Dortmund

The history of Dortmund extends back to prehistoric times and early history. Archeological finds in the city center indicate that the area was already heavily settled around 1000 BC. In 1907 construction workers made a spectacular find from the late Rome Empire, 444 gold coins, 16 silver coins, and a gold necklace that had been buried around the year 410 AD.

Imperial City

The settlement of 'Throtmani' was first mentioned in a monastery record book kept between 880 and 884. Dortmund was granted the status of an Imperial City during the Hohenstaufen period in the 12th and 13th centuries and expanded to where the city wall can still be seen today. The seal of the city, the so-called 'tower seal', was a visible symbol of its independence.

Merchants and craftsmen were responsible for Dortmund's rise in the Middle Ages to the level of an important Hanseatic city that shipped wool, cloth, wine, as well as iron and steel products to Flanders and England. The city was destroyed during the Thirty Years War. Lutheran Dortmund, with its Imperial connections, was seen as an enemy by all the warring factions and experienced numerous occupations. The effects of the war reduced it to the status of a small rural town.

Industrial development

It took the city two hundred years to recover from the effects of the war. Factories were built here during the industrial revolution of the early 19th century. The year 1837 marked the beginning of the coal mining industry in Dortmund. New technologies had made it possible to break through a one-hundred-meter-thick layer of marl to get at the coal underneath. Dortmund rapidly became a center of industrial development in Westphalia and the Ruhr region. Blast furnaces, pithead towers, coal stockpiles, and smokestacks were characteristic features of the city.

Cheap coal and oil imports changed the structure of the energy market in the second half of the 20th century, leading to mine closures and large-scale layoffs. Dortmund responded to this crisis with dynamic structural change. Today Dortmund is home to companies in the logistics, media, software, and telecommunications sectors.

There are thirty research institutes and a technology center near the university where scientists are engaged in the development and testing of new technologies. Some 33,000 students are enrolled at Dortmund's five universities and 4,700 scientists are employed by more than twenty internationally known research establishments.

Sports

In the recent past Dortmund has emerged as an international center for sports. It has become a regional base for Olympic training, providing services for athletes such as performance diagnostics, scientifically based training, and nutritional counseling. There is also a widespread interest in sports at the recreational level. Around 140,000 people in 600 sports clubs actively pursue a specific sport, including 40,000 in the city's soccer clubs.


One club in particular is at the root of all this enthusiasm for football, Borussia Dortmund. Founded in 1909, it won the German Championship in 1956, 1957, and 1963. It rose to international fame in 1966 when it became the first German club to win the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup.

A similar feat was repeated in the 1990s when Borussia won two German Championships in a row and became the first German team to win the UEFA Champions League Championship by defeating the Italian Champion, Juventus Turin, 3-1 in the final. The Westphalia Stadium has a seating capacity of 83,000. This makes it Germany's largest and a fitting venue for World Cup matches.