10 largest cities in Germany
Berlin
Hamburg
Munich
Cologne
Frankfurt am Main
Hanover
Dusseldorf
Leipzig
Bremen
Dresden
With 355,100 inhabitants (December 31, 2019), Wuppertal is the
largest city and the industrial, economic, educational and cultural
center of the Bergisches Land in western Germany. The “big city in
the country” is located south of the Ruhr area in the Düsseldorf
administrative region and, as the seventeenth largest city in
Germany, is one of the regional centers of the state of North
Rhine-Westphalia. The city is part of the metropolitan regions of
Rhine-Ruhr and Rhineland, the Rhineland Regional Association and the
Bergisches Städtedreieck.
The first documented mentions of
settlements come from the middle of the 11th century. For many
centuries, today's urban area was divided by different domains.
Until the 19th century, the region developed into a center of early
German and European industrialization and contributed significantly
to the rise of the Ruhr area; Above all, the textile industry
brought wealth and growth to the region. The city was founded on
August 1, 1929 as an independent city under the name
Barmen-Elberfeld through the merger of the independent cities of
Elberfeld (major city since around 1883) and Barmen (major city
since around 1884) and the cities of Ronsdorf, Cronenberg and
Vohwinkel and in 1930 renamed to Wuppertal after a public survey;
this naming expressed the geographical location of the cities of
Barmen and Elberfeld in the valley of the Wupper.
During
National Socialism, the city was an important center of both the
NSDAP and the resistance, both of the trade unions and political
opposition and of the churches, which was not least expressed in the
Barmer Declaration. The importance of the city decreased due to
extensive destruction in World War II.
The topography is
shaped by the valley of the Wupper, which winds around 20 km through
the urban area and whose steep slopes are often wooded. City
districts located on the northern and southern plateaus merge into
the meadows and forests of the Bergisches Land and make Wuppertal,
together with extensive green and forest areas such as the Barmer
Wald, Scharpenacken or Staatsforst Burgholz, Germany's greenest city
in a ranking from 2013. As the “cradle of industrialization in
Germany”, the city is also rich in large villa districts and
residential buildings from the Wilhelminian era: around 4500
monuments are located in the city area.
In addition to the
suspension railway, which has existed since 1901, the university
town is known for the internationally renowned dance theater Pina
Bausch and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy,
the Zoological Garden, the Historical City Hall, the Wuppertal
Symphony Orchestra, the Von der Heydt Museum for Fine Arts, the
historical center with the Engels house, the sculpture park
Waldfrieden, extensive parks and forests with Germany's largest
arboretum and the largest variety of denominations in Germany.
Well-known sports clubs are the former first division soccer and
UEFA Cup participant Wuppertaler SV and the Bundesliga handball club
Bergischer HC, as well as Bundesliga clubs in other sports with
numerous national and international titles. In addition, numerous
personalities are connected to the city through birth or work, such
as Pina Bausch, Friedrich Bayer, Gerhard Domagk, Friedrich Engels,
Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Else Lasker-Schüler, Johannes Rau and Hans
Wolfgang Singer.