Lörrach is a town in the south-west of Baden-Württemberg. It is the
largest city in the Markgräfler Land. The city is located at the exit of
the Wiesental on the Swiss border and is surrounded by the foothills of
the southern Black Forest.
Lörrach is first mentioned as
"Lorracho" in a document from the year 1102, in which Bishop Burkhard
von Basel appointed Dietrich von Rötteln as the governor of the
possessions of the monastery of St. Alban on the right bank of the
Rhine.
In 1403 King Ruprecht of the Palatinate granted Margrave
Rudolf III. von Hachberg-Sausenburg Lörrach the market right, the
Emperor Friedrich III. 1452 confirmed.
In 1678, Rötteln Castle
was destroyed by French troops and four years later, in 1682, Margrave
Friedrich Magnus von Baden-Durlach granted the town town rights.
During the revolution of 1848/49, also known as the "Baden Revolution",
Gustav Struve proclaimed the "German Republic" on the balcony of Lörrach
town hall.
In 1863, one year after the opening of the
Wiesentalbahn, Lörrach became the district capital and, in the course of
municipal reform in Baden-Württemberg, in 1973, the official town of the
enlarged Lörrach district.
The districts of Stetten (since 1908),
Tumringen and Tüllingen (both since 1935) belong to Lörrach. Since 1975,
Haagen, Brombach and Hauingen have also belonged to Lörrach as
districts.
By plane
The nearest commercial airports are EuroAirport
Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg (IATA: BSL, MLH, EAP) and Zurich Airport (IATA:
ZRH)
By train
Lörrach is on the Wiesentalbahn and is part of
the Basel S-Bahn S6. The route goes from the Basel SBB train station via
Basel Bad to Zell im Wiesental. From 1 Lörrach Hbf station you also have
a connection to Weil am Rhein on the route of the S5 garden railway and
on to the Rheintalbahn RE to Freiburg im Breisgau.
UEX
Urlaubs-Express offers night and car trains between Hamburg-Altona and 2
Lörrach train station. The entire route takes around 10 hours. Depending
on the date, a ticket is available from €99 (plus the price for a car or
motorbike). Without car loading, boarding is also possible in Hamburg
Hbf, Lüneburg, Hanover and Göttingen (as of summer 2017).
By bus
Flixbus goes to the 3 Lörrach bus station.
In the street
Lörrach has three symbols: AS connection points 4, 5, 6 to the A98,
which meets the A5 at Weil am Rhein. The B317 leads through the
Wiesental to Todtnau, the B316 leads to Rheinfelden and the High Rhine.
By bicycle
The Black Forest cycle path - BW tourism ends in
Lörrach
A variant of the Southern Black Forest Cycle Path touches
Lörrach - Southern Black Forest Nature Park
The cross-connection of
the Dreiland-Radweg leads from Lörrach on the Wiese river to Basel and
the circuit touches the north of Lörrach - Veloland Schweiz
The Stettener Schlösschen, located in the Lörrach district of
Stetten, is the only secular building from the 17th century that can be
assigned to the Renaissance style. The former manor house with the
striking stair tower has late Gothic elements.
Brombach Castle
was first mentioned in 1294. The small castle, owned by Matthias Reich
von Reichenstein, was considered impregnable with its two meter thick
foundation walls. The Basel earthquake destroyed the building, which was
restored. From 1676 to 1678, French troops completely destroyed Brombach
Castle, but it was rebuilt in 1880 by the industrialist Großmann. A
small park surrounds the palace.
Numerous churches of both
denominations are located in Lörrach. The nave of the evangelical town
church south of the old market square was built in the classicist style
between 1815 and 1817 according to the plans of Weinbrenner's student
Wilhelm Frommel. This included the uplifting podium. The church tower
dates from 1514. It is striking for its unadorned portals and slits in
the wall. The gabled roof of the church tower was replaced in 1817 by a
pointed tent roof with a golden ball and cross. In 1556, the church was
the place from which the Reformation was introduced in the Margraviate
of Baden-Durlach through a sermon by the Basel priest U. Koch. The
cemetery used to be around the church.
The evangelical Christ
Church was built in 1956. In 1975 a Protestant community center was
built on Suttermattstrasse.
The main Catholic church in Lörrach
is the Church of St. Bonifatius, built between 1864 and 1867. On July
15, 2007, it was severely damaged in a major fire and was rebuilt over
the following years. One of the youngest churches in Lörrach is the
curate church of St. Peter by the architect Rudolf Dietsche in the
northern part of town on the edge of the Grüttpark. The church, which
belongs to the Catholic community, stands on a 6 meter high plateau. The
tower on the north side is connected to a cylindrical low-rise building.
What is striking is that the flat roof tapers towards the 42 meter high
tower thanks to a reinforced concrete construction. This remarkable
building was built between 1962 and 1964 on the edge of Grüttpark and
can be seen from afar. A 220 m² glass wall, designed by the artist
Wilfrid Perraudin (1912-2006), shows a picture cycle with motifs from
the New Testament and the church patron Peter. When it was realized in
1963, this was the largest concrete light wall in the world.
The
Catholic Fridolins Church in Stetten (1821 to 1822) is an outstanding
example of neoclassical church architecture in south-west Germany. It
was built according to plans by Christoph Arnold. The front façade is
framed by two rather plain church towers. The branch church of the Holy
Family, built in 1965/66 according to the plans of the architect Wilhelm
Frank, also belongs to the community in the district of Neumatt in the
west of Stetten.
The Rötteler church was first mentioned in a
document in 751. Margrave Rudolf III. had the church rebuilt. His tomb
and that of his wife Anna are kept in the Röttler Church. Her tomb is in
a beautiful vaulted chapel behind the choir. Today's church dates back
to 1401. The Röttler church and Rötteln Castle are illuminated in the
evening.
The evangelical St-Germanus church in Brombach was built
in neo-Gothic style around 1903/1904 and has space for more than 800
people. The tower dates from the 13th/14th. Century. Parts of the choir
are dated to 1479. The large bell from 1595 was cast by Sebaldt Hofmann
from Basel. St. Joseph's Church in Brombach was built in 1899/1900.
The evangelical church of St. Nicholas in Hauingen was first
mentioned in 1102. The current church was built in 1768, the tower has
older parts from 1469.
Rötteln Castle, the city's landmark and one of the largest castle complexes in southern Baden, offers a sweeping view of Lörrach, the surrounding communities and the city of Basel. The first documented mention of the castle dates back to 1259; the oldest parts of the castle probably date back to the beginning of the 11th century. Until 1678, the more fortress-like complex served as the administrative seat for the Upper Margraviate (Oberland, part of Baden-Durlach). After the destruction, the offices were moved to the valley settlement of Lörrach, Rötteln was not rebuilt and fell into a romantic ruin, temporarily being used as a quarry. Johann Peter Hebe immortalized the castle in this state in his poems. In the 20th century, the structural safeguarding and partial reconstruction took place through private initiative. The elongated castle complex has two towers that can be climbed. The inside of the castle can be visited from mid-March to the end of October.
The lower castle can be visited all year round. The upper castle is
open daily from mid-March to mid-November from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Mid-November to mid-March on weekends and public holidays from 11:00
a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Admission for adults: 3.00 euros; children (6 years to
14 years) 1.50 euros; Children under 6 years free.
The
Schwarzwald-Westweg leads through the outer bailey of the castle ruins.
In addition, the ruins are accessible from all sides by local hiking
trails.
The castle can be reached by bus line 16 (from Lörrach
main station in the direction of Hauingen/Brombach to the Röttelnweiler
stop). From the bus stop you can walk to the castle in about 15 minutes.
You can also take bus lines 1 and 2 (Lörrach - Kandern) of the Regio
Verkehrsverbund Lörrach (RVL) to the Rötteln stop. From there it is also
a 15-minute walk to the castle, although the ascent is more leisurely.
A narrow local road leads from Lörrach-Haagen to a large car park at
the foot of the castle. The way is signposted. Since the number of
visitors is very high on weekends when the weather is nice, you can
alternatively use the "Wittlinger Höhe" hiking car park (on the district
road between Wittlingen and Lörrach-Haagen - K6344) or on the Lucke
(access via the state road from Rümmingen to Lörrach - L141). The paths
are a bit longer from these car parks, but have almost no incline.
Stetten "Schlössle"
Brombach Castle
Buildings
The
Burghof Lörrach, a modern cultural center on the site of a castle that
was demolished in the 17th century
The Old Town Hall, on whose
balcony Gustav Struve proclaimed the Republic in 1848
The new town
hall, popularly known as "Langer Egon".
The building on Weinbrennerstraße, which was used as a police
headquarters until the end of 2013 and is now a criminal inspectorate,
was built in several stages between 1719 and 1727 as a salt warehouse
with fruit storage and a wine cellar. The expansive, representative wing
building in the baroque style has a large hipped roof with flat,
protruding skylights. The large arched portal can be reached via a wide
staircase that curves outwards.
Lörrach town hall is nicknamed
"Langer Egon" after the former mayor Egon Hugenschmidt, during whose
tenure it was built. The eye-catching 17-story high-rise building with
the headquarters of the administration and the Lord Mayor is located
near the Lörrach train station. The dark green building was completed in
1976 after four years of construction at a cost of 23.7 million marks
and, at 72 meters, is the tallest skyscraper in the city.
The
building of the Lörrach youth hostel is architecturally idiosyncratic.
The building is located on the Steinenweg between the Stetten district
and the Salzert settlement, right on the edge of the forest. From the
exposed location of the building you have a good view of Basel and the
surrounding towns. The youth hostel was inaugurated on April 26, 1982 by
the then Federal President, Professor Karl Carstens.
On the site
of a former athletics field, the “Stadion” residential complex was built
between 1990 and 1994 in the north of Lörrach by architects Wilhelm +
Partner on behalf of Wohnbau Lörrach. The complex architectural
structure of the complex consists of units arranged in an oval and eight
free-standing buildings inside. The eight buildings are spread over two
squares surrounded by a 400 meter ring. The residential complex contains
a total of 220 residential units.
Since the spring of 2005, a 41
meter high residential building on Chesterplatz in the city center has
shaped the cityscape. Also on Chesterplatz is the Galleria Mendini
commercial building, a project by the Italian architect Alessandro
Mendini. The façade facing the square is striking because of its
striking color scheme. Since the 2000s, the city has been trying to
counter the housing shortage with energy-saving buildings. In 2002,
Lörrach was the first German municipality to be awarded the Swiss energy
label “Energiestadt” and in the following years it also won the European
Energy Award several times. An outstanding project for this is the
Niederfeldplatz residential area, built between 2010 and 2013. It is the
first CO2-neutral residential complex in Germany.
Old Marketplace
Street of Democracy
The sculpture path in the
pedestrian zone, starting at the old market square
There are around 10,000 urban trees in Lörrach. The main tree species
with 20% is maple, followed by linden and plane tree with 7% each,
hornbeam with 6%, ash with 4% and oak and birch with 3% each.
In
the south of Lörrach, west of the Hünerberg, lies the 2.4-hectare
Rosenfelspark at the foot of the Villa Rosenfels (built in 1876). This
park, which is the second largest in Lörrach by area, originally
belonged to the Koechlin family estate and has only been open to the
public since 1925, contains a small animal park and a concert shell from
1965. Next to the Old Market Square, the concert shell serves as a venue
for the Voices Festival.
