Wenden (Sauerland)

Wenden

Coat of arms
Wenden

Coordinates: 50°58′0″N 07°52′0″E / 50.96667°N 7.86667°E / 50.96667; 7.86667Coordinates: 50°58′0″N 07°52′0″E / 50.96667°N 7.86667°E / 50.96667; 7.86667
Country Germany
State North Rhine-Westphalia
Admin. region Arnsberg
District Olpe
Government
 • Mayor Peter Brüser
Area
 • Total 72.55 km2 (28.01 sq mi)
Population (2015-12-31)[1]
 • Total 19,873
 • Density 270/km2 (710/sq mi)
Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes 57482
Dialling codes 02762
Vehicle registration OE
Website www.wenden.de

Wenden is a community in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It belongs to the Olpe district in the Sauerland. It lies 10 km south of Olpe and approx. 20 km northwest of Siegen.

Geography

Wenden

Location

Wenden lies at the southernmost tip of the Sauerland, an area of low mountain ranges. The Bigge and its tributaries, which feed into Biggesee, rise near Wenden. To the southeast a ridge separates the municipality from the adjoining Siegerland. In the southwest the municipal area borders Rhineland-Palatinate.

Neighbouring communities

Bordering on Wenden are Olpe and Drolshagen, which like Wenden lie in the Olpe district, Friesenhagen in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Altenkirchen district, Kreuztal, Freudenberg and Siegen (all in Siegen-Wittgenstein), and also Reichshof in the Oberbergischer Kreis.

Constituent communities

The community consists of the following centres: Altenhof, Altenwenden, Bebbingen, Brün, Büchen, Döingen, Dörnscheid, Eichertshof, Elben, Gerlingen, Girkhausen, Heid, Hillmicke, Hoffnung, Hünsborn, Huppen, Löffelberg, Möllmicke, Ottfingen, Römershagen, Rothemühle, Rothenborn, Scheiderwald, Schönau, Schwarzbruch, Trömbach, Vahlberg, Wenden, Wendenerhütte and Wilhelmstal.

Climate

Wenden’s climate is very wet. West winds bring clouds that form over the Atlantic Ocean and they rise as they pass over the Sauerland and Wenden, which in turn brings rain. The coldest month is January. July is the warmest month. During winter fog forms frequently out of the moist air.

History

The origins of the name Wenden are not known for certain. Probably it has to do with the location because at the turn of the first millennium within its area the lands of two Germanic people, the Franks and the Saxons met. There is no knowledge as to when the area was first settled. The names of some villages like Girkhausen, Bebbingen, Döingen, Gerlingen and Ottfingen as well as the names of lost villages and homesteads offer some clues. Most likely settlement must have taken place no later than around 900 to 1000 AD. Perhaps the area knew settlements even earlier as the names of local brooks and streams like Elbe, Albe, Wende, Bigge, Benze and Binse hint.

The first documented record of Wenden dates back to 1011. By that time a monastery had been founded in Herford and given land in Wendenne, which is said to mean Wenden. At the beginning of the 14th century a chapel Wendene capella is mentioned in a copy of a much older tax register of the Archdiocese of Cologne. Watersheds have been Wenden’s limits for centuries. In the southeast and east these watersheds marked the boundary with the territory of Nassau-Siegen, in the south to the land of the counts of Wildenburg and in the south and southwest to the Duchy of Berg. All of the municipal area was part of the Electorate of Cologne. Following the Reformation they remained Catholic while their neighbours to the southeast, south and southwest converted to Protestantism.

Opening in old earthwork marking boundary between Siegerland and Wenden near Hünsborn

By the end of the Middle Ages people in the Siegerland fenced off their territory with a combination of trenches, earthworks and dense hedgerows. That part which touches the district of Olpe is called the "Kölsches Heck" ("Cologne hedge"). The "Kölsches Heck" also marks a boundary between two languages High German and Low German. After the Reformation it came to mark the border between areas of different faiths.

