St. Wendel is the district town of the district of the same name in the northeast of Saarland. It is located around 36 km northeast of the state capital Saarbrücken and is named after the holy Wendelin.
St. Wendel is located on the Blies at the foot or west of the Bosenberg at an altitude of 286 m above sea level. NN. (Fruit market). The highest point is the Bosenberg at 485 m, the deepest point at 260 m is the point where the Blies leaves the city for Ottweiler.
St. Wendel includes 16 districts, these are Bliesen, Bubach, Dörrenbach, Hoof, Leitersweiler, Marth, Niederkirchen, Niederlinxweiler, Oberlinxweiler, Osterbrücken, Remmesweiler, Saal, Urweiler, Werschweiler, Winterbach and the core town of St. Wendel.
The annual precipitation is 941 mm and is thus in the upper fifth of the values recorded by the measuring points of the German Weather Service. Over 81% indicate lower values. The driest month is April; it rains most in December. In the wettest month, around 1.6 times more rain falls than in the driest month. The seasonal fluctuations in precipitation are in the middle third. In 53% of all locations, the monthly precipitation fluctuates less.
Coat of arms
The city coat of arms provides key points about
the city's history. The shield is divided into four fields by a
cross; in each there is a lily. The origin of the cross of the
former electoral sovereignty is very likely, as is the borrowing of
the lilies from the Scottish coat of arms. This was supposed to
emphasize the origins of the city saint, Wendelin, as well as his
royal descent. In 1840 the colors of the coat of arms were not
known. The following blazon has been in effect since 1907: In blue,
golden cross, in each of the four corners a silver lily.
From
the beginning to the middle of the 19th century
The center of the
town of St. Wendel was probably formed by the court of a landlord
from the Merovingian era (late 6th century) named Baso. This is how
the place name Basonevillare, d. H. Baso estate. This name would
probably have evolved into Bosenweiler in our time - had it not been
for the veneration of Wendalinus. Baso's farm was on the shoulder of
the Bosenberg, between the Todbach and the Bosenbach. In the middle
of the 7th century, the Bishop of Verdun, Paulus, bought
Basonevillare. He also inherited the Tholey Foundation (at that time
still without a monastery) from a Frankish nobleman, Adalgisil,
nicknamed Grimo. In this way the area of St. Wendel came to Verdun
for centuries. Around 600 a man probably lived here who was greatly
revered by the population after his death. This gave rise to the
cult of St. Wendelin (lat. Wendalinus). As a result of this
veneration, an extensive pilgrimage developed in the centuries after
his death, which ultimately led to the old settlement name
Basonevillare being replaced by St. Wendel in the 11th and 12th
centuries.
The Counts of Blieskastel, whose possessions
stretched from northern Lorraine on both sides of the Blies across
the Hunsrück to Bernkastel on the Moselle, today's Bernkastel-Kues,
laid in the Blies lowlands (today the area of the underground car
park in Mott) possibly a moated castle that served to protect the
ambitious place of pilgrimage. This water castle typically consisted
of a heaped mound of earth with a residential tower, surrounded by a
palisade fence and a moat. Such a plant was called a moth. The
presence of the field name "Mott" in St. Wendel leads to conclusions
about this early castle complex; Otherwise there is no evidence or
evidence for this.
In the 9th or early 10th century a church
was built on the site of today's basilica, in which the relic "Saint
Wendalinus" is kept today. Several markets arose parallel to the
pilgrimage, including Wendelsmarkt, the central market in the entire
area for cattle, clothing and everyday objects. Castle, courtyard
and church did not gradually grow together until the 14th century.
In 1326/28 the Elector and Archbishop of Trier Baldwin of
Luxembourg acquired the castle and village of St. Wendel. With the
acquisition of St. Wendels by Baldwin, the settlement gradually
developed into a medieval town. Jakob (Jacomin) von Montclair
(Monkler) was the first electorate bailiff (burgrave) of the St.
Wendel office. As a representative of the elector, he had a new
castle built after 1328. It is believed that at Archbishop Balduin's
behest, construction of the new pilgrimage church began. At the
Reichstag in Nuremberg in 1332, Baldwin received from Emperor Ludwig
the Bavarian the so-called collecting privilege for 29 cities,
villages, castles and chapels in his area, which he was able to
equip with the rights contained in the Frankfurt city charter. The
St. Wendel historian Max Müller interpreted this document as a "town
charter for St. Wendel" in his standard work on the history of St.
