Sindelfingen

Sindelfingen
St. Martin's church
Coat of arms
Sindelfingen Location of Sindelfingen within Böblingen district
Coordinates: 48°42′48″N 9°0′10″E / 48.71333°N 9.00278°E / 48.71333; 9.00278Coordinates: 48°42′48″N 9°0′10″E / 48.71333°N 9.00278°E / 48.71333; 9.00278
Country	Germany
State	Baden-Württemberg
Admin. region	Stuttgart
District	Böblingen
Government
• Mayor	Bernd Vöhringer
Area
• Total	50.85 km2 (19.63 sq mi)
Elevation	449 m (1,473 ft)
Population (2017-12-31)[1]
• Total	64,599
• Density	1,300/km2 (3,300/sq mi)
Time zone	CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes	71043–71069
Dialling codes	07031
Vehicle registration	BB
Website	www.sindelfingen.de

Sindelfingen is a German town near Stuttgart at the headwaters of the Schwippe (a tributary of the river Würm), which is home to a Mercedes-Benz assembly plant.

History

• 1155 First documented mention of Sindelfingen
• 1263, Sindelfingen was founded by Count Rudolf Scherer of Tübingen-Herrenberg.^[2]
• 1351 the city was sold to Württemberg.^[2]
• Middle Ages Notable weaving industry
• 1535 Entrance of the Protestant Reformation
• 1944 Stuttgart/Sindelfingen oil refinery bombed by the Oil Campaign of World War II
• 1958 Partnership with the French city Corbeil-Essonnes
• 1962 Sindelfingen became a "Große Kreisstadt" (town with special governmental responsibilities within the larger county)
• 1971 municipal annexation of the neighboring villages Maichingen and Darmsheim
• 1987 the final traditional Sindelfinger Volksfest was held (the site was later required for a state-level horticulture and landscaping exhibition)
• 2013 Sindelfingen celebrated the 750th anniversary of its founding^[3]

The weaving industry survived until most of Europe's textile industry was devastated by Asian imports. Some textile distribution centres are still left in the town. Former weaving mills can still be found in the city area, now used as offices for the computer industry. This is due to the takeover of Hollerith by IBM which used the punched card technology from the weaving mills.

Geography

Neighbouring towns and cities: Böblingen (contiguous), Stuttgart (15 km), Leonberg. The highest point is 531 meters above sea level and to the north is the Glemswald (Nature reserve).

Points of Interest

Statue of gossips in the Altstadt of Sindelfingen

The Mercedes-Benz factory in Sindelfingen.

• Old city hall (Rathaus), now the city museum (free admission)
• St Martin's church (Martinskirche) (built: 11th–12th century)
• A short alley with half timbered houses (Fachwerkhäusern)
• Old cemetery (behind city library)
• Witch's Leap
• The Cloister Pond (Klostersee)
• Large public swimming pool with a long water slide^[4]
• Water-tower on Goldberg
• Water-tower Sindelfingen-Steige
• Water-tower Sindelfingen-Eichholz
• Friendship Fountain on the market place, designed by Bonifatius Stirnberg.^[5] Around a central fountain with the Pegasus are six small fountains representing the six partner towns of Sindelfingen. The figures can rotate.
• Miniature Railway in the Sommerhofen Park
• Powerline-branch Maichingen
• Zweigart-Sawitzki-Bridge
• High-based pylons
• TV repeater Darmsheim
• Transmitter Tower Fuchsberg
• Transmitter Tower service area Forest of Sindelfingen
• Daimler AG factory. Tours can be arranged through Mercedes dealers.
• Haus zur Geschichte der IBM Datenverarbeitung (IBM Dataprocessing History Museum)

Culture

Sindelfingen has an annual International Street Fair which features ethnic food and performances from the partner cities, as well as from various local ethnic clubs.

