Ancient and medieval times Although the part of town now called Buer was first mentioned by
Heribert I in a document as
Puira in 1003, there were hunting people on a hill north of the
Emscher as early as the
Bronze Age – earlier than 1000 BC. They did not live in houses as such, but in small yards gathered together near each other. Later, the
Romans pushed into the area. In about 700, the region was settled by the
Saxons. A few other parts of town which today lie in Gelsenkirchen's north end were mentioned in documents from the early
Middle Ages, some examples being:
Raedese (nowadays
Resse), Middelvic (
Middelich, today part of Resse),
Sutheim (
Sutum; today part of Beckhausen) and
Sculven (nowadays
Scholven). Many nearby farming communities were later identified as ("near Buer"). It was about 1150 when the name
Gelstenkerken or
Geilistirinkirkin appeared up for the first time. At about the same time, the first church in town was built in what is now Buer. This ("church at Buer") was listed in a directory of parish churches by the sexton from
Deutz, Theodericus. This settlement belonged to the
Mark. However, in ancient times and even in the Middle Ages, only a few dozen people actually lived in the settlements around the Emscher basin.
Industrialisation Up until the middle of the 19th century, the area in and around Gelsenkirchen was only thinly settled and almost exclusively agrarian. In 1815, after temporarily belonging to the
Grand Duchy of
Berg, the land now comprising the city of Gelsenkirchen passed to the
Kingdom of Prussia, which assigned it to the
province of Westphalia. Whereas the Gelsenkirchen of that time – not including today's north-end communities, such as Buer – was put in the of
Wattenscheid in the
Bochum district, in the governmental
region of Arnsberg, Buer, which was an in its own right, was along with nearby Horst joined to
Recklinghausen district in the governmental
region of Münster. This arrangement came to an end in 1928. After the discovery of coal – lovingly known as "Black Gold" – in the
Ruhr area in 1840, and the subsequent industrialisation, the
Cologne–
Minden Railway and the Gelsenkirchen Main Railway Station were opened. In 1868, Gelsenkirchen became the seat of an within the Bochum district which encompassed the communities of Gelsenkirchen, Braubauerschaft (since 1900, ), Schalke, Heßler, Bulmke and Hüllen.
Friedrich Grillo founded the Corporation for Chemical Industry () in Schalke in 1872, as well as founding Vogelsang & Co. with the Grevel family (later ), and also the Schalke Mining and Ironworks Association (). A year later, and once again in Schalke, he founded the Glass and Mirror Factory Incorporated (). After Gelsenkirchen had become an important heavy-industry hub, it was raised to city in 1875.
Independent city In 1885, after the Bochum district was split up, Gelsenkirchen became the seat of its own district (
Kreis), which would last until 1926. The cities of Gelsenkirchen and Wattenscheid, as well as the of Braubauerschaft (in 1900, Bismarck), Schalke, ,
Wanne and
Wattenscheid all belonged to the Gelsenkirchen district. A few years later, in 1896, Gelsenkirchen split off from Gelsenkirchen district to become an
independent city (). In 1891, Horst was split off from the of Buer, which itself was raised to city status in 1911, and to an independent city status the next year. Meanwhile, Horst became the seat of its own . In 1924, the rural community of
Rotthausen, which until then had belonged to the
Essen district, was made part of the Gelsenkirchen district. In 1928, under the Prussian local government reforms, the cities of Gelsenkirchen and Buer along with the of Horst together became a new called Gelsenkirchen-Buer, effective on 1 April that year. From that time, the whole city area belonged to the governmental district of Münster. In 1930, on the city's advice, the city's name was changed to 'Gelsenkirchen', effective 21 May. By this time, the city was home to about 340,000 people. In 1931, the Gelsenkirchen Mining Corporation () founded the Gelsenberg Petrol Corporation (). In 1935, the Hibernia Mining Company founded the
coal liquefaction plant. Scholven/Buer began operation in 1936 and achieved a capacity of 200,000 tons/year of finished product, mainly aviation base gasoline. After 1937, Gelsenberg-Benzin-AG opened the Nordstern plant for converting bituminous coal to synthetic oil.
Nazi Germany The
9 November 1938 Kristallnacht antisemitic riots destroyed Jewish businesses, dwellings and cemeteries, and a synagogue in Buer and one in downtown Gelsenkirchen. A new downtown Gelsenkirchen synagogue was opened on 1 February 2007. Gelsenkirchen was a target of
strategic bombing during World War II, particularly during the 1943
Battle of the Ruhr and the
oil campaign. Three quarters of Gelsenkirchen was destroyed and many above-ground
air raid shelters such as near the town hall in Buer are in nearly original form.
