Itzehoe is a medium-sized town in southwest Schleswig-Holstein on both sides of the Stör. It is the capital of the Steinburg district and is one of the oldest cities in Holstein.
The city lies directly on or on both sides of the Stör
in a largely hilly and heavily wooded area. The part on the right
side of the sturgeon lies on a compression moraine, which at the
same time forms the border between Geest and Marsh. The part on the
left-hand side of the Stör is partly on the Münsterdorfer
Geestinsel. Downstream of the city, the Störmarsch widens to the
right to Wilstermarsch and to the left to Krempermarsch. The city
belongs to the Hamburg metropolitan region.
The size of the
urban area comprises a total of 2803 ha (built-up area 757 ha;
streets, squares, waterways 371 ha; parks, green spaces, sports
fields, cemeteries 216 ha; agricultural areas 763 ha; allotments 46
ha; forestry areas 650 ha).
Neighboring municipalities and
surrounding cities
The city borders on the communities of
Heiligenstedten, Oldendorf, Ottenbüttel, Schlotfeld, Oelixdorf,
Münsterdorf, Breitenburg (with the district Nordoe), Kremperheide
and Heiligenstedtenerkamp. The nearest towns are Wilster, Krempe and
Kellinghusen; the next larger cities Neumünster, Heide, Elmshorn and
Hamburg.
The climate is humid and maritime. The annual mean temperature is 8.2 ° C (maximum temperature 28 ° C, minimum temperature −10 ° C), the amount of precipitation is 860 mm.
Itzehoe was first mentioned in the
12th century as "Ekeho" by Saxo Grammaticus. 1196 wrote another
mention "de Ezeho". The meaning of the name is controversial to this
day: One possibility would be “pasture land at the river bend”
(Middle Low German “hô” for a flat raised promontory in a plain or a
river meander, Middle Low German “ete” for pasture land). Today's
Bach Itze is the name of a brook that was only named after the city
in the 20th century and not the other way around.
Development
of a provincial town into the seat of the ducal meeting of estates
To protect against the Danish Vikings marauding from the north, the
Esesfeldburg was built under Charlemagne in 810 AD in the
Oldenburgskuhle, but it is not directly related to the development
of Itzehoe. Under their protection, Archbishop Ebo von Reims built a
small monastery or prayer house, the "Cella Welana", in today's
Münsterdorf in the summer of 823 as a base for the Christian mission
in Denmark that he initiated. The larger Echeho Castle, built around
1000 in the nearby Störschleife, became the nucleus of a settlement,
which, benefited by the granting of the Luebian city charter (1238),
combined with the exemption from duty, which at that time was only
granted to Hamburg, and later the stacking right 1260), developed
into a trading town. Itzehoe was involved in the salt, cloth and
grain trade during this time and was at times an important hub in
European east-west trade. On the other side of the river, further
settlements arose around the cloister courtyard (approx. 1260) and
around the Laurentii church (first mentioned in 1196).
Under
Gerhard von Holstein-Itzehoe, Itzehoe was also briefly the residence
of the County of Holstein-Itzehoe in the 13th century.
Caused
by this mixture of secular and ecclesiastical rule in Itzehoe there
were four separate judicial districts (jurisdictions) in the city
area from 1617 to March 31, 1861, each with its own gallows. A stone
castle was built by the Counts of Schauenburg around 1180 on an old
castle wall within the Störschleife. The medieval law of the castle
applied. The associated Galgenberg is a Bronze Age burial mound
between Struvestraße and the Ringstraße Galgenberg in the Wellenkamp
district. The last public execution of the robbery murderer Johann
Lau from Brokdorf took place there on December 18, 1856. In the
merchants' settlement (Neustadt) founded by Adolf IV von Schauenburg
and Holstein in 1238, Lübisch law was in force. The gallows hill of
the Lübschen city was a Bronze Age burial mound on Buchenweg east of
the Lübschen fountain. Furthermore, the Cistercian convent founded
in 1256 had its own law. During the Reformation in 1541, the
monastery was converted into a noble evangelical women's monastery,
which still exists today. The still existing monastery courtyard
next to the St. Laurentii Church is also one of the oldest preserved
areas in Itzehoe. The gallows hill of the monastery was the Germanic
grave. Furthermore, in today's urban area there was still the rule
of Breitenburg with its own rights. The gallows hill of the
Breitenburg rule was on a hill northeast of the Kratt.
