Gartenstadt Welheim, Bottrop: a German garden city

The Manor of Welheim (meaning: home by a natural spring) was given to the Order of the Teutonic Knights by Everhard von Welheim in 1230. They expanded the manor into a Commandry (Kommende). The old manorial chapel remained the head church of the surrounding villages of Welheim, Boy and Batenbrock and the knights held patronage of the Salvatator Mundi Church in Duisburg until the reformation of 1572. In 1369 the knight were gifted the Emscherbruch, a large swamp wood, with the hunting rights. Here they bred sturdy ponies that centuries later would be used as working animals in the mines. With the dissolution of the Order by Napoleon the commandry with its moated castle, grain stores, farms and mills, was given to the Duke of Arenberg in exchange for the loss of their ancestral property that was annexed by France.

The Duke granted several mining concession in the middle of the 19^th century as mining spread across the Ruhr Revier. The Colliery Prosper, sunk in 1856, was named in honour of the 7^th Duke. Other collieries around Bottrop were Maximilian, Konstantinopel, Gottfried and Arenberg-Fortsetzung. In the neighbouring County Mark the Zeche Mathias Stinnes was started in 1863 near Karnapp, just beyond the Boye Brook that formed the edge of the Manor of Welheim. In 1910 The Zeche Vereinigte Welheim was founded to exploit a coalfield below the Welheimer Mark. Two pit were sunk for this colliery that started production in 1914. A small colony (Kolonie Werkstrasse) of a single street with large semidetached houses on either side was first built around 1910 directly east of the colliery site.

Behind the moated castle, near the Prosper Colliery and directly south of the United Welheim, a large workers colony was built between 1914 and 1923 for the miners and other personnel employed by the United Welheim Colliery. Some 650 buildings were erected in what was conceived from the start as a garden village (hence the name Gartenstadt). For this garden village the Gungfeld behind the tiny village of Welheim was developed. Older routes -Welheimer Strasse, Gungstrasse and Flöttestrasse- were incorporated into the new layout and the mill stream (Mühl Flötte) of the Boye Brook was redirected away from the planned housing to better prevent flooding.

The garden village at Welheim was designed with curved streets that terminate in T-junctions or small ‘places’. Two squares are part of the layout, as well as two close-like features. The houses where mostly built in terraces with rows of 4 to 8 dwellings. There are few detached properties. These are mostly located in the section for engineers near the goods rail way along the northern side of the development. Semidetached houses are included throughout the garden village. All buildings face the street, but the building line is varied according to Unwinesque principles; the corners are treated in line with those principles: angled blocks, set-backs and protruding sections. On several basic floor plans no less than 40 house types were designed for this housing development, making is one of the most varied and decorative in the Ruhr Area.

The garden village at Welheim was built on a more or less triangular site. It has many features of a typical garden city development. The open spaces are an important feature here, closes and angled corners are seldom used. The original buildings are shown in dark grey. The later additions (replacement buildings) have a lighter grey tone, whilst the older or private buildings have a darker tone. The context of Gartenstadt Welheim consisted of the moated House Welheim (H) with the hamlets of Welheim (W) and Boy (B), the mines Prosper (P) with the Kokerei (K), Mathias Stinnes (MS) each with a large colony (C) and the mines Vereinigte Welheim (VW) with a small street colony, and Arenberg Vortsetzung (AV). Each mine had a spoil heap nearby and was accessible by railway which formed a tangle on this side of Bottrop.

The colliery was located directly north of the colony on the other side of the railway. In 1931 the exploitation of the mine ended and the buildings were converted to a Hydrierwerk (a coal liquification plant) for the manufacture of synthetic oils and fuels. In the 1980s the plant was decommissioned and all the buildings were taken down. Now a furniture factory dominates the site that has been turned into an industrial park. WW2 brought some destruction, with about 25% of the houses destroyed by bombs. Because of the central location between many industrial site a large anti air raid bunker was constructed on the central square. After the war the bombed-out houses were rebuilt. The Kokerei (Cokes Plant) was enlarged in the 1950 and the ruins of the former Commandry were completely removed and built over.

The garden village was renovated as part of the IBA Emscherpark. This International Architecture Exhibition ran from 1989 until 1999. In 1993 the work on Welheim was finished and the garden village was given protected status as a listed monument. It is also part of the industrial heritage trail of the Route der Industriekultur.