Wendel (up to the First World War) (this misinterpretation continues
to have an effect, although it was already considered false by
experts in Müller's time recognized). St. Wendel became a town in
the 14th century, but no formal granting of town charter is known.
Balduin's successor, Archbishop Werner von Falkenstein, had a 650
meter long wall built around the city in 1388; At that time, access
to the city center was formed by a single gate (today upper
Balduinstrasse at the level of the Bernhard Salon). At that time
around 500 people lived in St. Wendel.
Today's fruit market has always been a marketplace; In 1440 it
received an increase when the archbishop of Trier at the time gave
the place, called “Kaff”, to the parish with the stipulation that a
large department store be built there; this later became the first
town hall. The middle class (mostly craftsmen and traders) settled
in the houses around the parish church. Guilds were formed and the
lay judges gave them a say in the city administration. In 1455 the
St. Wendeler Hospital was established as a private foundation; In
1460, the parish church was completed under the pastor Nikolaus von
Cues. In the middle of the 15th century the population had risen to
700.
In 1512, Emperor Maximilian visited the city of St.
Wendel during his stay at the Trier Reichstag. In September 1522,
the city experienced the only siege in its history by the troops of
Franz von Sickingen. After two days of continuous bombardment on the
wall (which held up) and three unsuccessful storms by Sickingen's
troops, the Kurtrier garrison (60 riders) capitulated. While Franz
moved on to Trier, his son Johann stayed in the city. The siege of
Trier had to be broken off on September 14th, and parts of the army
withdrew via St. Wendel. Thereupon two companies of Trier infantry
and a pennon of horsemen appeared in front of the city and asked for
the surrender. The following night, Johann von Sickingen fled
through “a breach in the city wall”. This point, which could never
be precisely located, is still called “Sickinger Hole” today (this
hole probably didn't even exist in the wall, as the wall had not
collapsed anywhere). An inscription and a walled-in cannonball on a
buttress on the south side of the Wendalinus basilica commemorate
the siege, but it was only installed there in 1922.
In 1514
and 1589 large parts of the city were burned to rubble and ashes.
Almost 50 years later billeting and contributions (contributions to
the maintenance of occupation troops) brought the city to the brink
of ruin during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648).
On February
2, 1677, all houses were burned down by French troops under General
Comte de Bissy, Turenne's successor, with a few exceptions
(Candlemas 1677). The city wall was razed. The old town hall and the
electoral castle were also devastated.
During the War of the
Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the city was again occupied and
looted. For a long time, trade and industry could not recover. The
clean-up work could not begin until 1714.
In the War of the
Polish Succession (1733–1736), the War of the Austrian Succession
(1741–1748) and the Seven Years War (1756–1763), troops marched
through St. Wendel, and contributions had to be made.
The
urban development of the city had long been characterized by a great
contrast between the very high residential density in the walled
area of the old town and the low residential density outside. The
city wall disappeared towards the end of the century and the city
began to expand a little. The trades, especially the wool and
leather industries, revived. There were large companies with over
100 looms. Merchants from Saarbrücken and Strasbourg met their need
for good cloths here, while the tanneries brought their leather
products to the Frankfurt fair. A wealthy upper class soon formed,
and numerous splendid residential and farm buildings were built. The
Wendelsdom was provided with a three-tiered baroque dome in 1753. In
addition, numerous urban development measures took place (for
example the construction of roads, development of the castle
grounds, relocation of the cemetery from the basilica in front of
the upper gate of the city).
During the Revolutionary Wars,
St. Wendel suffered from looting and billeting by troops on both
sides from 1792 onwards. The introduction of the freedom of trade
abolished the old guild regulations, whereby many masters became
unemployed, as there were no more price fixings and botchers worked
under price. From 1798 the canton St. Wendel belonged to the
arrondissement Saarbrücken in the Saar department. Gradually some
prosperity came back into the slowly but steadily expanding city.
The lower city gate in Kelsweilerstraße was demolished (1774) and a
bridge over the Todtbach (1809) and a bridge over the Blies built in
what is now Bahnhofstraße (1820); the Bahnhofstrasse in an early
form was laid out. On January 9, 1814, Field Marshal von Blücher
proclaimed the resumption of free trade between the Saardepartement
and the area on the right bank of the Rhine in St. Wendel.
