1950s: When Bottrop’s city center was still full of life

My journey through time through the 50s continues. With Father Leppich, the popular itinerant preacher on Berliner Platz, with pretty girls who are crazy about my dream car and therefore also a little bit about me – with Bottrop’s most famous waiter, who actually wanted to be an opera singer, and with the opening of Althoff, the new shopping temple in downtown.

When I look out of the window of the Bergermann pub on the Kreuz, I see the Böhmer shoe store, the Rebbelmund clothing store and the Heuer traffic lights above the Gladbecker/Horster Strasse intersection. The big clock with the red and green fields is a sensation in the city. The white pointer circles from one field to the next in slow motion, admired by waiting pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. The fools sing about the traffic sign at the Kolping ceremonial meeting in the carnival session 1950/51: “There’s a traffic light on the Altmarkt.”

With the convertible through the city of Bottrop

Two more clocks, invented by Josef Heuer, an entrepreneur from Iserlohn, float at the Heidenheck and at the B 224/Prosperstraße intersection. I’m not on good terms with the man. During my driver’s license test, I have to give up my seat at the wheel of the driving school car after just 20 seconds. I’m so nervous that I just miss the pointer on the red field.

The second attempt works, from now on I drive to school in my dream car, an ancient, no longer completely white Karmann Ghia convertible – of course through the middle of the city via Horster Strasse. The rails are long gone, the road is two lanes, and I’m as proud as Oskar, because the prettiest girls in town get on the road, who previously completely ignored me.

Further consequences of the Bottrop writer:

Finally I don’t have to play with the idea of ​​jumping off the ten in the Hesse outdoor pool to impress the beauties. Now I had my Schiiia, always for five marks of fuel in the tank and the cassette recorder on the back seat, because the old radio only roared in sharp right turns – and not in the parking lot behind the Marienhospital as desired.

I move on, leaving Berliner Platz on the left. If cobblestones could tell a story… Mayor Ernst Wilczok thrilled more than 10,000 people with his rousing speech on May 1, 1950; He demands that millions bleed to death on the battlefields must never happen again. Months later, 20,000 believers celebrate the 800th anniversary of St. Cyriakus Church, flags are waving all over the city center, and the number 800 shines in golden dahlia blossoms on a huge green fir wall.

In 1957 Father Leppich drew the masses to the Berliner Platz in Bottrop

At Pentecost 1951, 30,000 Upper Silesians flock to Trappenkamp, ​​”the 700th anniversary of the city of Gleiwitz was a powerful commitment to the Upper Silesian homeland,” writes the Bottroper Stadtanzeiger. Father Johannes Leppich also attracted the masses in 1957, the “God’s machine gun” fired cheeky phrases and loud curses against licentiousness and debauchery. “Every cowmaid must have been to Paris at least once, but she doesn’t know Lake Baldeney or the Sauerland.”

For many, the pugnacious penitential preacher of the post-war period is an unwelcome guest. Politicians try in vain to ban him and his lecture to the outskirts. Help comes from above. A thunderstorm causes many to flee.

The spacious, proud square was our nostalgic jewel in the middle of the city. With a fair and rifle festival, with lots of political celebrities during the election campaign and on May 1st, with rabbit petting at our weekly market. What would have happened if the ZOB hadn’t cut the space and the Hansazentrum had survived. If only the good old indoor pool still existed; half Bottrop learned to swim there. Many questions but no answer. Am I Father Leppich? we would have said earlier.

Bottrop’s most famous head waiter

It’s obvious that I can’t get past the brewery bar of the Westfalia brewery. Just take a quick look to see who’s there and have a beer or two; it rarely stays that way, which Gerd could confirm. Bottrop’s most well-known head waiter rushes from table to table with beads of sweat on his forehead, a self-satisfied smile on his flushed face and filled glasses.

Everything happens at lightning speed, an arithmetic genius like him doesn’t need lines on beer mats, no till for the bill; the numbers gush out of him as a matter of course. Let’s be honest, Gerd: Who of us wanted to, who was able to calculate at all? He died in 1979 at the age of 52. Only after his death did I find out that Gerhard Gautner wanted to be an opera singer. His dream didn’t come true. Our Gerd found another stage.

Opening of the Althoff department store: magnet in downtown Bottrop

Resisting the temptation to sink, I’m on my way. On March 12, 1943, bombs had reduced the Althoff department store, my ancestors’ 6,000 square meter shopping temple, to rubble and ashes. The reopening on June 25, 1951 was a folk festival. Crowds of people crowd the Hansastrasse between Rickert and Althoff, and security forces on the canopy look down at the curious crowd in amazement. Finally.

