Solingen


Solingen is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 25 km east of Düsseldorf along the northern edge of the Bergisches Land, south of the Ruhr. After Wuppertal, it is the second-largest city in the Bergisches Land, and a member of the regional authority of the Rhineland.
Solingen is called the Klingenstadt, and has long been renowned for the manufacturing of fine swords, knives, scissors and razors made by firms such as WKC, P.D Rasspe Söhne, DOVO, Wüsthof, Zwilling J. A. Henckels, Böker, Güde, Hubertus, Diefenthal, Puma, Clauberg/Klauberg, Eickhorn, Linder, Carl Schmidt Sohn, Dreiturm, Herder, Martor Safety Knives, Wolfertz, Ralf Aust and numerous other manufacturers.
The medieval swordsmiths of Solingen designed the town's coat of arms. In the late 17th century, a group of swordsmiths from Solingen broke their guild oaths by taking their sword-making secrets with them to Shotley Bridge, County Durham, in England. In the local dialect the Solinger Platt, a variety of the Limburgish language, the city is called Solich or Zóóliech.

Geography

Solingen lies southwest of Wuppertal in the Bergisches Land. The city has an area of, of which roughly 50% is used for agriculture, horticulture, or forestry. The city's border is long, and the city's dimensions are east to west and north to south. The Wupper river, a right tributary of the Rhine, flows through the city for. The city's highest point at 276 metres is in the northern borough of Gräfrath at the Light Tower, previously the water tower, and the lowest point at 53 metres is in the southwest.

Neighbouring cities and communities

The following cities and communities share a border with Solingen, starting in the northeast and going clockwise around the city:
Solingen currently consists of five Stadtbezirke, or boroughs. Each borough has a municipal council of either 13 or 15 representatives elected every five years by the borough's population. The municipal councils are responsible for many of the boroughs' important administrative affairs.
The five city boroughs:
  • Gräfrath
  • Wald
  • Mitte
  • Ohligs/Aufderhöhe/Merscheid
  • Höhscheid/Burg
Ohligs/Aufderhöhe/Merscheid and Höhscheid/Burg are divided into sections that were once separate towns and are still statistical and planning units but are no longer self-governing.
The city further comprises many neighborhoods with their own names, although they often lack precise borders:

Climate

Solingen's climate is classified as oceanic. The average annual temperature in Solingen is. The average annual rainfall is with December as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in July, at around, and lowest in January, at around.
The Solingen weather station has recorded the following extreme values:
  • Highest Temperature on 18 June 2002.
  • Warmest Minimum on 9 August 1992.
  • Coldest Maximum on 1 February 1956.
  • Lowest Temperature on 27 January 1942.
  • Highest Daily Precipitation on 17 April 1936.
  • Wettest Month in September 1957.
  • Wettest Year in 1954.
  • Driest Year in 1959.
  • Earliest Snowfall: 28 October 1950.
  • Latest Snowfall: 3 May 1979.

    History

Middle Ages

Solingen was first mentioned in 1067 by a chronicler who called the area "Solonchon". Early variations of the name included "Solengen", "Solungen", and "Soleggen", although the modern name seems to have been in use since the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
Blacksmiths' smelters, dating back over 2000 years, have been found around the town, adding to Solingen's fame as a Northern Europe blacksmith centre. Swords from Solingen have turned up in places such as the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the British Isles. Northern Europe prized the quality of Solingen's manufactured weaponry, and they were traded across the European continent. Solingen today remains the knife-centre of Germany.
It was a tiny village for centuries, but became a fortified town in the 15th century.

Thirty Years' War

After being ravaged by the plague with about 1,800 deaths in 1614–1619, Solingen was heavily fought over during the Thirty Years' War, repeatedly attacked and plundered, and the Burg Castle was destroyed.

