Erkrath

Town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Erkrath (German pronunciation: [ˈɛʁkʁaːt] ^ⓘ) is a town in the district of Mettmann, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Geography

Erkrath is situated on the river Düssel, directly east of Düsseldorf and west of Wuppertal, close to the famous Neandertal. It has two stations, Erkrath station, which is served by Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn line S 8, and Erkrath Nord station, which is served by S-Bahn line S 28, both at 20-minute intervals.

History

In that part of Neandertal, which is located in Erkrath, in the summer of 1856, quarry workers discovered the fossilised remains of what became known as the Neanderthal man or Homo neanderthalensis in Feldhof cave. The name Erkrath was first mentioned in 1148. Erkrath received town rights in 1966. In 1975, the municipality of Hochdahl was incorporated into Erkrath. As well its former borough Unterbach was incorporated into Düsseldorf. Only a part of Unterbach called Unterfeldhaus remained as now a borough of its own with Erkrath. Erkrath today has three local parts: Erkrath, Hochdahl and Unterfeldhaus.

Mayors

^[3]

• Johann Kaiser (1898–1907) (the old town hall was built in 1899)
• Franz Zahren (1907–1930)
• Werner Hallauer (1930–1935)
• Heinrich Rasche (1935–1945), NSDAP, later FDP
• Wilhelm Broch (1945–1946)
• August Westerholz (1946), SPD
• Hermann Moritz (1946–1949), CDU
• Alex Bendt (1949–1954), SPD
• Gertrud Thomé (later: Küpper) (1954–1956), CDU
• Alex Bendt (1956–1961), SPD
• Gertrud Küpper (geb. Thomé) (1961–1963), CDU
• Johannes van Oost (1963–1964),
• Gertrud Küpper (geb. Thomé) (1964–1972), CDU
• Hans Weyer (1972–1974), SPD
• Aloys Kiefer (1975–1983), CDU
• Gloria Ziller (1983–1989), CDU
• Rudolf Unger (1989–1999), SPD
• Arno Werner (1999–2015), CDU
• Christoph Schultz (since 2015), CDU^[4]

Gallery

• 
  Heilig-Geist-Kirche (Erkrath)
• 
  Neanderkirche (Erkrath)

Twin towns – sister cities

Erkrath is twinned with:^[5]

• West Lancashire, England, United Kingdom

Notable people

Johann Heinrich Bongard around 1840

• Klaus Allofs (born 1956), German footballer, manager of VfL Wolfsburg, lived for a long time in Erkrath-Unterfeldhaus
• Thomas Allofs (born 1959), German footballer, lives in Erkrath-Unterfeldhaus and runs a disposal company in Düsseldorf
• Heiner Baltes (born 1949), German footballer
• Johann Heinrich Bongard (1779–1857), eye and wound surgeon and royal Prussian Hofrat, first author of a publication on the Neandertal
• Klaus Hänsch (born 1938), former President of the European Parliament
• Friedrich Hünermann (1886–1969), Catholic theologian and auxiliary bishop in Aachen
• Werner Koch (born 1961), German developer of Free Software and founder of the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG), lives in Hochdahl
• Manfred Lahnstein (born 1937) politician (SPD), former Federal Finance Minister and Member of the Management Board and Supervisory Board of Bertelsmann AG
• Flemming Lund (born 1952), Danish footballer for Fortuna Düsseldorf and Rot-Weiss Essen, lived in Hochdahl

Joachim Neander

• Joachim Neander (c. 1650–1680) German pastor, church poet and composer, first author about the Neandertal
• Aleksandar Ristić (born 1944), footballer and coach (among others Fortuna Düsseldorf), lived in Erkrath at this time
• Karl Sudhoff (1853–1938), founder of the medical history as a scientific discipline in Germany, was from 1885 to 1905 doctor of the Hochdahl iron foundry and Armenian physician, later also councilor of Hochdahl-Millrath
• Toni Turek (1919–1984), national goalkeeper and world champion of Bern 1954, lived during his years with Fortuna Düsseldorf and his world title in Erkrath. 50 years after Bern the Erkrath Stadium was named after him ("Toni-Turek-Stadion", Freiheitsstraße 46).^[6]
• Karl Wenders (1841–1905), mayor of Neuss, Member of Reichstag and member of Landtag

References

1. Wahlergebnisse in NRW Kommunalwahlen 2020, Land Nordrhein-Westfalen, accessed 21 June 2021.
2. "Bevölkerung der Gemeinden Nordrhein-Westfalens am 31. Dezember 2023 – Fortschreibung des Bevölkerungsstandes auf Basis des Zensus vom 9. Mai 2011" (in German). Landesbetrieb Information und Technik NRW. Retrieved 2024-06-20.
3. Stadt Erkrath (Hrsg.), Erika Stubenhöfer: Die Erkrather Bürgermeister 1898–1999 – Stadtgeschichte im Spiegel von Biografien 2004 (ohne ISBN)
4. Ergebnis auf der Webseite der Stadt Erkrath: http://wahlen.erkrath-it.de/bw2015.html
5. "Haushaltsrede 2019 CDU-Fraktionsvorsitzender Wolfgang Jöbges" (PDF). erkrath.de (in German). Erkrath. 2019-02-26. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
6. Werner Raupp: Toni Turek – „Fußballgott“. Eine Biographie, Hildesheim: Arete Verlag 2019 (ISBN 978-3-96423-008-9), p. 73-74; 117-119; 171-176.

External links

• Official website (in German)
• Homepage of the Neanderthal Museum (in German)
• Homepage of the Lokschuppen Museum (in German)