In the city center are the 0.35-hectare
Hebepark, which was remodeled in 2016, with a larger-than-life statue of
the Alemannic local poet Johann Peter Hebe, and the 1.5-hectare park at
the Villa Aichele. The building of the Villa Aichele dates back to 1861
and can be assigned to the neo-baroque style with its baroque base. It
served as a residence for the Swiss textile manufacturer Nicolas
Koechlin. Koechlin's heirs sold the villa in 1901 to Maria Aichele -
Albert Aichele's mother - after whom the villa was named. After the
Second World War, ownership passed to the city. Nowadays, cultural
events such as readings, vernissages or civil weddings regularly take
place in the Villa Aichele.
On the occasion of the state garden
show in 1983, the Grütt landscape park was created. The name Grütt
derives from the word rütten, which means something like clearing. This
largest green area in Lörrach with 51 hectares has a small lake
(Grütt-See) and a stream that runs through the entire park. There is a
rose garden along the promenade path.
The partially forested
hiking trails and the area of the Tüllinger Berg, which is partly on the
Lörrach area, do not constitute a park, but are still a popular local
recreation area due to their natural state and the wide all-round view
of the region.
On the northern edge of the park is the regional
leisure and exhibition center with a total gross area of 23,000 square
meters. There are two permanent halls with a total of 7,200 square
meters of exhibition space and eleven other halls in lightweight
construction, which are temporarily set up and dismantled. In addition,
special shows are held on an open-air site. In 2005, the exhibition
center received a new exhibition car park in order to upgrade the
exhibition site. On the Wiesentalbahn, the Haagen (Baden) station was
given the name Lörrach-Haagen/Messe.
The green areas also include
the nine cemeteries in Lörrach, of which the main cemetery in the city
center is by far the largest at 110,607 square meters.
The former tobacco factory was converted into a pedagogical building
in 1759. In the baroque building on Basler Strasse, Johann Peter Hebel
worked as a teacher. The school was later renamed the Hebegymnasium,
before being converted into what is now the Dreiländermuseum after
extensive renovations in 1978. Collections that are more than 100 years
old include medieval wooden sculptures and a pewter shop. There are
exhibitions on various topics such as natural areas of the Rheinaue,
hills and mountains, geological history and the risk of earthquakes,
settlement history from the Stone Age to the Alemanni. The exhibits
include over 50,000 objects. The museum also houses a scientific
reference library with over 10,000 books and journals, including around
1,000 particularly valuable books from the 16th century. In addition to
regularly changing special exhibitions, a permanent exhibition has been
set up which depicts the past and present of the three-country region of
Germany, France and Switzerland.
In 1981, the foundation walls of
a Roman villa rustica from the second century were excavated and
restored on the Bühl hill in the Brombach district.
Located in
the district of Brombach, the Sculptor Rudolf Scheurer Foundation is
housed in a twelve meter high sculpture tower; this is used as the
artist's exhibition space. Sculptures, reliefs and graphics from the
40-year activity of the sculptor Rudolf Scheurer are on display.
Since May 5, 2009, an art museum has been exhibiting around 2,500 works
by the Lörrach painter Paul Ibenthaler in two annual exhibitions.
adventure climbing forest
Well signposted network of hiking and
cycling trails
Park swimming pool and indoor pool
Leisure center
impulsive
The first origins of the Lörrach Fasnacht can no longer be
reconstructed. The first reliable evidence of this is a written mention
from the year 1620. This concept sheet served as a template for a
document from the files of the Oberamt Rötteln. It contains rules of
conduct for the population during the pre-Lent period. Dances, for
example, are allowed to a certain extent, but "mummeries" (disguises)
are forbidden. However, this document does not contain any detailed
descriptions of the course of the festival itself. Documents for the
carnival are only available again in the 19th century, so that no
continuous tradition can be identified. The Reformation pushed back the
carnival hustle and bustle, and the low importance of Lörrach in the
17th and 18th centuries prevented a pronounced carnival tradition. Only
the industrialization, the economic boom and the noticeable increase in
the population offered new conditions for the creation of a Lörrach
carnival.
The first documented masked parade took place in
Lörrach on February 11, 1866. These early years, however, were
characterized by extensive disorganization. From 1895 to 1907 there were
no masked parades, only masked balls. The cornerstone of today's Lörrach
carnival was laid in the mid-1930s. The newly created style is based on
the Swabian-Alemannic Fastnacht, but initially also contains elements
from the Rhineland. In 1936 the first independent Lörrach carnival took
place. The Lörrach Fools' Guild and some cliques and the Lörrach Fools'
Guild were founded in this year. In the years that followed, the
elements of the Rhenish carnival declined and, in addition to the
Swabian-Alemannic tradition, influences from the Basel carnival
established themselves in the form of the figure Waggis and the
so-called Guggenmusik. The local painter Adolf Glattacker, who was an
active carnival participant himself, had a significant impact on the
fools' guild with his designs for posters and emblems.
In
addition to the parades, the carnival fire is an integral part of
carnival customs. These traditionally take place on the Saturday or
Sunday after Shrove Monday and are demonstrably one of the oldest parts
of carnival customs. To do this, heaps of wood several meters high are
piled up and set on fire. Sometimes a puppet is placed on top of the
pile of wood as a symbol of evil spirits. Participants in the carnival
bonfire hurl burning throwing discs (disc hits) into the valleys. Every
district of Lörrach organizes its own carnival bonfire, e.g. B. on the
Tüllinger Berg, on the Hünerberg or on the Maienbühl in Stetten.
The time of the Lörrach Fasnacht is based on the so-called "Men's
Fasnacht". Other parts of the city, such as Hauingen, are based on the
"Peasant Carnival". Here, the carnival season only begins when Lent has
begun in other places. The different dates stem from the reorganization
by the Synod of Benevento in 1091, in which Lent was postponed by a
week.
Despite the comparatively short carnival tradition, Lörrach
is considered a carnival stronghold in Baden-Württemberg due to the
activities of the last 70 years. The Fools' Guild Lörrach 1936 e. V.
draws today for the street carnival, the Narrenzunft Lörrach 1936 e. V.
responsible for the guild evenings. In 2007, 150 carnival fans from
Lörrach took part in the Steuben Parade in New York City.
Brewery Lasser
The oldest traces of human settlement in the Lörrach area go back to
the early Stone Age. Findings in the Isteiner Klotz caves from the
Middle Stone Age (about 6000 years ago) indicate mining activities and
reindeer hunters. The finds in Lörrach's district begin with the
Neolithic period, a period in which village-like settlements formed with
the transition to sedentary life. Around 1000 B.C. B.C. Fliegeburgen,
which in the case of the skull mountain was used as a hilltop
settlement. The name of the skull mountain points to the numerous Celtic
relics that can be found on the ridge.
After the settlement of
Celts in the 1st century B.C. The country was affected by the expansion
of the Roman Empire, which began under Emperor Augustus with the
occupation of the left bank of the Rhine. Around AD 70, the Flavians
continued to Romanize the high and upper Rhineland on the right bank of
the Rhine up to the Limes. It is striking that, in contrast to the Basel
area, the southern Upper Rhine area and the High Rhine Valley, there is
little evidence of the Roman period in the Lörrach district. The front
Wiesental and the Dinkelberg were not yet part of the area of interest
of the Roman conquerors. Traces of Roman times can only be found in
today's Stetten and in Brombach. In Lörrach, where the Romanization
process started later, you will find a Roman country estate, a so-called
Villa Rustica, in a scenic location. The excavated and restored
foundation walls of the Villa Rustica in Brombach are the only
discovered evidence of Roman buildings to date.
The surrounding
villages of Lörrach, such as Tumringen, Tüllingen or Stetten, which was
first mentioned in 763, are documented in part by deeds of donation.
Lörrach itself was mentioned relatively late. A document from the
monastery of St. Gallen dated September 7, 751 documents Lörrach for the
first time. The village of Lörrach only gained in importance in the 12th
and 13th centuries. Lörrach was first mentioned in 1102 in a founding
report of the St. Alban Monastery.
From then on, Lörrach's
history was closely linked to the Lords of Rötteln. The influence of the
Lords of Rötteln was not limited to the worldly. In 1238 Liutold I von
Rötteln was appointed bishop of Basel. Rötteln Castle, which was
mentioned in a document in 1259, was the ancestral seat of the family.
In the 14th century, the castle and lordship of Rötteln first passed to
the Margraves of Sausenberg and then in 1503 to the Margraves of Baden
through inheritance.
On January 26, 1403, the German King Ruprecht of the Palatinate
granted the Margrave Rudolf III. from Hachberg-Sausenberg to the village
of Lörrach the right to hold a yearly market and a weekly market on
Wednesday. Since Lörrach was at the intersection of important trade
routes, this market right was of great importance, which was granted in
1452 by Emperor Friedrich III. has been confirmed.
The
Reformation introduced in Basel by Johannes Oekolampad in 1529 also had
an impact in Lörrach. In 1556, a Protestant pastor gave the first sermon
in German instead of the usual Latin.
At the time of the Thirty
Years' War, Lörrach suffered from the consequences of the war on the one
hand, and on the other hand the plague, which lasted for several years,
claimed many victims. In 1633 Spanish troops marched through the country
and became a serious nuisance. During the Battle of Rheinfelden in 1638
Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar had his headquarters in Brombach and
occupied Rötteln. Only the Peace of Münster in 1648 brought peace to
Lörrach.
Friedrich Magnus von Baden-Durlach granted Lörrach city
rights on November 18, 1682. However, this did not become effective due
to the constant turmoil of war and fell into oblivion. Thus, on June 3,
1756, the town charter of Lörrach was renewed by Margrave Karl
Friedrich.
Due to Lörrach's location on the border with France
and changing margraviate alliances, the region around Lörrach became the
scene of frequent battles over the next 150 years. The consequences of
the war had a lasting impact on the city and its development. In 1702,
west of Lörrach, the Battle of Käferholz took place during the War of
the Spanish Succession. In the War of the Polish Succession from 1733 to
1738, French troops crossed the Rhine again near Hüningen in 1735,
demanded provisions from the residents of the Wiesental and levied a war
tax for all communities. The War of the Austrian Succession, which
lasted from 1740 to 1748, did not spare Lörrach either. Although there
was no destruction, the communities of the Markgräflerland had to
provide Austrians and French with provisions. Only the Second Peace of
Aachen brought peace to the country for a few decades.
In 1796
Lörrach became the scene of the First Coalition War. The Lörrach
population was burdened with the payment of contributions and forced
labor. During the Second Coalition War from 1799 to 1802, the lower
Wiesental was again overrun by French troops. In return, Lörrach
benefited in 1803 from the elevation of the state of Baden to an
electorate by Napoleon and in 1806 to a grand duchy. During the second
half of the 18th and the first half of the 19th century, the most
important Alemannic dialect poet, Johann Peter Hebe, frequented Lörrach.
From 1783 to 1791 lever was a teacher at the former Latin school in
Lörrach, the so-called Pedagogium.
Lörrach's path to industrialization was marked by the founding of
many companies in neighboring Switzerland. Many textile processing
companies settled along the Wiesental and in Lörrach itself. Due to the
developing economy, the construction of workers' housing became
necessary. The cityscape began to change rapidly. Around 1800, many
classicist buildings were built in Lörrach, including the synagogue, the
town church in the center and the Fridolins church in Stetten.