Althoff cast the longing for the economic miracle in concrete. The dream is tangible, buyable, it goes up, with escalators and elevators to consumption, to shelves and tables full of goods. The two-storey Althoff department store, which was expanded five years later by three more floors, has magnetic power, the WAZ exults in bold letters. The giant in the city not only attracts buyers. Rebbelmund and Woolworth, as well as smaller retailers, are investing, positioning themselves for the future in the best Althoff neighborhood on Hansastrasse and Hochstrasse: Triffterer watches and Frintrop drugstores, Berkel and Surmann, Mengede and Böhmer…

But the paths to the pedestrian zone and the shopping experience are still bumpy; with dirt in the streets, with holes and cracks in the cobblestones, with tripping hazards, where rails are dug up and sidewalks become obsolete. It doesn’t matter, Bottrop, the mining town, lives, celebrates, buys, treats itself while the soot of progress settles on old and new facades.

The patron of beer moves to Gladbecker Strasse

Happy, but still prudish times, scandal at Hochstrasse 14: Gambrinus, the patron saint of beer, looks down from the gable of the building, motionless, at the goings-on of the night owls. Maybe he’s just snapped because the event-hungry guests in Bottrop’s first bar in 1951 hardly drink any beer. The champagne flows at the bar and tables in upholstered benches and in the green salon. The curfew is lifted, the sins of the night stay where they belong, namely somewhere between subtle music, darkened lamps and heavy carpets.

Years later, Zum Gambrinus was demolished, but its namesake on the gable survived the dying out of the pubs. At the end of the glass, the figurehead of the beer drinkers gets his feet on solid ground on a pedestal, looks down at the Stadtcafe vom Schorsch, at the König Pilsener beer house, at Ramonas Hürter, at the Bottrop writer, who toasts him. And keep silent.

“There are many, too many pubs that we miss”

Back at the horse market. A nightcap at Schäfer, before no more beer flows out of the tap and the economy has to make way for the new Sparkasse building at the end of the 1950s. There are many, too many pubs that we miss. Just like Reidick on Kirchhellener Strasse, I can still hear the choirs rehearsing in the next room. Or much later the Hannen Fass on Schützenstraße. The economy must not be missing, my friend Ricardo asks. Did he also meet his wife for life at the bar?

One, who does not want to be named, remembers his time in the army, the trips home at the weekend, the pub crawl on Essener Strasse with, among others, Böhmers Minchen, Brinkmann, Heger, Hullerum, Keisel, Lochtkemper, Mennekes, Pepping, Trappe, Trogemann , Ullrich, Westfälischer Hof. “On the way from the train station to the city center I drank a beer at every bar and was already smarter when I arrived in the city.” The old rooms. A story with a late happy ending. Landlord Erich Kaluza was an original, a master of the arts, a man of bold sayings. He really wanted to put the legendary advertisement “I drink Jägermeister because…” on the back cover of the football magazine Kicker. Coincidence. coincidence? One day after his death, his wish comes true.

Memories of the Schauburg, the queen of cinemas

Of course I remember Studio B. I memorized every detail of the disco in my head. The strict control at the entrance, the long, darkened path, the wall to the right, the bar and dance floor to the left. Steep stairs at the back. It leads up to the tables. I was always at the bottom step. I never danced, I was just a shy looker. When the DJ cranks it up, you can hear the hits in the Schauburg opposite the St. Cyriakus Church. At that time there were a lot of cinemas in the city center and the districts: Scala, Thalia, Capitol, Bali, Deli, Universum, Roxy, Corso, Kamera and Glück-Auf.

But I only loved my Schauburg. With red armchairs and carpets, in the back with secluded stalls and in front with the big stage. The queen of cinemas showed the latest films first; it was a cinema with charm and dignity. On April 4, 1987, the lights went out forever and the screen went pitch black. I queued up to the lower elevated road to see Winnetou, my childhood hero, die. I dreamed of his sister, the beautiful Nscho-tschi. I hated her killer, the villain Santer, played by Mario Adorf. Our paths crossed several times, I happened to meet him in Rome, Berlin, Munich and later in Essen. He’s a wonderful actor, a great person. But I’ll never forgive the bandit.

>>> About Hermann Beckfeld

After the view from the town hall tower and the start of a fictional journey through the turbulent 1950s of our new city, Bottrop writer Hermann Beckfeld continues his tour of the past and pubs today.

In April he is drawn to Kirchhellen. The journalist tries his hand at being a farmer and pretzel baker, gets the old ladybird train going in Beck Castle and is on the stage at the Hof Junger cultural center. For a year, the native of Bottrop will be looking at his hometown, his reports appear every month in the local edition of the WAZ and on the city’s website. As after the opening stories, Hermann Beckfeld is looking forward to feedback from readers by email to the address: [email protected]

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