Oberst Werner Mölders, the legendary
Luftwaffe fighter pilot, was born here. The
Gelsenberg Lager subcamp of the
Buchenwald concentration camp was established in 1944 to provide
forced labour of about 2000 Hungarian women and girls for Gelsenberg-Benzin-AG. About 150 died during September 1944 bombing raids (shelters and protection ditches were forbidden to them). There was also a camp for
Sinti and
Romani people (see
Romani Holocaust) in the city. From 1933 to 1945, the city's mayor was the appointed
Nazi Carl Engelbert Böhmer. In 1994, the Institute for City History opened the documentation centre "Gelsenkirchen under National Socialism" ().
After the war On 17 December 1953, the went into operation, billed as Germany's "first new
coking plant" since the war. The
Scholven Power Station was built in the late 1960s with further development until 1985, one of the largest in Europe at the time. Its chimneys are among the tallest in Germany. When
postal codes were introduced in 1961, Gelsenkirchen was one of the few cities in
West Germany to be given two codes: Buer was given 466, while Gelsenkirchen got 465. These were in use until 1 July 1993. The first comprehensive school in North Rhine-Westphalia was opened in 1969. Scholven-Chemie AG (the old hydrogenation plant) merged with Gelsenberg-Benzin-AG to form the new corporation VEBA-Oel AG. In 1987,
Pope John Paul II celebrated
Mass before 85,000 people at Gelsenkirchen's
Parkstadion. The Pope also became an honorary member of
FC Schalke 04. In 1997, the Federal Garden Show ( or ) was held on the grounds of the disused
coalmine in Horst. In 1999, the last phase of the
Internationale Bauausstellung Emscher Park, an undertaking that brought together many cities in North Rhine-Westphalia, was held.
Coke was produced at the old Hassel coking works for the last time on 29 September 1999. This marked the shutdown of the last coking plant in Gelsenkirchen, after being a coking town for more than 117 years. In the same year, Shell Solar Deutschland AG took over production of
photovoltaic equipment. On 28 April 2000, the Ewald-Hugo colliery closed – Gelsenkirchen's last colliery. Three thousand coalminers lost their jobs. In 2003, Buer celebrated its thousandth anniversary of first documentary mention, and FC Schalke 04 celebrated on 4 May 2004 its hundredth anniversary.
Jewish history 19th century The Jewish community of Gelsenkirchen was officially established in 1874, relatively late compared to the Jewish
Ashkenazi communities in Germany. In a list of 1829 to determine the salary for the
Chief Rabbi of
Westphalia, , three families were named: the families of Ruben Levi, Reuben Simon, and Herz Heimann families. With the growth of the town during the second half of the 19th century, its Jewish population also grew bigger, with about 120 Jews living in town in 1880, and a synagogue established in 1885. With the growth of the community, a bigger building was built to serve as the community school.
20th century The community continued to grow and around 1,100 Jews were living in Gelsenkirchen in 1901, a number that reached its peak of 1,300 individuals in 1933. At the turn of the 20th century the
Reform Jewish community was the most dominant among all Jewish communities in town, and after an organ was installed inside the synagogue, and most prayers performed mostly in German instead of traditional Hebrew, the town's
orthodox community decided to stop attending the synagogue and tried to establish a new orthodox community, led by Dr. Max Meyer, Dr. Rubens and Abraham Fröhlich, most of them living on Florastraße. In 1908, a lot on Wanner Straße was purchased and served the community as its cemetery until 1936, today containing about 400 graves.
After World War II In 1946, 69 Jews returned to Gelsenkirchen and in 1958, a synagogue and cultural centre were built for the remaining community. In 2005, about 450 Jews were living in town. During the last decade of the 20th century, a noted number of Jews came to the town, after emigrating out of the former USSR. This situation made it necessary to extend the synagogue. Eventually, a new and bigger synagogue was built to serve the increasing Jewish community of Gelsenkirchen. The current community practices Orthodox Judaism, even though no family practices it at home.
Sites The building at Husemannstraße 75 belonged to Dr. Max Meyer, who built it between 1920 and 1921. A
mezuzah sign can still be seen on the top right side of the door. ==Climate==