Under the impact of the Baden Revolution of 1848/49, the state of Baden
went over to municipal three-class suffrage, which was staggered
according to tax revenue. Disappointed with the Frankfurt Democrats,
Friedrich Hecker and Gustav Struve launched an armed uprising from
Constance on April 13, 1848, which went down in history as the Hecker
Raid. Their destination was Schliengen, where the terminus of the
Mannheim-Basel railway line was located at the time. On April 20, 1848,
Hecker asked the city of Lörrach to support the revolutionary movement.
However, the council refused. Hecker's troops were defeated in combat on
the Scheideck near Kandern. Struve undertook the second coup attempt
from Basel. He moved to Lörrach and proclaimed the German Republic on
September 21, 1848 in Lörrach town hall. However, this attempted coup
was also ended by government troops. For four days, Lörrach became the
main town of the Struve putsch, the “seat of government” so to speak.
In 1862, Lörrach was connected to the railway network with the
opening of the Wiesentalbahn, a branch of the Baden main railway. In
1867 the Catholic Church of St. Bonifaz was built. At that time Lörrach
had around 6,000 inhabitants.
Progressive industrialization caused Lörrach's population to continue
to rise. In 1900 it reached the mark of 10,000 inhabitants. The village
of Stetten was incorporated on April 1, 1908, increasing Lörrach's
population to 15,000. The district area had grown from 752 hectares to
1213 hectares. Lörrach's economic boom ended with the First World War.
In 1915, Lörrach suffered casualties from enemy air raids. A Hindenburg
line was built on the Tüllinger Berg to defend the city. In 1916 an
additional hospital was set up in the Realschule. During the First World
War, Lörrach and the surrounding towns suffered a total of 813
casualties. After the end of the World War, the scarcity of raw
materials particularly damaged the textile processing industries and led
to increased unemployment. The social situation continued to deteriorate
and from August 1922 the rapid depreciation of the currency began in the
course of hyperinflation. During this time, wages were paid in Swiss
francs in some of the companies located in Lörrach.
At the time
of the Weimar Republic, there was increased social unrest in Lörrach,
which peaked on September 14, 1923. Three people died, many were injured
and several hostages were abused. The economic imbalance also meant that
the authorities and administration were unable to carry out urgent
construction projects. The narrow leeway meant that the term of office
of Mayor Heinrich Graser (1927-1933) was assessed as a management of
defects.
The local group of the NSDAP in Lörrach had existed
since 1922. During the 1920s, however, it found it rather difficult to
gain a foothold, although there was also anti-parliamentary propaganda
in Lörrach with the German-nationalist magazine Der Markgräfler by the
dialect poet Hermann Burte. After the National Socialists "seizure of
power" Reinhard Boos was appointed mayor of Lörrach in 1933. Boos, who
built up and strengthened the NSDAP with great commitment in Lörrach,
subsequently played a leading role in the local smashing of the trade
unions and opposition parties. From 1938 onwards Boos played a leading
role in the actions against the Jews of Lörrach. During the November
pogroms of 1938, several men gained access to the synagogue and
destroyed it. The destroyed church was then demolished. Thanks to the
geographical distance to the war fronts, Lörrach remained comparatively
undamaged during the Second World War. On April 24, 1945, French troops
in Lörrach ended the hostilities.
The post-war years were
characterized by disproportionate growth in the city's population due to
the arrival of refugees and expellees. The relatively low level of war
damage in the manufacturing industry in the Lörrach area also attracted
many job seekers. From around 20,000 inhabitants after the war, the
number grew to over 30,000 by 1960. Around 7,500 of them were expellees
and refugees from the eastern German territories and the Soviet
occupation zone and later GDR. In the 1960s, the Salzert settlement and
the Bühl in Brombach were built in the fast-growing city. A general
traffic plan drawn up in 1964 was the basis for further urban planning
and the development of a new traffic concept through a city bypass. In
the 1970s, part of the city center was restructured into a pedestrian
zone. As part of the municipal area reform in Baden-Württemberg, the
town of Lörrach was formed on January 1, 1975 by merging the town of
Lörrach with the municipalities of Hauingen and Brombach. Already on
January 1, 1974, Haagen was incorporated into Lörrach. In 1976 Mayor
Hugenschmidt inaugurated the new town hall. The 17-storey, dark green
high-rise has shaped the silhouette as the tallest high-rise building in
the city.
On August 17, 1980, the neo-Nazi terrorist organization
German Action Groups carried out an attack on an accommodation for
asylum seekers, in which a woman of Ethiopian origin was seriously
injured.
The construction of the Wiesental bridge as a section of
the A 98 and the State Garden Show in 1983 were two major projects that
have significantly further developed the city. Founded in 1981, the
Lörrach vocational academy, renamed the Lörrach Cooperative State
University in 2009, currently has over 2,000 students. At the end of
March 31, 1984, the Lörrach University of Education was closed due to a
change in the law of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament. At the
beginning of the 1990s, extensive construction work began in the center
of Lörrach, which significantly expanded the previous pedestrian zone by
closing roads.
On September 19, 2010, three people died in a
rampage in the city center in addition to the perpetrator, and 18 others
were injured.
One of the largest construction projects in decades
is the planned construction of a central clinic on the northern
outskirts of the city. For the development of the construction area, the
transport connection is to be optimized with several measures. In
addition to the relocation of the L138 state road, a new S-Bahn station
for the Basel S-Bahn is to be built and the connection to the B317
federal road is to be changed. The current (as of March 2018) schedule
is for construction to begin in 2020 and the opening of the clinic to be
pursued in 2025. An area of around 7 to 8 hectares and around 700 beds
are to be developed for the clinic, which is to be located in the
Entenbad-Nord district. The construction costs, including the medical
technology, are estimated at around 239 million euros.
The population development of Lörrach is closely linked to the
political and economic development of the city. During the
industrialization in the 19th century, the population grew steadily. The
two world wars and the economic crises caused stagnation. After the
Second World War, the population rose again rapidly due to the influx of
refugees and expellees. This development was promoted by the fact that
the war damage in Lörrach was relatively low and jobs were lured in
neighboring Switzerland. With the municipal reform in 1974 and 1975, the
population continued to grow through the incorporation of the suburbs of
Haagen, Brombach and Hauingen.
Since the mid-1970s, however, the
population has been declining because the main growth zones have shifted
to the surrounding communities. This trend has been reversed since the
fall of the Berlin Wall. Due to the better economic situation and the
resulting lower unemployment rate, the population development followed
the nationwide trend, and Lörrach was able to attract many new
residents. Currently (as of 2023) the population of Lörrach is steadily
growing; However, the number of 50,000 inhabitants forecast for 2017 was
not reached. The proportion of foreigners in Lörrach was 18.3% at the
end of 2020.
Lörrach is located in the extreme southwest of Germany at the
foothills of the southern Black Forest in the Wiesental and on the Swiss
border with Riehen, which belongs to the canton of Basel-Stadt. The
so-called "Green Border" to Switzerland, a hiking trail for pedestrians
and cyclists, runs along the Wiese, a right-hand tributary of the Rhine.
At the southern end of the district area, the Iron Hand, a mountain
ridge, forms the border with Switzerland.
Geographical data of
the municipal district of Lörrach:
Lowest point: 268.5 meters above
sea level. NN (the river Wiese on the Swiss border)
Highest point:
558.1 meters above sea level. NN (high level in the Röttler forest)
The built-up urban area of Lörrach measures 6.0 kilometers from
north to south and 4.6 kilometers from east to west.
Lörrach is
sometimes referred to as the "capital" of the Markgräflerland and
belongs to the trinational Eurodistrict of Basel and Regio TriRhena. The
state capital of Stuttgart is 160 kilometers from Lörrach, the major
Swiss cities of Bern 102 kilometers and Zurich 90 kilometers, a good
hour's drive. The nearest French city (49 kilometers) is Mulhouse, the
nearest German city is Freiburg im Breisgau (74 kilometers).
The
town of Lörrach is framed by many wooded elevations (Schädelberg,
Homburg Forest, Röttler Forest and Tüllinger Berg) along the Lower
Wiesental, of which the Tüllinger Berg at 460 meters above sea level. NN
forms one of the highest. From there you have the best view of the
surrounding towns of Weil am Rhein and Basel, as well as the knee of the
Rhine. A 657-hectare conservation area has been set up on the Tüllinger
Berg. The regionally important Gutedel vine is grown on the
south-western slope of the mountain and made into Markgräfler wine. A
total of nine areas have been set up in the city for the long-term
protection of nature and the landscape. In terms of nature, the urban
area of Lörrach belongs to the Markgräfler Hügelland.
The final
stage of Variant A of the Westweg leads through Lörrach, or to be more
precise, past Rötteln Castle and over the Tüllinger. Since 2010, part of
the lever hiking trail has also run through the city area. There is a
total of 89 kilometers of a hiking trail network managed by the Black
Forest Association in Lörrach's district.
Lörrach is located in a
so-called customs border district with a main customs office. After
Switzerland joined the Schengen area on December 12, 2008, border
controls were abolished. Customs controls, on the other hand, remain in
place because Switzerland has not joined the European Customs Union.
Lörrach's border location brought the townspeople both advantages and
disadvantages. With the fall of the borders within the EU and the
bilateral agreements between the European Union and Switzerland, the
region moved from a political fringe position to a European central
position for the first time. With well-developed north-south and
east-west transport connections, Lörrach is economically integrated and
also benefits in terms of tourism as the regional center of the southern
Black Forest. The increased crime rate caused by border traffic has a
disadvantageous effect; these include, in particular, crimes related to
drug smuggling. In 2004, the district of Lörrach was sixth in
Baden-Württemberg in terms of the frequency of criminal offenses with
10,099 cases.
A large part of the city center stands on the gravel masses that the
meadow piled up during the last (Würm) glaciation. The old town centers
of Brombach, Haagen and Hauingen also lie on them. Tumringen, on the
other hand, did not expand to the valley floor until late. This level
has two levels: a higher level, the level of deposits from the last
glacial period (lower terrace), and a lower one, which arose after the
Ice Age when the deepening meadow partially cleared and surrounded its
gravel (the Aue). The Rain (the Hochgestade), which is about 10 meters
high and connects both levels, an old meadow bank, cannot be overlooked
in the cityscape (steep climbs on Teichstrasse, Clara-Immerwahr-Strasse,
Weiler Strasse, the Burghof multi-storey car park leaning against the
Rain, the “Rainstrasse” etc.). It can be followed as far as Brombach,
with the difference in level already decreasing in Grütt. From Haagen,
where the lower terrace also appears to the right of the meadow, the
difference in altitude is only around 5 meters. To the east of Hauingen,
the lower terrace is completely suspended. Until the meadow was dammed,
the floodplain was a floodplain. The old branches of the river, traced
by the vegetation, can still be seen in the open field between the
Haagener Steg and the feeder road in the aerial photo.
The valley
around the city center is bounded by the Tüllinger Berg in the west and
by a series of hills in the east, such as the Hünerberg, the
Leuselhard/Schädelberg and the Stettenbuck in front of the actual
western edge of the Dinkelberg.