In 1803 the municipal area of Wenden was transferred to the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt and in 1816 it was annexed to Prussia. Some years later in 1850 the municipalities of Wenden and Römershagen were joined to form the new municipality of Wenden (Amt Wenden).[2]

Religion

The great majority of the community dwellers adhere to the Catholic faith. With the exception of Möllmicke and Rothemühle, each of the community’s bigger centres has a Catholic church or chapel at its disposal. After the Second World War many Germans driven out of the lost territories in the east moved into what was then the Amt of Wenden; they settled mostly in the centres of Vahlberg and Rothemühle. Thus arose the Evangelical Church of Rothemühle in the 1950s. In the 1980s there came a community centre in Wenden’s main town which quickly outdid the church in Rothemühle. In 2006, a resolution was handed down by the Evangelical parish of Olpe, to which Wenden belongs, to abandon the church in Rothemühle. The Rothemühle chapel building club thereupon took over financial responsibility for the church, guaranteeing its continued existence for the time being. In the 1960s, many Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians also came to the community of Wenden. For a few years, a mosque has been maintained in Wenden’s main centre. A regionally important pilgrimage centre for Catholics is the Dörnschlade, found in the middle of the woods between the centres of Hünsborn, Wenden and Altenhof. According to legend, a Madonna statue stolen from the Wenden church was found there. A chapel is used by many believers for worship. Among others, the regional Katholische Arbeitnehmer-Bewegung (“Catholic Employees’ Movement”, KAB) uses the Dörnschlade for its yearly pilgrimage.

Amalgamations

The community of Wenden came into being in 1969 in the course of municipal restructuring in North Rhine-Westphalia. It is coëxtensive with the former Amt of Wenden, which itself consisted of the communities of Wenden and Römershagen.

Politics

Mayor

Peter Brüser, a CDU member and also formerly that party’s candidate, won in the municipal election as an independent by a great margin over CDU candidate Antonius Halbe. Before the dual leadership system was abolished, Brüser was already Gemeindedirektor (“Community Director”), and was chosen as mayor (Bürgermeister) first by the council and then in the original election.

Town partnerships

A partnership came about as a result of German unity with Dingelstädt in the former East Germany. The partnership was at first actively pursued, for instance through administrative employees’ exchanges, and continues today at a lower, but constant, level. For example, Dingelstädt’s mayor is a regular guest at the great yearly event known as the Wendener Kirmes.

Currently, groundwork is being laid to build a partnership with the Hungarian town of Lepsény. The packaging firm SiBO maintains branch offices in both Wenden and Lepsény. Owner Bernd Hesse blazed the trail for this budding partnership.

Culture and sightseeing

Theatre

The Sauerland-Theater Hillmicke is a successful amateur theatre, and performs every November in the Wenden school centre’s auditorium.

Museums

The Wendener Hütte is a technological cultural monument and one of the oldest still preserved charcoal furnace works in the German-speaking world. It can be viewed free during opening hours.

Music

The community of Wenden is well known for its great number of concert bands, music clubs, bands and choirs. Almost every centre has a concert band and several choirs at its disposal. The Spielmannszug Wenden (band) celebrates its centenary in 2008, holding a great festival weekend on 18–20 April.

Buildings

St. Severinus parish church

The Dörnschlade pilgrimage chapel was built in the mid 19th century and is found near Altenhof. It can easily be reached by the road running between Hünsborn and Wenden. On the Sundays after the Festivals of the Assumption (2 July) and the Nativity of Mary (8 September), a procession from Altenhof and Wenden to the Dörnschlade takes place, which is then finished with a church service there.

The St. Severinus parish church was built about 1750. The altars and most holy figures already adorned the forerunner church, from which also came the bulky tower, the new church having been built over the old one, which was then only knocked down after construction on the new one was well under way. The holy objects were all transferred to the new church. The pulpit, the Resplendent Madonna and the organ, however, were acquired new in 1755. The new church’s namesake may have been St. Severin’s Church in Cologne. The last thorough renovation was done between 1986 and 1988, with the church being made over as far as possible to look as it did when it was built in the 18th century.