Medieval Itzehoe was divided into residential quarters. For a long
time only craftsmen (gardeners, barrel makers) were allowed to live
in the old town, merchants and other craftsmen had to settle in the
new town, which was divided into four quarters, with the urban upper
class concentrated in the two oldest quarters around the market.
During the Thirty Years' War the city was billeted and plundered
several times, but there was no major destruction, as the city
council handed over the city to General Wallenstein without a fight
in 1627. This enabled Itzehoe to maintain its status as fifth among
the eighteen cities of Schleswig-Holstein.
After Itzehoe had
been largely spared from wars for a long time, the city was almost
completely destroyed by Swedish soldiers in 1657 in the
Danish-Swedish War (1657–1658). As a result, the cloister of the
Laurentii Church is now Itzehoe's only preserved medieval building.
In the 17th century Itzehoe was the seat of the ducal regiment
on foot Prince Georg (around 1500 men) and in the 18th century it
was the seat of three companies of the cuirassiers and the dragoons
of the body regiment.
In 1712, the Asian bubonic plague that
had been brought in from East Prussia and Poland broke out in
Itzehoe. 250 inhabitants died as a result of the disease (around 7%
of the then 3500 population).
Itzehoe was only indirectly affected by the Napoleonic Wars
through transit and billeting as well as financial burdens. From
1807, Itzehoe briefly became the residence of Elector Wilhelm I of
Hesse-Kassel, who fled into exile from Napoléon.
Before the
Schleswig-Holstein uprising, in which a large part of the
citizenship of Itzehoe took part for the German-minded
Schleswig-Holstein movement, the Holstein Assembly of Estates met in
Itzehoe from 1835 to 1848 and later again from 1852 to 1863, thereby
establishing the History of parliamentarism in Schleswig-Holstein.
After the German-Danish War, the Duchy of Holstein fell to Austria,
whose governor Ludwig Karl Wilhelm von Gablenz finally convened the
Holstein Assembly of Estates for the last time on June 11, 1866.
However, a conference was prevented by the side effects of the
German-German war. After the end of the war, the Duchy of Holstein
including Itzehoe fell to Prussia: The Province of
Schleswig-Holstein was created in 1867 - together with the Duchy of
Schleswig.
With the railway connection (1847) and the
connection to the new Chaussee from Hamburg to Rendsburg (1846), the
industrial age began in Itzehoe, so that in the 19th and later in
the 20th century many commercial and industrial companies (including
sugar production, weaving mill , Chemical industry and shipyard)
settled in and around Itzehoe, which helped the city to regain
greater economic importance.
While the inhabitants of
Holstein, and thus Itzehoe, were initially more part of the
Augustenburg party, this changed noticeably after the establishment
of the empire. The enthusiasm and admiration for Prussia increased
in all parts of the population and several monuments in the city
were dedicated to Prussia and its personalities. Among other things,
a bronze statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I was erected in the city park in
1890 (melted down in World War II) and in October 1905 the founder
of the empire, Otto von Bismarck, was particularly honored with the
inauguration of the Bismarckian column in the city forest. This
Bismarck tower is still one of the city's cultural monuments today.
After its foundation on July 29, 1866, Itzehoe became the seat
of the Field Artillery Regiment General-Feldmarschall Graf Waldersee
(Schleswigsches) No. 9. Furthermore, after the Franco-German War won
during the founding period, Itzehoe experienced an economic boom.
The population increased suddenly, the port flourished and several
larger factories were built in the food and textile industries, soap
and paper processing, as well as a few smaller engineering factories
and other shipyards.