The west boundary of the shell
limestone table of the Dinkelberg lies in a north-south trending turning
zone about one kilometer wide, in which not only the shell limestone
layers, but also younger sediments dive into the depths of the Upper
Rhine Graben, i.e. are not simply pushed off at faults. This flexure
zone starts south of Kandern as a continuation of the Rheingraben edge
fault and reaches the urban area on the Haagen district. Already at the
western edge of the Lingert, visible in an abandoned quarry, the shell
limestone layers turn off. Westward in the direction of Lichsen and
Manzental, younger and younger layers follow, also descending: red
Keuper clay and Jurassic sediments, including the oblique hard main
rogen stone rib on which the castle ruins sit. To the west of the castle
there are already tertiary layers, which also plunge into the depth of
the ditch.
In the inner city area, longitudinal faults run in the
flexure. In addition, there are several transverse faults, so that a
real mosaic of Jura and Tertiary clods is created, which appears in the
landscape as a chain of hills between Dinkelberg and the valley floor.
The main rogen stone at Hünerberg, skull mountain and Stettenbuck plays
a role in the landscape as a resistant cover plate. Between these clods
and the shell limestone of the Dinkelberg, a forest-free clearing zone
runs from the Salzert via the Spitzacker to the Moosmatt in soft Keuper
clay.
The descending layers of the flexure form a deep trough
under the Tüllinger Berg, so they rise again further west. The shell
limestone of the Dinkelberg is sunk more than 1000 meters deep in the
deepest hollow. It (and the younger Mesozoic layers) are covered there
by sediments from the Tertiary graben, e.g. of gray clay from the time
when the Rhine Graben was filled by a shallow arm of the sea (Rupel:
Froidefontaine Formation) and fine sandstone and marl, alluvial sediment
from the following continental period. This so-called Alsatian Molasse
(Rupel/Chatt: Niederrödern Formation) only forms a low base of the
Tüllinger Berg above the meadow, but largely forms the subsoil in the
rest of Markgräflerland. The so-called Tüllinger strata, a sequence of
marls with interposed limestone that were once deposited in a lake
basin, lie on it as the uppermost hollow filling. This alternation is
revealed on the slopes of the Tüllinger Berg by several surrounding
slope gradients, each of which is based on the hard freshwater
limestone. In addition, spring horizons form at their foot above the
water-logging marls. The marl of the Tüllinger Berg has a strong
tendency towards landslides. The best known is the hamlet of Schlipf.
While the Dinkelberg is mainly made up of around 245 million old marine
shell limestone layers from the Mesozoic, the sediments of the Tüllinger
Berg are much younger, around 25 million years old (Oligocene: Chatt).
It is thanks to the erosion of the meadow, Kander and Rhine that the
former hollow filling now appears as a "cut out" ridge.
Brombach
and Hauingen lie to the east of the Rhine valley flexure, i.e. no longer
in the Upper Rhine Graben, but in the southern, tectonically higher
foothill zone of the Black Forest, the Schopfheim Bay. Brombach's
district extends to the Dinkelberg, where the karstification-prone banks
and slabs of the upper shell limestone are the dominant rock. Keuper has
survived in the south-eastern wooded part of the district, and even a
remnant of the Lower Jura on the Metzelhöhe. The remaining Jurassic
layers, which escaped erosion in the flexure, have already been
completely cleared away by it on the Dinkelberg. In Brombach, too, the
valley floor is divided into Niederterrasse and Aue. The old village
center lies largely on the alluvial fan of the village stream.
Haagen is located on a narrow strip of lower terraces in the east, which
widens like a bay between the lower Lichsenweg and the Röttler Burgberg.
The geological conditions in the area of the flexure have already been
outlined above.
The old village of Hauingen has settled on the
alluvial fan of the Soormattbach, which covers the lower terrace, which
is only small here. Hauingen is already outside (to the east) of the
Rhine valley flexure, which begins with the deflection of the upper
shell limestone only in Haagen's district. The Rechberg slope is
tectonically so deep that the shell limestone appears between Heilisau
and the Soormattbach valley, which otherwise north of the meadow in the
Weitenauer Bergland has already completely fallen victim to erosion,
with the exception of a remnant near Hägelberg and the Stockert. On the
lower Dornhalde and on the eastern Lingerthang we have the entire shell
limestone sequence in front of us, as in the case of the Dinkelberg.
The meadow, following an east-west fault from Schopfheim, turns in a
south-southwest direction near Haagen, adapting to the geological
conditions of the flexure. Old, loess-covered gravel from the
penultimate glacial period (rift glacial period) on the Schindelberg,
Leuselhard and Hünerberg at a height of well over 300 m document the
deepening of the meadow in the period that followed. The coherent layer
of gravel in the Röttler Forest (surface area at a height of over 380
meters) dates from the older Ice Age. Even older are the remains of
tertiary high-altitude gravel north-east of Rötteln and on the Tüllinger
Berg (on the Lehmbuck).
The urban area of Lörrach is rich in groundwater sources. In addition
to the municipal water supply, the operator bnNETZE, a subsidiary of
Badenova, is responsible for the water supply in Lörrach. In addition to
the city of Lörrach, the water supply for the neighboring municipality
of Inzlingen is also supplied via the Lörrach facilities.
At the
lower limit of the high terrace gravel against backing Blaue Letten
(meletta layers), water emerges on the valley floor (e.g. Leuselhard,
Buckweg). Large amounts of hillside water, which used to be used in
numerous shaft wells, often escape above impermeable claystone areas.
Local fault sources can be found, for example, east of the Hartmatten.
The Tüllinger Berg is surrounded by a ring of springs at a height of
around 400 metres. Until the middle of the 18th century, Lörrach was
supplied with water by running stone fountains. In 1887, a deep well was
built on the high shore near the swimming pool, which has since supplied
the city with groundwater via a public distribution network. The supply
center has been in the Grütt landscape park since 1967. There, from a
total of seven deep wells in Grüttpark and groundwater from different
depths from the Gewann Wilde Brunnen between Hauingen and Brombach,
converge in the central waterworks. Every year, more than three million
cubic meters of drinking water with a hardness level of 2 are treated
there and distributed to over 9,300 connections. Lörrach's largest
drinking water reservoir is a cavern with a capacity of 10,000 cubic
meters, which is located underground on the skull mountain.
In
2017, the Lörrach water management infrastructure included the following
facilities in the city area:
1 waterworks (Grütt), 1 disinfection
system (Brombach)
14 elevated tanks (8 in Lörrach, 2 in Brombach, 2
in Hauingen, 1 in Haagen) with a capacity of 60 to 10,000 cubic meters
7 deep wells (4 in Lörrach, 3 in Brombach)
3 pumping stations
(Tüllingen and Tumringen)
2 pressure reduction shafts (Hauingen)
1967 hydrants, 9360 house connections, 9152 water meters
230.5
kilometers of water pipes (without house connections)
1 water
treatment plant
1 raw water tower and 1 pure water tank (Lörrach)
Due to its special geographical location, Lörrach has an extremely mild climate, which is even hot in summer. The Markgräflerland region is considered to be the warmest in Germany, as Mediterranean air flows in from the Rhone Valley via the Burgundian Gate. According to surveys by the German Weather Service for the years 1961 to 1990, the average sunshine duration is around 1700 hours a year. This value is in the top third in a nationwide comparison (mean value for Germany is 1541 hours). The above-average number of sunny days have earned the south-western region the nickname "Germany's Tuscany". In winter there is usually no or only a very thin layer of snow in Lörrach. On March 5, 2006, however, a record snowfall paralyzed the region around Lörrach and Basel. A good 42 centimeters of fresh snow were measured in the center of Lörrach, as much as last in 1962.
The three districts have their own local administration with a mayor.
The Lörrach local council is elected directly by the citizens every five
years.
Some parts of the city and districts include other
separate residential areas with their own names, which usually have very
few residents (e.g. Im Löhr in Brombach, Rötteln near Tumringen,
Röttelnweiler near Haagen or Rechberg above Hauingen) and can still be
of great historical importance, such as Rötteln or Obertüllingen with
their church buildings from the 8th century.
The core town of
Lörrach includes the quarters: Nordstadt, Mitte, Lörrach-Ost with the
Homburg settlement and the Hünerberg, as well as the Salzert settlement,
which was developed in 1963.
The neighboring municipality of
Inzlingen is independent, but the town of Lörrach forms an agreed
administrative community with it.
The medium-sized town of Lörrach, together with the neighboring town of Weil am Rhein, forms one of the two regional centers in the Hochrhein-Lake Constance region (the other is Constance). The medium-sized centers of Bad Säckingen, Rheinfelden (Baden), Schopfheim and Waldshut-Tiengen are assigned to it. The regional center in Lörrach/Weil also assumes the role of central area for the towns and communities of Binzen, Efringen-Kirchen, Eimeldingen, Fischingen, Inzlingen, Kandern, Malsburg-Marzell, Rümmingen, Schallbach, Steinen and Wittlingen. There are also cross-border links with the cantons of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft in Switzerland and with southern Alsace in France. Due to the sustained influx, the 2022 land use plan provides for around 53 hectares of new gross residential land to be developed.
The city's churches initially belonged to the diocese of Constance
and were subordinate to the archdeaconate of Breisgau. Thus, there has
always been an ecclesiastical border with the diocese of Basel, which is
only a few kilometers away. In 1529 the Lörrach parish was occupied from
Basel after the Reformation had been introduced there. In the city
itself, the Reformation was only introduced in 1556 at the instigation
of the sovereign. After that, Lörrach was a predominantly Protestant
town for centuries. A regional chapter had existed in Rötteln since the
beginning of the 15th century, which was moved to Lörrach at the end of
the 17th century. From 1682, the Protestant pastors in Lörrach were also
special superintendents of the Rötteln diocese. The main church in
Lörrach is the town church, which was mentioned as early as the 12th
century. In addition to the Lutheran confession, there have also been
Reformed church members from neighboring Switzerland since the 17th
century. In the 19th century, the church district of Lörrach emerged
from the superintendency of Lörrach. From the town parish (Johannes
parish) further parishes emerged in the 20th century, namely the Paulus
parish (1906, after which the Johannes parish was initially called the
southern parish) for the north town, the Matthew parish (1949) for the
eastern town (which also serves Inzlingen), the Markus parish (1956),
the Salzert parish (1969) and the peace parish (1974) in the Homburg
settlement . The Christ Church was built in 1956 for the Paulus and
Markus parishes. In 1975, the parish of St. John received a community
center on Suttermattstrasse.
There are also Protestant parishes
in the districts of Brombach, Hauingen, Rötteln (with Tumringen) and
Tüllingen, since these places, like Lörrach, belonged to Baden early on
and the Reformation was introduced from there. Haagen belongs
ecclesiastically to Rötteln. These parishes also belong to the Lörrach
church district of the Evangelical Church in Baden.
The district
of Stetten was under Austrian rule until 1803. Therefore, there is a
Catholic tradition here, although the Reformation was first introduced
in the village. Through a treaty with Austria, Stetten became Catholic
again. The community of Stetten initially looked after the Catholics who
had been residing in Lörrach since the 18th century. She celebrates her
services in the Fridolinskirche, which was newly built in 1822. The
original church building in Stetten dates back to the 13th century.