Natural monuments

The source of the river Bigge lies near Römershagen. The stream, which where it rises is still only very small, runs for 16 km, then filling one of Germany’s biggest reservoirs, the Biggesee.

Sport

Regular events

Economy and infrastructure

The economic development of the area depended mostly on iron ore and heavy spar deposits as well as an abundance of wood and water. In 1855 there were 7 smelting works in the district of Olpe, 5 of which lay in the Wenden municipal area. While most smelting works produced pig iron, the Wendener Hütte, a mill founded by Johannes Elmert in 1728, made crude steel. Like others which fired their blast furnaces with locally produced charcoal, the Wendener Hütte lost out to the developing coal-based steel industry in the Ruhr Area. The Wendener Hütte closed down in 1866.[3] In the years after World War II the majority of the local population was working in agriculture. But when farming changed to more intensive farming with larger farms specialising in cattle and dairy farming, most small farmers gave up. People shifted out of farming and sought employment in manufacturing in neighbouring Olpe and the Siegerland.

This all changed when Bundesautobahn 45 was completed in 1971 and Bundesautobahn 4 opened to traffic in 1976.[4] With quick access to other areas of Germany, Wenden was able to attract larger operations and build a solid economic infrastructure.

Established enterprises

Transport

Roads

The community of Wenden is connected to two Autobahnen, the A4 (Aachen–Görlitz, links the area to Cologne in the west) and the A45 (connects Wenden northwards to Dortmund and the Ruhr Area and southwards to Giessen and Frankfurt), both with an interchange at Wenden at the Olpe-Süd Autobahn cross. There are, however, no Federal highways (Bundesstraßen) running through the community. The main thoroughfares are the highways (Landstraßen) L342, L512, L564, L714 and L905.

The eastward extension of the A4 in 2006 connects it to the Hüttentalstrasse linking Wenden to Kreuztal and Siegen.

Bus and rail transport

For local public road transport there are many bus lines that also join Wenden with neighbouring communities. Operators are the Verkehrsbetriebe Westfalen-Süd (VWS, “Westphalia-South Transport Services”), whose seat is in Siegen and which is a daughter company of the Stadtwerke Bonn, and the railway daughter company Busverkehr Ruhr-Sieg (BRS, “Ruhr-Sieg Bus Transport”). Lines R50 and R51 are the most important buslines, running from Siegen and Olpe to Wenden.

Nowadays there is no longer any rail transport in the municipal area. There was formerly a rail connection to the Biggetalbahn (railway). The stretch running between Freudenberg and Rothemühle, however, was abandoned by 1987, while the Rothemühle-Olpe stretch had its service withdrawn in 2000, and in 2005 it was dismantled.

Public institutions

Education

Wenden has got two secondary schools and several primary schools but no Gymnasium.

Schools and educational institutions in Wenden
Elementary schools Secondary schools
Katholische Grundschule Gerlingen Hauptschule: Konrad-Adenauer-Schule Gemeinschaftshauptschule
Katholische Grundschule Hünsborn Realschule: Realschule Wenden
Katholische Grundschule Ottfingen Special schools
Biggetal-Grundschule Rothemühle Geschwister-Scholl-Schule, Förderschule mit dem Förderschwerpunkt emotionale und soziale Entwicklung
Westerberg-Schule Katholische Grundschule Wenden

Famous people

Sons and daughters of the community

Further reading

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Wenden.
  1. ↑ "Amtliche Bevölkerungszahlen". Landesbetrieb Information und Technik NRW (in German). 18 July 2016.
  2. ↑ Über Wenden, Geschichte
  3. ↑ Wendener Hütte in Olpe
  4. ↑ Olpe, Geschichte, 20. Jahrhundert
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