During the First World War Itzehoe was
not directly affected by the military conflict, but suffered like
many German cities from famine caused by the British naval blockade
in the North Sea; many of the city's citizens did not return from
the battlefields of Europe and the population fell sharply.
As in the
entire German Reich, during the November Revolution in 1918/1919,
the rebel sailors and workers tried to usurp power. The officer
corps tried to prevent the rebels from marching into the city by
blocking the arterial roads from Itzehoe, but neglected to guard the
station. 50 sailors reached the city this way, hoisted the red flag
and formed a workers 'and soldiers' council.
During the
Weimar Republic, Itzehoe's population grew from just under 18,000 to
20,000. In their voting behavior, they preferred the Social
Democrats, the National Liberals and the German Nationals (as an
example, the result of the Reichstag election of December 7, 1924:
12,713 voters in Itzehoe, votes SPD 3515, DVP 2228, DNVP 1935, DDP
1015, KP 933, Center 67) .
In the Reichstag election of March
5, 1933, the last Reichstag election during the Nazi regime, in
which several parties were allowed, the 14,788 eligible voters in
Itzehoe elected the NSDAP with 6,161 votes, the SPD with 3,480, the
KPD in 1979 and the KPD with 1,054 DNVP, Center 84.
After
Altona was spun off by the Greater Hamburg Act, the province of
Schleswig-Holstein lost one of its four regional courts. From April
1, 1937, Itzehoe received its own regional court as a replacement.
13 local courts were initially assigned to this. While the number of
local courts decreased over time, the area covered by the regional
court has remained essentially unchanged since then.
After the beginning of the Second World War, many of Itzehoe's
inhabitants joined the Wehrmacht and died in the course of the war.
Compared to most northern German cities, the city itself hardly
suffered from the aerial warfare. After October 1941, only nine
bombs were dropped on Itzehoe. Itzehoe was not an important
destination due to the lack of industry. On October 31, 1941, five
bombs fell on Brunnenstieg and on a house in Sandberg, killing one
citizen and injuring two other people. In mid-April 1945 a bomb fell
near Poelstrasse in the middle of Lindenstrasse and damaged several
houses on both sides of the street. Also in April 1945, the 10,000
m³ gas tank of the gas works in the Gasstrasse burned out after it
had been bombed by British planes. On May 2, 1945, bombs hit the
southwest of Sude around a mill construction company, killing 22
people. A second attack a few hours later hit the Brückenstraße /
Liethberg triangle. In both cases there was complete destruction of
buildings and major damage in the wider area.
From July 1943,
parts of the population were evacuated from Kiel and Hamburg to
Itzehoe because of the bombing raids. In addition, from 1944
onwards, many expellees came to the city from the eastern German
regions. The number of inhabitants increased from 21,870 to 33,736.
During the Second World War there were several forced labor
camps in Itzehoe: The Fuchsberg camp for the company Siemen & Hinsch
with 150 people, the Schulenburg camp for the Alsensche Portland
cement factory with 130 people, the Leuenkamp camp for the
Hengstenberg sauerkohlfabrik, which has been located in Itzehoe
since 1937 with 100 women and the camp of the Army Munitions
Establishment with 135 people. In addition, in the former wallpaper
factory on Feldschmiedekamp there was a military hospital for
Belarusian armed forces and in the hall of the Hotel "Adler" there
was a prisoner-of-war camp for French.
Itzehoe was the
garrison location (Wehrkreis X, Hamburg) of the 225th Infantry
Division of the Wehrmacht, which was involved in the 1940 Vinkt
massacre in Belgium.
At the end of the war, Germany was
gradually occupied by the Allies. On May 4th, Hans-Georg von
Friedeburg signed the surrender of all German troops in north-west
Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark at Lüneburg on behalf of the
last Reich President Karl Dönitz, who had previously resigned in
Flensburg-Mürwik with the last Reich government. British troops
occupied Itzehoe on May 5, 1945. The war was over for Itzehoe.
The British military government
initiated denazification measures immediately after the war. The
National Socialist emblems were removed from the city, National
Socialist street and square names were renamed and National
Socialists were removed from office.