In 1816 Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was assigned the
cantons of St. Wendel, Grumbach and Baumholder (together around
20,000 inhabitants) for his services in the Wars of Liberation
(against Napoleon). From 1819 he named this area the Principality of
Lichtenberg, the boundaries of which are still largely unchanged
today in those of the Evangelical Church District of St. Wendel. The
ducal government was successful in financial and economic policy (on
behalf of the duke, who was always short of money, they tried to
squeeze the population to the limit, but in return they failed to
invest), but they tried to take over the judiciary subject to state
control by appointing judges and administrative officials in
personal union. The confidence of the Lichtenbergers in an
independent judiciary dwindled. After the formation of a district
administrator, the population hoped to have a say in legislation,
tax policy, etc., but Duke Ernst made decisions on his own in many
cases, in which, for example, he no longer convened the district
administrator. The population became increasingly dissatisfied,
which led to unrest. In the course of the liberal movement after the
Hambach Festival in 1832, the disputes escalated. The mini-revolts
of the population were put down with the help of Prussian troops
from Saarlouis. In 1834 the Duke sold the land to the Kingdom of
Prussia. St. Wendel became a district town in the Trier
administrative district, which was part of the Rhine province.
The Prussian state made St. Wendel a garrison location. By the
end of the 19th century, many citizens from the St. Wendel region
emigrated to America.
1850 to 1918
In the middle of the
19th century the town of St. Wendel and the nearby towns of
Alsfassen and Breiten gradually grew together. Today's
Bahnhofstrasse, which led to Niederweiler (in the area around
today's train station), was built on, as did Brühlstrasse and
Kelsweilerstrasse, which led to Breiten and Alsfassen. In 1859 St.
Wendel, Alsfassen and Breiten were merged to form the town of St.
Wendel. Further structural measures: street lighting, relocation of
the hospital to today's Hospitalstrasse (1818), second relocation of
the cemetery to the “Sprietacht” district in Werschweilerstrasse
(1814), construction of the Protestant church (1841). The economic
situation in St. Wendel only changed in 1860 with the opening of the
Rhine-Nahe Railway between Bingen and Saarbrücken, from which the
city benefited as a train station and through the construction of
the railway workshop. At that time a Jewish community emerged again
in St. Wendel. In 1868, St. Wendel became the seat of a Landwehr
district command, an institution that not only had considerable
military importance, but also significantly increased the central
local importance of the city and the district office. Out of
gratitude, the city awarded the commanding General Eberhard Herwarth
von Bittenfeld, who had campaigned for the St. Wendel location,
honorary citizenship a year later.
In 1898 the Steyler
Mission Society (religious name: Societas Verbi Divini, SVD) founded
in the Netherlands in 1875 began to establish a branch in St.
Wendel; she bought the 320 hectare "Langenfelderhof" (also called
"Cettos Hof") for 350,000 Reichsmarks and renamed it
"Wendelinushof". The previous owner was the then Rhine Province. The
farm, whose origins go back to the 15th century, was, in addition to
self-sufficiency, a training center for technical and agricultural
professions.
In several construction phases from 1901 to 1914
the mission house with living quarters and school wings were built
for training as a friar and religious priest. In 1912 the mission
house church was completed. More than 500 priests and brothers were
trained here until it was dissolved and expropriated by the Nazis.
From 1941 to 1945 the mission house was a Napola, an elite boarding
school for the next generation of National Socialist leaders.
At the turn of the century, in response to the change in the
economic and social structure, extensive urban expansion began. As a
result, the residential building area more than doubled between 1910
and 1937. During the Nazi era, a large barracks complex was built on
the western outskirts of the city on both sides of the arterial road
to Winterbach in 1937/38; the owners of the required land were more
or less expropriated.
1918 until the end of the Second World
War
After the Versailles Treaty came into force in 1920, the city
of St. Wendel and the south-western part of the St. Wendel district
remained in the Saar area and thus under the administration of the
League of Nations. As a result, after the National Socialists came
to power in 1933 in the German Reich, unlike in the Reich territory,
opposition members and Jewish fellow citizens were initially spared
from being attacked by National Socialist persecution. The influence
of the National Socialist ideology, however, became more and more
massive even before the Saar referendum on January 13, 1935 and the
subsequent annexation to the German Reich. On May 14, 1933, the TV
St. Wendel voluntarily joined the German gymnastics association
(TD), which resulted in the exclusion of all Jewish members. On
October 13, 1934, the city council decided to rename Bahnhofstrasse
to Adolf-Hitler-Strasse and the Schlossplatz to Adolf-Hitler-Platz.
