Steuerwald, Hildesheim — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Steuerwald?

Burg Steuerwald was built to face the city. Bishop Heinrich II von Woldenberg had it raised between 1310 and 1313, and the name meant curb the violence, which says what it was for. It housed the bishops until 1763.

The castle served as their permanent residence for four and a half centuries, and after the secularisation of 1803 it became a state domain under the Klosterkammer. One bomb marked it. The first bomb dropped on Hildesheim fell at the castle on 9 October 1943 and killed four people, and a photograph in the chapel shows the roofs of the palas, the stables and the great barn wrecked while chapel and keep stood.

A field cross is all that is left of the village.

What is the history of Steuerwald?

A village called Essem stood where the harbour is. It fell empty after the castle was founded, and the village of Steuerwald grew up a little to the north instead, joining Hildesheim in 1912. Hildesheim wanted a harbour.

Plans for an inland port on a branch canal to the Mittellandkanal date from 1910, and the city under mayor Ernst Ehrlicher bought the castle and its four hundred and twelve hectares from the Klosterkammer on 1 September 1912 to get the land. Work began in May 1919. Much of the village was pulled down, an entire hill called the Kirschenberg was carried away, and the harbour with its harbour railway took up more than two hundred hectares.

The opening came on 20 June 1928. An airfield finished the village off. What was left of it went when the civil field of 1927 was expanded after 1933 into a military station with a reconnaissance flying school, and the site became a commercial estate after 1993.

Where is Steuerwald?

Steuerwald lies in the north of Hildesheim near the Innerste at the mouth of the Kupferstrang, just under three kilometres from the inner city, with Himmelsthür two kilometres west and the Bundesstraße 6 running north.