essen

~ / kihaku / trips / let-me-be-your-guide / wessreis-2022 / essen

Myself-proclaimed German capital of dad jokes

The city of Essen, the center of enormous Ruhrgebiet, the shopping capital of the area etc., but for me it's also an important point of my imaginary map of dad jokes. For context, essen means to eat in German, so… yeah, you get the idea.

But you might (or might not) be surprised that this isn't the real etymology of the name. According to the Wikipedia, the oldest known form of the city's name is Astnide, which changed to Essen by way of forms such as Astnidum, Assinde, Essendia and Esnede. The name Astnide may have referred either to a region where many ash trees were found or to a region in the East (of the Frankish Empire). The Old High German word for fireplace, Esse, is also commonly mentioned due to the industrial history of the city, but is highly unlikely since the old forms of the city name originate from times before industrialization.

It also has a really interesting Stadtbahn and tram system, it actually was looking quite deserted (but I visited it on the Pfingstensonntag, that is the Sunday of the Pentecost (in Germany it's not just a free day, but a Easter-like freetime, with Monday being a holiday as well – Pfingstenmontag) and I was my first time in the city.

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The Essen main building, designed by Edmund Körner, inaugurated in 1930 and listed as a historical monument since 1987, is located north of Essen's main train station and was used by the then Essen Stock Exchange until 1934. As early as 1855, the Essen Stock Exchange developed from a private stock exchange association as part of regular Sunday negotiations, and initially only existed for two years. At the instigation of the mining association, the Essen stock exchange was brought back to life on 21st December 1865. In 1880, the Essen Stock Exchange was placed under the supervision of the Chamber of Commerce, and was given stock exchange regulations. In 1934 the Essen Stock Exchange was closed. The closure resulted from a decree by the Reich Minister of Economics, Kurt Schmitt, who had reduced the number of German stock exchanges from 21 to 9.

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Essen Cathedral (Essener Dom), more widely known as Essen Minster (Essener Münster), since 1958 the seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Essen, the "Diocese of the Ruhr". The minster was formerly the collegiate church of Essen Abbey, founded in about 845 by Altfrid, Bishop of Hildesheim, around which the city of Essen grew up. The present building, which was reconstructed after its destruction in World War II, is a Gothic hall church, built after 1275 in light-coloured sandstone. Though the first aspirations of setting up a bishopric of the Ruhr were dashed in the 1920s, a new bishopric was formed in 1958 from parts of the dioceses of Münster, Paderborn, and Cologne and Essen Minster was made the cathedral. On 1 January 1958 the first Bishop of Essen, Franz Hengsbach was consecrated by the Nuncio Aloisius Joseph Muench.

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