Between 1864 and 1867 a separate parish church (St. Bonifatius) was
built in Lörrach, at which a parish curate was founded in 1867, which
was raised to a parish in 1882. A second Catholic Church (St. Peter) was
built in 1964. In the Neumatt area, a somewhat outlying part of Stetten,
the branch church of the Holy Family of the Stetten community was built
in 1966. The St. Joseph's Church in Brombach was built in 1900 and has
been a parish since 1911. Haagen and Hauingen also belong to the
municipality. Since March 1, 2000, all of Lörrach's Catholic parishes,
together with the neighboring parish of St. Peter and Paul in Inzlingen,
have formed a pastoral care unit within the Wiesental Deanery of the
Archdiocese of Freiburg.
In addition to the two large churches,
there are also free church congregations, including the Free Evangelical
Congregation with its youth Peter, the Evangelical Free Church
Congregation (Baptists), the Evangelical Chrischona Congregation, the
Evangelical Free Church Congregation - Freie Christengemeinde Lörrach e.
V., the Lörrach Christian Assembly, the Open House Congregation and the
Salvation Army.
There is also a New Apostolic congregation in
Lörrach.
Lörrach has a Jewish community that dates back to 1660. Initially,
the Jews were mainly employed in the cattle trade. Many shops and
companies later belonged to Jewish families. There were also many
craftsmen and academics among the Jewish residents. They took an active
part in the political and cultural life of Lörrach, but during the
November pogroms of 1938 it was mainly SA men who completely devastated
the Lörrach synagogue from 1808. This was not far from the market
square. Today, a commemorative plaque from 1976 commemorates the Jewish
house of prayer. At least 47 of the 162 Jews living in Lörrach were
murdered during the Nazi era.
In 1995 the Jewish religious
community was re-established in Lörrach. The catchment area of the new
community with around 400 members in 2007 extends from Badenweiler to
Waldshut. Many of the believers immigrated from states of the former
Soviet Union. The community continues to grow. On June 28, 2007, the
foundation stone of a new Lörrach synagogue was laid, which was
officially opened on November 9, 2008 - seventy years after the
destruction of the old synagogue.
Lörrach has several Islamic communities that perform their prayers in different prayer rooms; a mosque built specifically for this purpose does not yet exist. With 250 active members, the Turkish-Islamic Union is by far the largest community.
The Lörrach municipal council consists of 32 honorary councilors. The
municipal council, which is elected for a period of five years, is
elected by the citizens. The mayor, who is elected independently of this
election, is the chairman with an additional seat and voting rights.
Since June 1, 2018, his deputy has been Mayor Monika Neuhöfer-Avdić.
city leaders
The Lörrach Chronicle reports that Johann von
Schallbach was the first bailiff in 1366. The official title of mayor
was reserved for the local heads of cities. Marx Christoph Leibfried is
named as the first mayor of Lörrach in 1682, the year the city was first
granted city rights. This was used by the Margrave. Up to and including
1756, the designation Vogt or Altvogt continued to be used. Since 1956,
the head of the city of Lörrach has been the mayor, who is elected
directly by the citizens. His term of office is eight years.
The
persons marked with * in the following list have or have had the title
of Lord Mayor. Arend Braye began his tenure as mayor in 1948 and became
Lord Mayor in 1956. Reinhard Boos was the only non-democratically
elected mayor; In 1933 he was installed by the Gauleiter of Baden as a
commissioner or mayor as the previous local group and district leader of
the NSDAP and was deposed and arrested by French troops in 1945.
Blazon: "In red above a rising golden (yellow) lark."
The coat
of arms colors correspond to those of the Baden coat of arms. The
Lörrach coat of arms is a so-called talking coat of arms, which is
derived from the city name. It is documented with the municipal charter
from 1756 (§ 9), whereby it is assumed that this motif has been used as
a coat of arms since 1682. The oldest evidence of the coat of arms is on
a map from 1643 in the state archive of the canton of Basel-Stadt.
However, the heraldic animal has already been changed several times in
terms of design. In 1965 the General State Archives in Karlsruhe
approved the coat of arms, which is interpreted as a stylized ascending
lark. On November 11, 1975, as part of the municipal reform, the coat of
arms for the newly formed city through incorporations was confirmed. In
addition to the coat of arms, according to a decision by the Ministry of
the Interior of the State of Baden-Württemberg on November 11, 1975, the
city may carry a flag with the colors "red-yellow-red". The reassignment
of the flag became necessary as a result of the incorporation of
Hauingen and Brombach on January 1, 1975, because the old coat of arms
was no longer valid.
The use of the coat of arms and other
national emblems of the city of Lörrach is regulated by the Coat of Arms
Statute. This is due to Paragraph 4 of the Municipal Code for
Baden-Württemberg. A final revision of this statute was approved on
April 29, 2021, which in particular does not authorize its use for
political purposes. The city coat of arms from 1975 was retained
unchanged. Only the size of the heraldic animal was increased a little
for better reproducibility and the two heraldic colors red and yellow
were darkened a little.
The official seal is circular, bears the
city coat of arms in the middle, which is lined with the inscription
"Stadt Lörrach". Before the introduction of the Euro license plate, the
coat of arms could also be seen on the registration plate of the license
plates of motor vehicles that were registered in the district of
Lörrach.
In addition to the coat of arms, the city also uses a
specific word-image mark (logo), consisting of a stylized lark with
orange-yellow plumage and the word "Lörrach" set in gray, which is
separated from the logo by a vertical line that is also gray. The city
also has authority over the use of the logo. The city uses this logo for
certain services, projects and events that are fully supported by the
city, such as the Lörrach adult education center or the Villa Aichele.
Lörrach is an industrial and service location. Around 30% of all jobs
are provided by companies in the manufacturing sector, around 22% in
retail and hospitality, and more than 45% in the service sector. The
large district town offers around 18,300 jobs. While the unemployment
rate in the city was still over 12% in 1997, it has been falling
steadily since then and is at a Germany-wide low. The unemployment rate
in the Lörrach district was 3.9% in May 2008, and 5.0% in the city. In
June 2019, the rate in Lörrach was only 3.1%.
Lörrach is also
characterized by a large number of cross-border commuters. In 2001, more
than 3,000 workers commuted to Switzerland from the city of Lörrach, and
13,043 from the entire district in the same year. At the end of 2018,
the district-wide number of cross-border commuters rose to 21,334
people, from the city of Lörrach itself there were 5,294 employees.
In 2004, retailers generated a total turnover of 342.7 million
euros, with Swiss customers contributing around a fifth of this
turnover.
The first postal line was opened in 1576 between the lower and upper
margraviate. Since the city rights were granted, Margrave Friedrich VII
Magnus tried to expand the line further. The courier service ran twice a
week between Durlach and Lörrach by a man on foot or on horseback. In
1756 Lörrach received a post office. The transport network expanded to
the Feldberg, to Basel, Kandern and Beuggen. The last mail coach ran
until 1840. The regular journey to Karlsruhe, 200 kilometers away, took
30 hours, with the six-horse express coach only twelve hours. After 1900
motor vehicle traffic found its way into Lörrach. While there were only
400 vehicles in 1926, registrations grew to 4,500 by 1956.
Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg International Airport is 14 kilometers west of
Lörrach in Alsace. In the years 1920/21-1955 Lörrach had its own
airfield in Tumringen.
Since the river Wiese completely crosses
the urban area in a north-south direction, more than a dozen bridges
connect the city of Lörrach. In addition to the large Wiesental bridge
and other road bridges, footbridges and pedestrian and bicycle bridges
are also included.
The Autobahn 98, which runs directly through Lörrach, connects the
Rheintal Autobahn A 5, the French A 35 and the A2 and A3 on the Swiss
side via the Weil am Rhein Autobahn triangle. The 1970 planned A 98 was
opened on April 12, 1983 with the commissioning of the 1201 meter long
Wiesental Bridge. Since March 2006, a continuous journey from Lörrach to
Rheinfelden has been possible via the A 98. Alternatively, the L141 and
federal highway 316 also lead to Rheinfelden via the Waidhof Pass. Due
to the basin location in the Wiesental and the surrounding mountain
hills, Lörrach is also connected to the surrounding towns via smaller
mountain passes.
According to a manual traffic census from 2005,
around 20,800 vehicles drove between the Lörrach-Mitte (5) and
Lörrach-Ost (6) junctions, with a share of heavy goods traffic
accounting for 11.3%, making it one of the motorway sections with the
least traffic in Germany.
The federal highway 317 leading from
Titisee-Neustadt over the Feldberg Pass is the city's main traffic
artery and follows the axis of the valley. Since 2013, the B 317 has
continued on the duty-free road through Swiss territory to Weil am
Rhein. Alternatively, Lörrach and Weil am Rhein are also connected via
the pass in Untertüllingen, which is purely on German territory and is
around 5% steep.
Furthermore, federal highway 316, which largely
runs parallel to the A 98, connects the Lörrach-Ost (6) motorway
junction with Rheinfelden. The state road 141 leads from Rümmingen over
the Lucke from the northwest to the east of the city and flows north of
the Salzert into the B 316. Before the completion of the autobahn, the L
141 was an important traffic connection across the valley axis. Lörrach
is also connected to the Kandertal via district road 6344 and the
Wittlingerhöhe.
Since September 7, 2007, the newly opened street
of democracy has been running through Lörrach.
Since the spring of 2017, there has been a 640-kilometer cycle route
network in the Lörrach district, of which the most important traffic
routes belong to the Baden-Württemberg cycle network. These routes are
marked with banderoles, signposts and ground pictograms. The district
has about 200 kilometers of these special RadNETZ paths, which have
7,000 kilometers nationwide. Both the 440-kilometer district network and
the RadNETZ include tourist routes and everyday routes.
The
tourist routes include the 264-kilometer-long Southern Black Forest
Cycle Path, which starts and ends in Hinterzarten and leads in a wide
arc through and along the edge of the southern Black Forest and also
through the town of Lörrach. Apart from two detour variants in the
Petite Camargue Alsacienne and Northwestern Switzerland near Basel, the
route runs on German territory. Another tourist cycle path is the
Dreiland cycle path around Basel. The total distance of 197 kilometers
is divided into four stages and includes 192 kilometers on asphalt and
five kilometers on natural surface. The first stage leads from Liestal
to Rodersdorf, the second from Rodersdorf to Mulhouse, in the
60-kilometre-long, third stage you reach Lörrach and in the last the
route leads back to Liestal. A total of 1,500 meters in altitude must be
mastered on the circuit. Furthermore, Lörrach is crossed by the
165-kilometer-long Hochrhein-Hotzenwald-Weg long-distance cycle route.
The 375-kilometer Black Forest Cycle Path ends in Lörrach. Due to the
proximity to Basel, a central crossing point of the transcontinental
cycle network EuroVelo can also be reached from Lörrach in a few
kilometers. Three of the 16 routes meet in Basel: the two north-south
routes Rheinradweg (EV15) and the Via Romea Francigena (EV5) as well as
the west-east route Atlantic - Black Sea (EV6). The 200-kilometer-long
Upper Rhine Roman Cycle Path leads from Grenzach-Wyhlen to Offenburg via
Lörrach and includes two stations: at the Villa Rustica (Brombach) and
at the Dreiländermuseum. Since 1997 there has also been a mountain bike
route from Karlsruhe to Lörrach, which leads over a 350-kilometre path
over the heights of the Black Forest along natural and cultural sights.
