned and became less desirable. All were removed for development of industrial buildings between 1937 and 1957. Now nothing remains of these 3 and 2 other of the workers colonies built by the Krupp Company in de 19th century.

Vanished Krupp company workers' colonies in Essen

De city of Essen would have flourished without the Krupp Company. Essen is as much Krupp as Krupp is Essen. You can't distinguish one or the other as far as urban development is concerned. Sure, the area knew many types of industry, namely coal mining, glass works, furnaces, cokes works, gas works and of course steel works, but these were mostly located outside of the pre-existing urban centres and gave rise to a rapid suburbanisation via workers colonies known as Siedlungen (literally: settlements, as the people inhabiting these places mostly came in anew to settle in these places).

Ever since the Krupp Company was founded on the edge of the city of Essen in 1811 the fate of  this historic city and the industrialisation became interlocked. From modest beginnings of an almost failed industrial company Krupp grew to become a city within a city, driving both the growth and the direction of urban development of the city. In 1819 a small factory was built on the edge of Altendorf just outside of Essen's medieval  city limits. In 1924 the large townhouse in Essen has to be sold to free up cash for the business and the family builds a new modest timber framed house next to the factory. This will become the centre of the later Krupp Steelworks that occupy more than double the area than the whole of the medieval city.

As the company grows so does the workforce. These are initially housed in scant dwelling built hastily by private developers or in large existing housing that is rented out per room to whole families. This pattern is basically true in the first phases of industrialisation everywhere! In 1863 the Kruppsche Wohnungsbau (Krupp House building) starts its activities as a way of balancing working conditions with a wellness program for workers, but also as a means of binding the factory workers to their employers. So in 1863 The Arbeiterkolonie Westend is built on the edge of the factory site directly west of the city of Essen. This worker colony was followed by Neu Westend (1870), Nordhof (1871), Schederhof (1872-73), Baumhof (1871 + 1890) and Kronenberg (1872-74).

  

The Krupp Steel Works (W) with the Krupp House (H) was surrounded by a number of workers colonies that have now vanished. The first to be built was Westend (1), consciously located upwind from the steel works. Later the workers colonies of Nordhof (2), Schederhof (3), Kronenberg (4) and Baumhof (5) followed. Krupp also funded the city park (Stadtpark -S). The steel works occupied a much larger area than the neighbouring medieval city of Essen (E).

These colonies are very similar to the housing built for miners all around the Ruhr Area. The name workers colony is very apt as they were built in one building campaign (although Arbeiterkolonie Baumhof was more than doubled in 1890) and were meant as complete new settlements. These colonies are always located near the work place. In the case of the Krupp Company they were situated on or adjacent to the Steel works on the west side of the medieval city. These workers colonies are very regular in their layout with parallel streets often on a grid and housing in long rows. Most of this housing were Mehrfamilienhäuser (Multiple Family Housing) although some provision was made for single young man and later women in the form of large dormitory hostels. Not unlike the new housing in the colonies these settlements were strictly orthogonal and only reacted to their surroundings at the edges.

These colonies were very successful and provided much needed housing for Krupp workers. The ideas on housing changed however, and by 1890 the family house was placed at the heart of the company housing policy by Friedrich Alfred (see also Altenhof). The rapid expansion of activities at the steel works meant the decline of these workers colonies located within or adjacent to the factory site. In 1938 Kronenberg is demolished to make way for a new tank factory and the expansion of the cast steel plant. Westend, Norddorf, Baumhof and Schederhof were (partly) destroyed by bombs and replaced by offices and industrial buildings after 1947. None of the oldest Krupp company housing remains, except for a few so-called Meisterhäuser, built for overseers in 1860.