Herne

Geschichte

Herne is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in the Ruhr area directly between the cities of Bochum and Gelsenkirchen.HistoryLike most other cities in the region, Herne was a tiny village until the 19th century. When the mining of coal and the production of coke and steel began, the villages of the Ruhr area slowly grew into towns and cities because of the influx of people, mostly from the East, looking for, and finding, work. Herne is located on the direct axis between Bochum to the South and Recklinghausen to the North, Münster yet further North; Gelsenkirchen to the West and Castrop-Rauxel and Dortmund to the East. The physical border between Herne and Recklinghausen in fact is, and has been for a long time, the bridge at the Bochumer Strasse across the Rhine-Herne Canal . A little further North of the Canal flows the Emscher River, which was a major known location because of the former abundance of wild horses that were caught in the Emscher Valley, then sold and/or traded at the yearly horse market at Crange, which later developed into the "Cranger Kirmes", now a World renowned Fair and the largest in Germany. After World War II Herne was known as "Die Goldene Stadt" because of the comparatively limited damage suffered during World War II.Present-day Herne includes the former settlements of Haranni, originating at the South end of the Bahnhofstrasse and just across the Evangelische Hauptkirche Herne and the crossing of Sodingerstrasse, running to the East at that point, then turning into Wiescherstrasse; Haranni used to be somewhat hidden at about 9:40 hrs. In reference to the "Kreuzkirche", if you will, but seems to be totally obliterated, razed, eliminated, forgotten, the sole reference to Haranni seemingly resting with the very short "Harannistrasse". Herne, Wanne and Eickel as well as formerly independent settlements or villages like Baukau, Börnig, Crange, Horsthausen, Pöppinghausen, Sodingen et al. became the present Herne. Farms bearing these names were probably or possibly founded in the 11th and 12th centuries and were later integrated at one time or another into the city of Herne. In 1860 the first of a number of many coal mines started operating. In the following thirty years the population increased twentyfold. For the first time, Herne would be called a city. The same process took place in Wanne and Eickel, the two of which merged in 1926 to form the new city of ""Wanne-Eickel"". In 1975 Wanne-Eickel, by then a city with over 70,000 inhabitants, was incorporated into Herne, which had a population considerably larger than ""Wanne-Eickel"" at that point in time.