The route was created by the Black Forest Association.
The city
has identified three main routes for commuter and everyday cycling. The
west route is part of the Wiesental cycle path, which runs over 45
kilometers from Schönau in the Black Forest to Basel. The cycle path
runs partly on the route of the Zell im Wiesental–Todtnau railway line,
a narrow-gauge railway that ran between Zell im Wiesental and Todtnau
until 1967. It leads within the city limits of Lörrach along the valley
axis and runs practically parallel to the meadow. At the points where
bridge structures span the meadow, the cycle path runs under the bridges
to enable a passage that does not have to interact with the crossing car
traffic. At the border crossing from Stetten to Riehen, it leads over
the Langen Erlen to Basel. Coming from Brombach, the east commuter route
first runs along the main road, branches off into the parallel
Hellbergstraße and, after going below the motorway bridge, leads over
the Homburg settlement via Hartmattenstraße, Bergstraße and Kreuzstraße
past the Rosenfelscampus to Stetten and from there also to the state
border. The Mitte commuter route connects the western and eastern routes
with one another by means of several cycle paths. In addition to the
city centre, there is also a network of possibilities in the Grüttpark.
The city's everyday bike paths are signposted to the east via the Skull
Mountain to the Salzert. To the west you can leave the city via the
Luckepass in the direction of Kandertal. Overall, the cycle traffic
concept speaks of five Rendler routes with a total of 26.5 kilometers,
seven basic routes with 35.8 kilometers and a denser network with 36.4
kilometers. In October 2021, a bicycle street was inaugurated from
Meeraner Platz to Berliner Platz via Weinbrennerstrasse and
Spitalstrasse, with which cyclists should bypass the pedestrian zone of
the old town.
In addition to the usual infrastructure of signs
and road markings, interfaces between bicycle traffic and public
transport have been created in recent years, which in particular provide
for bike+ride facilities. The largest of these facilities is the Velö at
Lörrach main station, a rental and repair service as well as a
weather-protected bicycle storage facility for up to 100 bikes on 200
square meters. There are bicycle counters at Berliner Platz and at the
main cemetery to record bicycle traffic in Lörrach.
Lörrach is connected by rail to Basel and Zell im Wiesental via the
Wiesentalbahn and to Weil am Rhein via the garden railway. After these
routes were taken over by the Swiss Federal Railways in December 2003,
the routes were extensively modernized, e.g. two new stops
(Schillerstraße and Dammstraße) were created in Lörrach. At the same
time, the routes were integrated into the Basel S-Bahn; the
Wiesentalbahn as S 6 (red line) and the Gartenbahn as S 5 (pink line).
As part of the Basel S-Bahn, Lörrach station (official main station
since December 2009) was also partially renovated and made barrier-free
in 2005; since 2005, the modern trains of the Stadler Flirt type from
SBB GmbH have been used. When the timetable changed in December 2009,
some stations were renamed, including Schillerstraße station to Lörrach
Museum/Burghof station.
There are seven train stations in
Lörrach, these are: Lörrach Dammstraße, Lörrach-Stetten, Lörrach
Museum/Burghof, Lörrach Schwarzwaldstraße, Lörrach-Haagen/Messe,
Lörrach-Brombach/Hauingen and Lörrach Hauptbahnhof.
In addition,
there has been a motorail terminal in Lörrach since 1963 with daily
connections to Hildesheim and Hamburg-Altona.
From 1919 to 1939
and from 1947 to 1967, line 6 of the Basel tramway operated as the
Lörrach municipal tramway, changing trains at the border. There is
currently discussion about bringing this line back to Lörrach.
In
addition, Lörrach has some local and regional bus services operated by
Südwestdeutsche Verkehrs-Aktiengesellschaft (SWEG) and Südbadenbus GmbH
(SBG). They belong to the Regio Verkehrsverbund Lörrach. The SWEG
operates the Lörrach city bus network, bus connections to
Markgräflerland and to Inzlingen, whereas the SBG connects Lörrach with
places in the Wiesental and in the Dinkelberg area.
Lörrach, as the district town of the district of the same name,
houses the district office and two road maintenance depots. Lörrach has
several schools of all school types (see educational institutions), an
adult education center, the Lörrach town library with over 88,500 media,
including over 69,000 books, two district libraries, since 1985 the
scientific regional library and a music school. The city archive of
Lörrach is housed in the city hall as a department.
The Lörrach
district court, which is part of the Freiburg im Breisgau district
court, is responsible for towns and communities in the district.
Furthermore, Lörrach had its own labor court until the end of 2017,
which exercised jurisdiction in the first instance for the districts of
Lörrach and Waldshut. There were also three other chambers in Radolfzell
on Lake Constance. Since January 1, 2018, Lörrach has had the status of
an external chamber of the Freiburg Labor Court. In the city center, on
the Alter Markt, there is a branch of the State Education Authority.
The Deutsche Bundesbank maintained an office in Lörrach. At the end
of the day, this location was no longer open to the public and was only
used to supply cash. In the course of branch closures of the Bundesbank,
a closure was initially refrained from in Lörrach, but the Lörrach
branch was then closed in September 2012.
Lörrach also has a tax
office, an employment agency and a main customs office. As part of the
police reforms in the state of Baden-Württemberg, the Lörrach Police
Headquarters was dissolved with effect from January 1, 2014 and merged
into the newly established Freiburg Police Headquarters. A criminal
police department and a traffic police department based in Weil am Rhein
will remain in Lörrach. The city is also the seat of the church district
of Lörrach of the Evangelical Church in Baden and of the Deanery of
Wiesental within the Hochrhein region of the Archdiocese of Freiburg.
There are two hospitals in Lörrach: the Lörrach District Hospital as
part of the Lörrach GmbH district clinics, which is sponsored by the
district, and the St. Elisabethen Hospital, a non-profit GmbH sponsored
by the Order of the Sisters of Mercy of St. Vincent de Paul and joint
management with the regional association of church hospitals in Freiburg
im Breisgau. The three district hospitals of Lörrach, Rheinfelden and
Schopfheim were merged into a GmbH on January 1, 1994. The Lörrach
district hospital was opened on October 1, 1845 as a municipal hospital.
The district hospital in Lörrach currently has 282 beds, with a total of
517 planned beds at all three locations. The St. Elisabethen Hospital,
founded in 1913 as a private clinic Dr. Böhler, has 220 beds. The
specialist disciplines are divided between the two Lörrach hospitals -
in the Lörrach district hospital: internal medicine and surgery; in the
St. Elisabethen Hospital: children's clinic, gynecology and obstetrics,
ENT and urology.
The fire brigade in Lörrach is organized as a volunteer fire brigade.
As such, it reports directly to the city administration. The fire
brigade commander, who is also head of the fire station, reports to the
road, traffic and safety department of the 2nd department in Lörrach
town hall.
The Lörrach fire department was originally founded on
November 5, 1858. At that time, 156 men volunteered to join the fire
brigade. With the help of a loan approved by the municipal council, the
first materials and accessories were purchased. The first operation took
place on January 30, 1860. A company fire broke out on the KBC premises.
In the mid-1930s, Tumringen and Tüllingen were incorporated into
Lörrach, so that the fire brigades were also incorporated into the
Lörrach fire brigade as the 4th and 5th fire brigade. In the mid-1960s,
a piece of land was purchased for the new fire station on Weiler Strasse
in Stetten. The incorporations of Haagen, Hauingen and Brombach brought
a renewed expansion of the organization.
The volunteer fire
brigade is divided into the following departments: Lörrach department,
Brombach department, Haagen department, Hauingen department, youth fire
brigade and honorary commanders. There is also a fire station in
Tumringen. In 2017 it consisted of 229 active members and had to deal
with 485 missions.
The largest company in Lörrach is the chocolate manufacturer Mondelēz
International, known among other things for the brands Milka and
Suchard. Chocolate has been made in Lörrach since 1880; it is also the
largest Mondelēz chocolate production site in Europe. The modern
production plant produces up to three million chocolate bars every day.
The pharmaceutical company GABA (Goldene Apotheke Basel) with the
brands aronal, elmex and meridol is also known nationwide. The former
company Wybert, which in turn was a branch of the Golden Pharmacy Basel
founded in 1638, was founded in Tumringen in 1921. Wybert changed its
name in 2000 and also appeared externally as the GABA Group. It has been
part of the Colgate Palmolive Group since 2004. Production in Lörrach
was closed in 2012 and relocated abroad.
Many Lörrach companies
are Swiss foundations due to the cross-border conurbation of Basel. This
was favored by Baden's accession to the German Customs Union in 1835. In
the course of industrialization, many textile companies in particular
settled in Lörrach. In 1835, Felix Sarasin-Heußler from Basel founded
the Haagen spinning mill, which at times employed over 500 workers. The
traditional textile finishing company KBC and the tea manufacturer Midro
Lörrach GmbH have their headquarters in Lörrach. The characteristic 85
meter high chimney of KBC is the tallest building in the city. In 1995,
the Swiss grocery chain Migros opened a department store in downtown
Lörrach; the Migros German headquarters is also located here. With
effect from October 1, 2013, the Lörrach branch was sold to the Rewe
Group.
The Lasser private brewery, founded in 1850, is based in
Lörrach. One of the major employers in the region is Hieber's Freshness
Center.
In 1963, the textile finisher Brombach AG was taken over
by the Lauffenmühle in Lauchringen and temporarily became one of the
largest employers in the city. The crisis in the German textile
industry, which had been progressing since the 1980s, led to the fifth
insolvency and the closure of the Lauffenmühle in 2019. In Lörrach, 76
employees were affected.
A subsidiary of the A-Raymond Group is a
major supplier of fasteners to the automotive industry and has been
based in Lörrach since 1898. The central European distribution warehouse
of the international fashion company Tally Weijl has been located in the
Lörrach district of Brombach on the site of the former logistics center
of the fashion company Schöpflin since 1999. The Italian machine builder
Marchesini also has a branch from which the Swiss pharmaceutical and
cosmetics industry is supplied with packaging machines.
The
Kaltenbach machine factory, founded by Julius Kaltenbach in 1887,
manufactures lathes, saws and milling machines, among other things. The
company belongs to Dieter Kaltenbach Verwaltungsgesellschaft with its
headquarters in Lörrach. In addition to Lörrach, the group produces in
the Netherlands and France and has eight subsidiaries and around 50
agencies worldwide.
The logistics company Streck Transport is
based in Lörrach.
Three high and two extra-high voltage lines run through Lörrach's
district, partly also over populated areas, and have been an important
junction in the national power line and the distribution from south to
north since 1967.
The high-voltage lines are three 110 kV lines
each, two of which lead north from the power transmission works in
Rheinfelden. The third line comes from the Wyhlen hydroelectric power
plant and runs via the substation near the freight yard over the
Tüllinger Berg to Haltingen. A branch leads from this line to Stetten.
The two extra-high voltage lines are two 380 kV lines each. One
leads from the Kühmoos substation to Daxlanden in northern Baden, the
second from the Laufenburg coupling line to the substation in Sierentz
in Alsace.
The daily newspapers Badische Zeitung and Die Oberbadische as well as
the weekly newspapers Der Sonntag and Wochenblatt each maintain a local
editorial office in Lörrach. The Oberbadische (until September 2006
Oberbadisches Volksblatt) with its publishing house in Lörrach is the
oldest newspaper in Lörrach (since 1885). The Oberbadisches Verlagshaus
also publishes the Weiler Zeitung and the Markgräfler Tagblatt.