After the annexation to the German Reich in 1935, most of St.
Wendel's 136 Jewish citizens fled abroad for fear of persecution.
Protected by the "Roman Agreement" valid in the former Saar area,
which guaranteed legal emigration under protection of property,
almost all St. Wendel Jews sold their property (mostly significantly
below their value) and left Germany. The St. Wendel Synagogue, newly
built in 1902, was destroyed on the Night of the Crystal in 1938,
and around 50 Jewish citizens of St. Wendel were murdered as part of
the Nazi persecution.
On March 19, 1945 American troops of
the 3rd US Army under George S. Patton (10th Armored Division and
80th Infantry Division) occupied the city and set up a provisional
military administration under Captain Stanley R. Jacobs. On July 10,
1945, the city was taken over by French troops.
After 1945
After the Second World War, with the economic miracle, there was
another strong expansion in residential development. But the return
to the Federal Republic of St. Wendel initially brought a negative
development, as in 1960 a large employer had to close with the
traditional tobacco factory Marschall. A French garrison was housed
in the barracks complex on Tholeyer Strasse from 1951 to July 1999.
Despite all the wars, there was still a lot of historical
building stock in the town center of St. Wendel in the 1960s.
However, under the post-war mayors Franz Josef Gräff and Jakob
Feller, a lack of historical awareness and economically oriented
renovation destroyed numerous buildings by the early 1980s. The
mayors were known as advocates of the philosophy of area renovation
as part of urban development, which was widespread at the time.
During her tenure, a number of historically and town-planning
important buildings in the St. Wendel town center were demolished in
order to be replaced by modern functional buildings. As a result,
the originally very well-preserved cityscape in the core area was
considerably damaged. Traces of the medieval city can only be seen
near the Wendalinus basilica.
The central square of the city,
Schlossplatz, was particularly affected by the renovation. There,
under Mayor Klaus Bouillon, the entire old house front was torn down
on the north side and replaced by historicizing, modern buildings,
which only partially reproduce the original house front. This caused
a considerable loss of authenticity in the square.
St. Wendel
has around 27,000 inhabitants today due to the territorial reform of
1974, when several villages in the surrounding area were moved to
the urban area.
Up until the end of the 18th century, the
present-day towns in the city belonged to different rulers: the
Princes of Trier, Nassau-Saarbrücken, Pfalz-Zweibrücken; the former
Nassau and Palatinate towns are still predominantly evangelical.
From 1816 to 1834 St. Wendel belonged to the Principality of
Lichtenberg, which was subordinate to the Duchy of Saxony-Coburg,
and then to Prussia, in whose Rhine province the area was
incorporated as the district of St. Wendel. The Bavarian-Palatinate
towns of Osterbrücken, Hoof, Niederkirchen, Marth, Saal and Bubach
(Kusel district) have belonged to the St. Wendel district since 1947
and became part of the town of St. Wendel in 1974 with the municipal
reorganization.
In the course of the conversion of the barracks site, the
building complexes of the former barracks were structurally changed
considerably. The southern part of the barracks was used to expand
the adjacent industrial area. A golf course belonging to the network
of the Weiland golf courses was laid out on the adjacent practice
area.
On December 1, 2000, the name Sankt Wendel was
officially changed to St. Wendel.
Religions
While the
upper Bliestal, including the main town of St. Wendel, is
predominantly Catholic (until 1784, only Catholics were allowed to
settle in the Electoral Trier office of St. Wendel), the rest of the
Bliestal has roughly equal Protestant and Catholic proportions. The
Ostertal is predominantly evangelical. In the area of the city
center there are the two Catholic parishes of St. Wendelin and St.
Anna (which will be merged with other Catholic parishes in the
surrounding areas in 2011 to form a parish community) and the
Protestant parish. Jews can be traced back to St. Wendel as early as
the 14th century. After they were expelled by the Archbishop of
Trier, Otto von Ziegenhain (1418–1430), it was not until 1861
(Samuel Daniel) that Jews settled here again. The Jewish community
existed until the Nazi regime. Their synagogue (built in 1902) was
on Kelsweilerstrasse; it was set on fire in 1938 and finally
demolished in 1943. The town's old Jewish cemetery is located on the
road to Baltersweiler at the Elsenbach (Urweiler) junction - already
under Urweiler ban.
There is a chapel of the New Apostolic
Church in Gregor-Wolf-Straße.