Rotthausen, Gelsenkirchen — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Rotthausen?

An airfield once stood under the spoil heap. The Gelsenkirchen-Essen-Rotthausen aerodrome opened on 25 May 1912 and was flown to by Lufthansa, the Kondor Flugzeugwerke had their main works there, and the flight pioneer Bruno Werntgen taught flying on it. The trotting track occupies that ground at Gut Nienhausen.

Alfred Fischer built the Volkshaus. He put it up in 1921, and he is the architect of the Hans-Sachs-Haus as well. Glass and then solar cells took over one site.

A plate-glass factory was built in Rotthausen in 1927, and solar cells have been made on the same ground since 1999.

What is the history of Rotthausen?

Rotthausen grew from three historic cores. The Bauerschaft belonged from 1808 to the new Bürgermeisterei Altenessen, whose seat was at Stoppenberg, and from 1873 the commune came under the Bürgermeisterei Stoppenberg in the Landkreis Essen. Coal was first dug in 1846.

The Cologne to Minden main line was built through the following year, a passenger station opened in 1876 on the link between that route and the Rhenish Ruhr line, and it was expanded with goods handling in 1895. Parishes formed in 1891 and 1893. Rotthausen was raised to a Bürgermeisterei of its own on 1 October 1906, and on 1 January 1924 it was detached from the Landkreis Essen and the Rhine Province and taken into Gelsenkirchen in Westphalia.

Dahlbusch was the pit here. Mining began in 1848 and ended in 1966, and three severe accidents in the middle of the century are remembered by three monuments in the Rotthausen cemetery. One rescue made the mine famous.

Three miners were brought up from underground with the Dahlbusch bomb on 12 May 1955, a capsule that later carried its name around the world.

Where is Rotthausen?

Rotthausen is the southernmost part of Gelsenkirchen in the Stadtbezirk Gelsenkirchen-Süd, running to the Essen city boundary, along which the Mechtenberg nature reserve lies.