The Südwestrundfunk radio station has had a regional office in Lörrach
since spring 1983, in which parts of the radio program (Hochrhein Radio)
SWR4 Baden-Württemberg are produced.
Lörrach is home to the Baden-Württemberg Lörrach Cooperative State
University, which was founded in 1981 as a vocational academy. In
addition to the classic three-year courses leading to a bachelor's
degree, it also offers some longer trinational courses with partner
universities in France (University of Upper Alsace in Mulhouse and
Colmar) and Switzerland (Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz, FHNW). The more
than 2000 students are currently offered eleven different courses with
several specializations in the two fields of study economics and
technology.
There is also a state seminar for didactics and
teacher training for elementary and secondary schools in Lörrach.
Lörrach has twelve public elementary schools or elementary and
secondary schools (Albert Schweitzer School, Astrid Lindgren Elementary
School Hauingen, Eichendorff School, Fridolin School, Salzert Elementary
School, Tumringen Elementary School, Hebe School, Hellberg Elementary
and Secondary School Brombach, Neumatt Elementary and Secondary School
with Werkrealschule and Schloßberg Elementary and Secondary School), a
secondary school (Theodor-Heuss-Realschule), two grammar schools asia
(Hans-Thoma- und Hebe-Gymnasium) and a special needs school
(Pestalozzi-School). The two state high schools (Hans-Thoma- and
Hebe-Gymnasium) as well as the Theodor-Heuss-Realschule form the
Rosenfels campus, which is only a few hundred meters south-east of the
center of Lörrach.
The district of Lörrach is the school
responsible for the trade school (including a technical high school,
areas of technology and computer science), the commercial school
(including a business high school) and the home economics-agricultural
and social education school (Mathilde Planck School; including a
nutritional high school and biotechnical high school). Together with the
St. Elisabethen-Krankenhaus Lörrach gGmbH, the district of Lörrach is
responsible for the School for Health and Nursing and for Health and
Pediatric Nursing. The school for sick children is located in the St.
Elisabethen Hospital in Lörrach.
Several private schools,
including the geriatric nursing school of the Deaconess Mother House St.
Chrischona, the Free Evangelical School (elementary, secondary, junior
high, grammar school and vocational grammar school with the profile
design and media technology and the social profile), the Free Waldorf
School Lörrach, the private language school Foerderer, the private
school for educational assistance at the Evangelical Children's Home
Tüllinger Höhe and since the school year 2021/2022 the inclusive all-day
elementary school of the Schöpflin Foundation complete the range of
schools in Lörrach.
The social working group Lörrach (SAK) and
the Phaenovum student research center Lörrach-Dreiländereck fulfill
special functions in the area of training and educational support.
Alemannic is spoken in southern Baden, which is seen as a transition
between Swabian and High or Southern Alemannic. In this border area, the
dialect is called Lower Alemannic. The Alemannic dialects sound very
different from region to region. Lörrach (regional Alemannic
pronunciation: [ˈlœʀɑx]) speaks High Alemannic, which sounds similar to
Swiss German and is common in south-west Germany, Alsace,
German-speaking Switzerland, the Austrian state of Vorarlberg and the
Principality of Liechtenstein. What is particularly striking about this
dialect is the shift of the initial Germanic k to ch: child and head,
for example, are pronounced Chind and Chopf in High Alemannic.
In
the recent past, especially due to immigration from the Saxon-speaking
area in the district, the high Alemannic characteristics have been
increasingly lost. In this dialect continuum, High German and a language
close to Low Alemannic are mixed. This creates a language border between
Switzerland and the High Alemannic Baden. In the Hotzenwald, the
Markgräflerland (apart from the border region) and the region around
Jestetten, High Alemannic is better preserved and sounds like the Swiss
dialects.
Due to the historical development, Lörrach is a comparatively young
city. This is one of the reasons why Lörrach has neither architecturally
extraordinarily important nor striking buildings nor a homogeneous old
town compared to other cities. Nevertheless, there are various
testimonies to almost all great epochs of architecture. The baroque
architectural style is particularly important in Lörrach. The reason for
this is the destruction of Rötteln Castle in 1678 and the resulting
relocation of administration to Lörrach. The town charter from 1682
required that the town was developed into an administrative center. In
1695 a summer residence, a "princely country house in Lörrach", was
planned for Friedrich Magnus, which was also to contain a baroque palace
complex.
The house at Weinbrennerstraße 4 was built around 1810
for the directorate of the Wiese district in the typical Weinbrenner
style. The central avant-corps with a rusticated ground floor is crowned
by a classic triangular gable.
The district court of Lörrach was
established in 1863 as the district court of the Grand Duchy of Baden.
The neo-Renaissance building was designed by the then district master
builder (1863-74) Jakob Friedrich Alois Hemberger, who later became the
court building director in Karlsruhe. Window shapes and arrangement
follow the example of the Cancelleria in Rome. The window crowns on the
first floor of the central avant-corps are Hemberger's own creation.
There is a large Palladian window in the stairwell.
The lever
school, which was built in 1871/72, also comes from Hemberger. The
building is an example of the so-called round arch style, which was
propagated by Hemberger's prominent teacher, Heinrich Hübsch, as a
practical alternative to the fading classicism. The middle building is
similar to the middle building added by Friedrich Theodor Fischer to the
Karlsruhe Polytechnic.
The house of the Löwenapotheke was built
in 1862 by the city master builder Meeser. A Neo-Renaissance building,
probably inspired by Venetian palazzi, which translates the models into
gracefulness. Characteristic of the building are its finely ornamented
pilasters in the style of the Italian early Renaissance, the blind
balustrade in the parapet zone of the piano nobile, festoons under the
windows of the second floor and a lion's head frieze above them. Fluted
double columns can be found on the ground floor.
The commercial
building on the corner of Baslerstrasse and Herrenstrasse (Café Pape),
clad in Franconian shell limestone, was built in 1903 (dates when it was
built) by the Freiburg architect Rudolf Schmid. It is a synthesis of
Neo-Baroque and Art Nouveau, both of which played a role in architecture
around 1900. Schmid clearly oriented himself towards the baroque style
in the 1904 Haus zum Schwanen (Baslerstraße 163, dated when it was
built) with its beautiful sandstone façade. The side entrance with
acanthus decoration and cracked gables is an ostentatious, sumptuous
Baroque quotation. baroque and others also the colossal pilasters.
According to the view at the time, it was a “developed, modern” baroque
style. The construction was recognized in contemporary trade journals.
The strong reference to Friedrich Ratzel's Kunstverein building in
Karlsruhe is striking.
Lörrach's town center is characterized by a pedestrian zone that
opened in 1991. The center is the old market place, which can be reached
from four sides. At the crossing point there is a cube-shaped sculpture
(Granit Rosa Porriño by Ulrich Rückriem). The city center is also
characterized by many residential and commercial buildings that were
built at the beginning of the 20th century. Worth mentioning are several
surviving "model houses" (standardized house type) from the time of the
second city survey in 1756, e.g. in Kirchenstraße (near Marktplatz).
Various fountains and sculptures can be explored on foot from the
center at 22 stations along the so-called Lörrach Sculpture Trail. In
addition to the pyramid in the courtyard, the large column figure by
Stephan Balkenhol on Senser-Platz, north of the old market square, is
also worth mentioning.
A few meters from the Old Market Square is
the Old Town Hall, which has housed the adult education center since
1998 after renovation and conversion. The building, which dates back to
1870, contains the old town hall bells from the previous building from
1756. Gustav Struve proclaimed the German Republic from the old town
hall on September 21, 1848. For four days, Lörrach was the main town of
the Struve Putsch and thus, to a certain extent, the seat of government.
To the west of the Old Market Square is the New Market Square, where
a large weekly market takes place three days a week. The synagogue lane
that branches off is a reminder that the former Lörrach synagogue, which
was destroyed during the National Socialist period, stood here. After
the Second World War, the synagogue was built over with an office and
commercial building. During the National Socialist era, this square was
also a parade ground.
Today the square is dominated by a fountain
and serves as a connection from the Alter Markt to the courtyard. The
fountain sculpture Tree of Life by the artist Michael Fischer depicts a
pair of lovers entwined in the crown of a tree.
On market days,
the square is packed with market stalls. It is a farmer's market where
mainly local products such as vegetables, fruit, bread, cakes, liquor,
wine and flowers are offered for sale, mostly by the producers
themselves. It was only at the end of the 1990s that other specialty
stands were added, offering meat, cheese, poultry, pasta, mushrooms and
jams on the edge of the market square. Most are regional products.
Because of the favorable climate in Lörrach z. B. also local peaches,
artichokes or aubergines on the market, which have to be imported
elsewhere. The Lörrach weekly market, which has existed since the
beginning of the 15th century, is considered one of the largest and most
beautiful in the region and also attracts many customers from
Switzerland and Alsace. It takes place three times a week on Tuesday,
Thursday and Saturday.
In 2003, the city celebrated 600 years of
market rights. The Margrave Rudolf III. von Hachberg-Sausenberg was
granted market rights by King Ruprecht of the Palatinate for his village
Lörrach. The market legal document was signed on January 26, 1403 in
Regensburg. With this right for a yearly and weekly market, the Margrave
wanted to create an economic and political counterweight to Basel. 1452
confirmed Emperor Friedrich III. the market right again.
In
addition to the weekly markets, the city of Lörrach organizes a large
flea market on the Postplatz and Rathausplatz on the third Saturday of
every month, with exclusively private sellers.
On November 6, 1998, after two years of construction, the Burghof
Lörrach replaced the function of the old town hall and opened as a new
cultural and events center. The name Burghof reminds us that the
building was erected on a historical site. Here stood the Lörrach
Castle, which was destroyed in 1638. This was a small moated castle
complex, roughly comparable to the Stettemer Schlössli or the moated
castle of Inzlingen.
The design by the Basel architects Katharina
Steib and Wilfrid Steib looks like a tall, narrow ship and is a
construction made of concrete, reddish clinker brick, steel and glass.
The courtyard is 87 meters long, 30 meters wide and 19 meters high. The
large and small hall, the gallery and the side gallery offer seating for
up to 885 people. The arrangement of the chairs can be changed depending
on the event; they can also be removed entirely. The castle courtyard is
used multifunctionally for conferences, theatre, concerts and cultural
events of all kinds. The Lörrach information center is located in the
courtyard.
The metal sculpture Truncated Pyramid Room by Bruce
Nauman, measuring 11.40 meters in base length and 7.50 meters in
vertical height, stands on the square in front of the castle courtyard
right at the entrance in the form of an open, walk-in truncated pyramid.
The reinforced concrete figure, painted with black bitumen, is
illuminated from the inside with yellow spotlights in the evening. This
space-light sculpture by Nauman only existed as a model from a group of
works created in 1982 and is his first work to be exhibited publicly in
Europe.
The city of Lörrach has a total of 60 sports clubs, including several
gymnastics clubs, tennis clubs, ski clubs, rifle clubs and football
clubs. The gymnastics and sports club Lörrach-Stetten was the starting
point of their careers in football for both Ottmar Hitzfeld and
Sebastian Deisler and was also particularly successful in the 1980s in
the South Baden Association League.