Modern Age

Early in the 20th century, Ohligs's chief manufactures were cutlery and hardware, and there were iron-foundries and flour mills. Other industries were brewing, dyeing, weaving and brick-making.
In 1929, Ohligs located in the Prussian Rhine Province, by rail north of Cologne became part of Solingen.
In World War II, the Old Town was completely destroyed by a bombing raid by the RAF in 1944; 1,800 people died and over 1,500 people were injured. As such, there are few pre-war sites in the centre.
From 1945 to 1949 Solingen was part of the British occupation zone. Reconstruction of the old town began in 1949. The newly built Protestant church in Fronhof was consecrated in 1954, and the destroyed towers of the Catholic church of St. Clemens were rebuilt in a different style. By the end of the 1970s, the city's population had increased due to numerous new housing developments in all parts of the city. The city's infrastructure continued to grow, with the opening of the theatre and concert hall in 1963 and the construction of the Viehbachtalstraße motorway through the city in the late 1970s. In 1975, the city grew again with the incorporation of the previously independent town of Burg an der Wupper. In 1993, Solingen made international headlines for a right-wing extremist arson attack in which five Turkish girls and women were killed. The attack was followed by demonstrations and riots in the city.
Since the beginning of the new millennium, the Klingenstadt has undergone a massive transformation as a result of urban development projects such as Regionale 2006 and City 2013. For example, the new Korkenzieherstrasse cycle path was created and the demolition of the Turmhotel and the former Karstadt Passage made it possible to build a new shopping centre on Neumarkt in Solingen-Mitte. After the closure of the old central station in Solingen-Mitte, Ohligs station was officially named the new Solingen central station by Deutsche Bahn AG on 10 December 2006.
On 23 August 2024, during the city's 650th founding anniversary festival, an Islamic State terrorist stabbed eleven people, killing three, marking the first IS-claimed attack since the 2016 Breitscheidplatz truck attack in Berlin.

Population

Solingen's population doubled between the years 1880 and 1890 due to the incorporation of the town of Dorp into Solingen in 1889, at which time the population reached 36,000. The population again received a large boost on 1 August 1929 through the incorporation of Ohligs, Wald, Höhscheid, and Gräfrath into the city limits. This brought the population above the 100,000 mark, which gave Solingen the distinction of being a "large city". The number of inhabitants peaked in 1971 with 177,899 residents, and the 2006 population figure was 163,263.
The following chart shows the population figures within Solingen's city limits at the respective points in time. The figures are derived from census estimates or numbers provided by statistical offices or city agencies, with the exception of figures preceding 1843, which were gathered using inconsistent recording techniques.
YearPopulation
1747ca. 2,000
1804ca. 2,871
1818ca. 4,000
3 December 18466,127
3 December 186110,100
3 December 186411,800
3 December 186713,000
1 December 187114,040
1 December 187515,142
1 December 188016,900
1 December 188518,641
1 December 189036,540
2 December 189540,843
1 December 190045,260
1 December 190549,018
1 December 191050,536
1 December 191645,720

YearPopulation
31 December 1995165,735
31 December 2000164,973
31 December 2005163,581
31 December 2006162,948
31 December 2007162,575
31 December 2008161,779
30 April 2009160,242
9 May 2011155,265
31 December 2012155,316

30.9% of the population of Solingen has foreign roots.
NationalityPopulation
Italy

Politics

Mayor

The people of Solingen have been able to elect a council and a mayor since 1374, the year the town was granted its charter. The mayor changed annually on 24 June. Solingen has had a mayor since 1896. During the Nazi era, the mayor was appointed by the NSDAP and not democratically elected by the people of Solingen.
After the Second World War, the military government of the British occupation zone appointed a Lord Mayor. From 1946, the Solingen City Council elected an honorary Lord Mayor and a full-time Lord Mayor from among its members. Until 1997, the honorary lord mayors had mainly representative functions, while the full-time lord mayors were the chief administrative officers of the city of Solingen. In 1997, the dual leadership of the city administration was abolished. Since then there has been only one full-time Lord Mayor. He is the chairman of the council, the head of the city administration and the first representative of the city. Since 1999, the Lord Mayor has been directly elected by the electorate in a secret ballot.
The current mayor of Solingen is Daniel Flemm of the Christian Democratic Union, elected in 2025.
Previous mayoral election was held on 13 September 2020, and the results were as follows:
! colspan=2| Candidate
! Party
! Votes
! %
! colspan=3| Valid votes
! 57,476
! 99.1
! colspan=3| Invalid votes
! 523
! 0.9
! colspan=3| Total
! 57,999
! 100.0
! colspan=3| Electorate/voter turnout
! 126,301
! 45.9