Demography

The resident counts below are either estimates, based upon census (*) or official records of respective statistical offices. All figures after 1871 are taken from the statistical office of Baden-Württemberg.^[6]

Mercedes-Benz factory

The factory was founded in 1915 by Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft to produce aircraft engines, hence why the plant initially had a runway located onsite. Post-World War I the first passenger car was manufactured, following the merger with Benz & Cie. founded by Carl Benz. In 1926, the entire body shop of the new Daimler-Benz group was relocated to the Sindelfingen plant, allowing plant manager Wilhelm Friedle to introduce assembly line production the following year, and in 1929 the first press shop was opened. By 1938 the plant employed about 6,500 people, and in the lead-in to World War II most production was aligned to military contracts, mainly trucks such as the LC 3000; passenger car production ceased by 1942. Initially replacing male workers with local women, Mercedes then took forced labour, including prisoners of war. Western European prisoners were initially housed in near-by boarding houses, but with the start of the Eastern front the local Nazi administration formed the co-located Riedmühle concentration camp, which from 1942 loaned workers to the company in return for payment to the Nazi Government in Berlin. By 1944, almost half of Daimler Benz’s 63,610 Daimler Benz employees were civilian forced labourers. Post-WW2, Daimler-Benz admitted its links with the Nazi regime, and became involved in the German Industry Foundation’s initiative “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”.^[7] With heavy Allied bombing, the town and plant were not suitably reconstructed until late 1946, with resumed production of the Mercedes-Benz W136. Two-shift production was introduced from 1950, with the relocation of final car assembly to the plant, meaning that by 1955 80,500 cars were manufactured. The Mercedes-Benz W 116 was first produced in 1972, the first model of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, which the plant still produces today as the current model Mercedes-Benz W 222. Until 2015, the plant was the top-producing Daimler AG plant, when with 319,000 vehicles manufactured it was overtaken by the Bremen plant with 324,000.

Today, covering 2,955,944 m² with a production area 1,305,557 m², the 37,000 people employed (April 2016 - around 10,000 are research and development), the plant still produces over 300,000 vehicles per year, around 15% of total Daimler Group vehicle production. Second in production scale to Bremen in the Daimler Group, it is the third largest vehicle manufacturing plant in Germany, behind Volkswagen's Wolfsburg plant and the Audi plant at Ingolstadt.

Notable people

• 1782, 30. April, Albert Schott, died 6. Juni 1861 in Stuttgart, jurist and politicianof the Frankfurt National Assembly

1921, 25. April, Karl Ganzhorn, died 25. August 2014 in Sindelfingen, physician, founder of IBM-Labor in Böblingen and member of board of IBM Germany

• 1948 Friederike Roth, author
• 1954 Erich Klemm, chairman of labour union of Daimler Benz
• 1967 Jörg Baldauf, Handicapped athlete
• 1968 Bernd Vöhringer, politician (CDU), since 2001 publicly elected Mayor of Sindelfingen
• 1968 Monika Henschel, musician, Henschel Quartett, (Viola)
• 1969 Christoph Henschel, musician (Violin), also Henschel Quartett
• 1971 Pascal Kober, parson and politician, Member of Bundestag
• Carl Eytel (1862–1925), desert artist who immigrated to America in 1885 and eventually settled in Palm Springs, California
• Cubeatz, hip-hop production duo
• Roland Emmerich, (born 1955), German Film producer, director, and author
• Wizo is a Punk rock band from Sindelfingen
• Christoph, Markus & Monika Henschel, sibling musicians

Transportation

Sindelfingen can be reached through the A8 and A81 motorways, and through the S-Bahn connections to Stuttgart or Herrenberg; the nearest airport is in Stuttgart.

Twin towns

Sindelfingen is twinned with:

• Schaffhausen, Switzerland, since 1952
• Corbeil-Essonnes, France, since 1961
• Sondrio, Italy, since 1962
• Dronfield, United Kingdom, since 1971
• Győr, Hungary, since 1987
• Torgau, Germany, since 1987
• Chełm, Poland, since 2001
• Sindelfingen is a member city of Eurotowns network^[8]

References

External links

• Sindelfingen travel guide from Wikivoyage