With 1000 members, the
strongest club is TSV Rot-Weiss Lörrach, which is broadly based with
eleven sports and can show national successes as well as successes at
state and federal level. Like FV Lörrach, TSV has its home base at
Grüttpark Stadium.
A special feature is the weightlifting club
KSV Lörrach 1902, which took part in the 2nd Bundesliga in 1980/81 and
1989/90. Well-known athletes of the club are Monique Ludwigs (born
Riesterer) and Jörg Mazur, who recently competed for the first division
club SV Germania Obrigheim.
Among the football clubs, FV Lörrach,
founded in 1902, deserves special mention. Ottmar Hitzfeld and Sebastian
Deisler played football in this amateur club in the early years of their
careers. To mark the centenary of FV Lörrach, FC Bayern Munich played
against the Lörrach football club on July 12, 2002 in the Grüttpark
Stadium in Lörrach and won 9-1. This game came about as a result of
contacts from Bayern coach Hitzfeld at the time and was his way of
saying thank you to the football club of his youth. Previously, he had
also invited Borussia Dortmund, whom he had coached in the 1990s, to a
friendly match in Lörrach. In 2011, FV Lörrach merged with FV Brombach,
a club from the Brombach district of Lörrach, and has since played under
the name FV Lörrach-Brombach in the Südbaden Association League.
In 2000, the 87th Tour de France passed through Lörrach, which was
accompanied by thousands of enthusiastic fans on the side of the road.
The 18th stage from Lausanne to Freiburg im Breisgau led through the
center of Lörrach up to the Lucke, a small pass in the direction of
Kandern. As early as June 27, 1971, the 1971 Tour de France drove
through Lörrach and was part of the stage from Basel to Freiburg.
The Regio-Tour, which took place annually from 1985 to 2012, was an
international stage race in the three-country region and often led
through the district and the city of Lörrach.
The Deutschlandlauf
takes place from the middle to the end of September. This
ultra-marathon, which starts in Kap Arkona on the island of Rügen, ends
after 17 daily stages and around 1200 kilometers in downtown Lörrach.
The winner of the run in 2006 was the Finn Janne Kankaansyrja with a
total time of 110 hours and 6 minutes. A total of 21 men and four women
successfully completed this run.
As a German revolutionary and politician, Markus Pfluger, who was
born in Lörrach, paved the way for the Baden revolutionary Gustav
Struve. Pfluger was a captain in the 1st Fähnlein of the Volkswehr and
thus paved the way for Struve's initial success of the republican
uprising in Lörrach during the March Revolution. Later Pfluger
(1858-1903) was a member of the Lörrach municipal council.
Born
in Lörrach in 1895, Walther Bringolf was a Swiss politician and
President of the Social Democratic Party from 1953 to 1962. In 1961 he
was President of the Swiss National Council.
Friedrich Vortisch,
born in Lörrach in 1899, was a lawyer and politician of the FDP/DVP. In
1946/47 he was a member of the Advisory State Assembly of Baden and was
then elected to the Baden State Parliament, of which he was a member
until 1952. From 1952 to 1960 he was a member of the Baden-Württemberg
state parliament.
Rainer Offergeld, born in 1937, was Lord Mayor
of Lörrach from 1984 to 1995. Before that, Offergeld held several
political positions at federal level in the 1970s, including being
Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation from 1978 to 1982.
The
politician Marion Caspers-Merk represented the constituency of
Lörrach-Müllheim as a member of the German Bundestag from 1990 to 2009.
From May 2011 to May 2016, Rainer Stickelberger, who was born in
Lörrach, was SPD politician and Minister of Justice in the Kretschmann I
cabinet.
Gustav von Hugo was born in Lörrach in 1764. The lawyer, who did his
doctorate at the University of Halle, became a full professor at the
University of Göttingen. He is regarded as a pioneer and co-founder of
the historical school of law. In addition to his legal contributions,
his correspondence with the Brothers Grimm, with whom he was on friendly
terms, has also survived.
Nelly Naumann was born in Lörrach in
1922 and was a German Japanologist. Her papers on Japanese studies are
considered important, especially her analysis of Japanese myths related
to Shintoism.
Physicist Roland Wiesendanger was born in
neighboring Basel in 1961. He grew up in Lörrach and attended the
Hans-Thoma-Gymnasium from 1972 to 1981, where he passed his Abitur.
Wiesendanger conducts research in the field of scanning tunneling
microscopy.
The German mathematician and university teacher
Joachim Escher was born in Lörrach in 1962. He currently holds a
professorship at the Leibniz Universität Hannover and is the
vice-president for appointment matters, human resources development and
academic further education.
From 1967 to 1969 Ernst Kern was
chief physician in the surgical department of the municipal hospital in
Lörrach before becoming a professor of surgery in Würzburg. His neighbor
in Lörrach was the emeritus university teacher and surgeon Rudolf
Nissen.
One of the most important personalities associated with Lörrach is
the local poet, theologian and pedagogue Johann Peter Hebe. Lever's
place of birth is generally - even by himself - given as Basel; however,
there is some weak evidence that he could also have been born in
Hauingen, which today belongs to Lörrach. Regardless of where you were
born, lever is omnipresent in Lörrach. Various streets, squares and
schools are reminiscent of him. From 1783 to 1791 he was a teacher at
the so-called Pedagogium in Lörrach.
Friedrich Kaiser was born in
Lörrach in 1815 and was a German history and battle painter and
lithographer. The well-known depiction of the entry of the volunteers
into Lörrach of the Struve uprising in the course of the March
Revolution comes from Kaiser.
Max Laeuger was born in Loerrach in
1864. From 1904 to 1934, the visual artist was a professor for figure
drawing and decoration at the Technical University in Karlsruhe. Later
he also taught architecture there. Laeuger was a founding member of the
Deutscher Werkbund and exhibited his ceramics at world exhibitions; he
created important sights in the field of garden art and built e.g. B.
for his Lörrach "foster brother", the founder of the Küchlintheater in
Basel and art patron Karl Küchlin.
In 1870 the painter and
graphic artist Hermann Daur was born in the then independent community
of Stetten. Daur attended high school in Lörrach and studied at the
Kunstgewerbeschule in Karlsruhe. In 1906 he moved to Ötlingen and lived
there as a freelance painter. His artistic legacy can be viewed in the
Dreiländermuseum.
The painter and draftsman Adolf Glattacker,
born in Wehr in 1878, is considered one of the most important local
painters in the Markgräflerland region. Glattacker created numerous
illustrations for Hebe's works and most recently lived in Tüllingen, a
district of Lörrach. The poet and painter Hermann Burte, born in 1879,
was a contemporary and friend of Glattacker. Burte's work is
controversial because he quickly became an advocate of ethnic ideology
and ultimately was an avid supporter of National Socialism. From 1924 to
1932, Burte contributed to the weakening of the Weimar Republic and its
institutions as co-editor and key contributor to the fortnightly
German-nationalist magazine Der Markgräfler in Lörrach. The honorary
citizenship of Lörrach bestowed on Burte in 1939 and the refusal to
revoke it posthumously is still controversial today.
Harald
Hauser (1912-1994) was a writer, best known as the author of novels,
children's books, plays, television screenplays and radio features. The
well-known Swiss writer Ruth Schweikert (1964-2023) was born in Lörrach.
However, she grew up in Aarau.
Born in Lörrach, Heinz Zuber (*
1941) has been a permanent member of the Vienna Burgtheater for 30
years. Zuber can be seen not only in numerous theater performances, but
also in television programs such as Tatort, where he played Commissioner
Schulz.
The jazz bassist and music journalist Martin Kunzler was
born in Lörrach in 1947. He is known for his rororo jazz lexicon,
published by Rowohlt Verlag, which is currently regarded as the standard
German-language work for this genre of music. The Lörrach physicist Hans
Deyssenroth (* 1937) is active as a jazz pianist in the Swiss scene; he
is one of the pioneers of computer jazz.
The two cabaret artists
Volkmar Staub (* 1952) and Florian Schroeder (* 1979) were born and grew
up in Lörrach.
The first Federal President, Theodor Heuss, felt closely connected to
Lörrach and felt “already part of the community mentally”. His only son
Ernst Ludwig Heuss, director of Wybert GmbH (today GABA Group), lived
with his family in the Tumringen district from 1946. Therefore, Theodor
Heuss often spent his Christmas holidays in Lörrach. In memory of the
popular and popular Federal President, the secondary school in Lörrach
and a central street in Tumringen were named after Theodor Heuss.
The doctor Theodor Binder was born in Lörrach in 1919. Binder, who
studied medicine, philosophy and ethnology in Freiburg im Breisgau,
Strasbourg and Basel, was strongly influenced by humanism and cultivated
friendships with Albert Schweitzer and the philosophers Ludwig Klages
and Martin Heidegger, for example. During the Second World War he joined
the resistance fighter Carl Friedrich Goerdeler. In 1948 Binder
emigrated to Peru, where – like Albert Schweitzer in Africa – he worked
as a doctor in the Amazon region. In 1975, together with Mother Teresa,
he received the Albert Schweitzer Prize for his work. At the end of the
1980s he returned to Germany and opened a practice for biological
medicine in Lörrach in 1988. Binder founded the organization for Indian
aid and tropical forest protection.
In 1943 Willi Eichin was born
in the district of Haagen; the artistic cyclist became two-time world
champion in single-art cycling. He died in his home town in 2002. Ottmar
Hitzfeld, born in Lörrach in 1949, is a former coach of the Swiss
national soccer team and a soccer player. In his playing and coaching
career, he was Swiss football champion four times and German football
champion seven times, and won various other titles. Hitzfeld was honored
as "World Coach of the Year" in 1997 and 2001. Born in Rheinfelden in
1971 and raised in Lörrach, Monique Ludwigs (native: Monique Riesterer)
is a former German weightlifter. She was German weightlifting champion
eleven times and won several bronze, silver and gold medals at European
championships. Former soccer player Sebastian Deisler was born in
Lörrach in 1980; here began his career as a footballer, where he played
for two clubs. Deisler was a member of FC Bayern Munich for five years
and was involved in 36 games for the German national team. Soccer player
Melanie Behringer was born in Lörrach in 1985. The midfielder played for
SC Freiburg from 2003 to 2008, then switched to Bayern Munich and has
been a member of the women's national team since 2005, with which she
became world champion in 2007. Born in Brombach, Gabi Roth (nee Lippe, *
1967) is a former German athlete and Olympian who won the silver medal
in the 4 x 100 meter relay at the 1990 European Championships and was
German champion in the 100 meter hurdles in 1990. The junior world
champion in handball Matthias Baur was born in Lörrach in 1988.
The Swiss television presenter and meteorologist Jörg Kachelmann was
born in Lörrach in 1958. However, he grew up in Schaffhausen.
The city of Lörrach has so far granted honorary citizenship to 25 male and one female citizen, the first time in 1818. The best-known personalities are the former mayor Egon Hugenschmidt, the architect and artist Max Laeuger and the poet and painter Hermann Burte. Since Burte was a staunch National Socialist and advocate of the ideology of the Hitler regime, there were repeated attempts to posthumously withdraw this award from him. To date this has not happened. Because of Burte's existing honorary citizenship, Theodor Heuss rejected the honorary citizenship of Lörrach that had been offered to him.