At the end of the war,
the population of Itzehoe had doubled due to refugees and displaced
persons from East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia, which, as in most
towns in the British and American zones of occupation, led to a
considerable housing shortage. This could only be reduced gradually
with new buildings in the city, especially in the Tegelhörn
district.
In 1946, on the initiative of the film producer
Gyula Trebitsch, who had lived in Itzehoe for a few years, the first
memorial to the victims of National Socialism in Northern Germany
was created in Itzehoe. The design came from the Hamburg architect
Fritz Höger.
The British occupation troops were replaced by
Norwegian troops in 1949, which in turn were replaced by Danish
occupation troops in 1950/1951. Basically, Itzehoe remained under
British occupation.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the first
skyscrapers were built in three districts of Itzehoe: the first on
Marienburger Platz in Tegelhörn, the second on Lindenstrasse in
Sude, and the third two in the city center. The Holstein Center
stands between these two high-rise buildings: built in 1972, it is
the largest shopping center in western Schleswig-Holstein and offers
shops on two sales levels a total of over 14,000 m² of retail space.
Various events take place there at irregular intervals. In 1997 the
buildings were completely renovated and in 2002 attempts were made
to revitalize them. A main entrance to the Holstein Center is
located on the Feldschmiede pedestrian zone immediately adjacent to
it. In 2017 the center was sold; it is largely empty and filed for
bankruptcy in June 2020.
The new theater is located near the field forge (built on the
bank of the filled-in Störschleife). It was inaugurated in 1992. The
old city theater burned down to the ground in 1994.
Another
big fire was remembered for a long time. Adjacent to the train
station was the 40,000 m² site of a timber wholesaler that fell
victim to the flames in 1988. It was only thanks to the favorable
wind conditions on that day that the fire did not spread to the
buildings in the city center and the train station. The
extinguishing work lasted almost a whole day.
Until it was
filled with around 110,000 m³ of sand in 1974, the Störschleife had
a decisive influence on the image of Itzehoe's inner city. The loop
was the original course of the river. The Stördurchstich (Lower
German: "Delf", from which the names "Delftor" and "Delftorbrücke"
of the city exit and the Störbrücke come from) made Itzehoe's castle
an island. It is said that there were sluices in Delf that closed
when the water ran out, forcing the disturbance loop to flow through
and clean it. After its removal, the sturgeon loop increasingly
silted up and developed into an almost stagnant, foul-smelling body
of water. The old town center, the "new town", could only be reached
via bridges. In the course of the redevelopment of the “Neustadt”,
during which almost all the houses on this former island were
demolished and replaced by new buildings and new streets laid out,
this defining element of the city died out. Only a few artificially
created water basins between the new theater and the Salt Road
remind of the original course of the loop. Adenauerallee, one of
Itzehoe's main thoroughfares, now runs along the former western
section. Due to these redevelopment and development measures,
Itzehoe "won" second place behind Idar-Oberstein in a 1988
"competition for the most consistent disfigurement of a historical
cityscape" carried out by German city planners, where in the 1980s
the Nahe river running through the urban valley area on one Length
of two kilometers had been built over with a road.
In order
to improve the cityscape again, an initiative was launched in 2011
with the aim of promoting the reopening of the filled in
Störschleife in the center of Itzehoe. In 2017, the entire city
center was declared a redevelopment area. The goal was expressly to
restore the disturbance loop.
Itzehoe achieved sad nationwide
notoriety in March 2014 when a gas explosion in Schützenstrasse in
the southeast of the city devastated the entire street and
completely destroyed the house with number 3. Four people were
killed in the accident; 15 people were injured, some seriously. The
accident happened during dredging work on the sewer system when an
unrecorded gas pipe was hit. The excavator driver and the foreman
were held responsible for the accident and had to answer in court,
where they were acquitted. In February 2017, civil proceedings began
to resolve the liability for damages.
In mid-March 2018 there
were attacks on Turkish mosques and shops across Germany. In
Itzehoe, too, windows of the mosque were smashed and a fire started.
People were not harmed.