The beginnings of the settlement of the "Wauler Dorps", as the older people still call the village centre today, probably date back to the 10th century. The construction of the front courtyard belonging to Deutz Abbey and the construction of the parish church in the 11th century created the conditions for the parish of Wald. His territory included the later communities of Gräfrath, Wald and Ohligs. In the following years new settlements around the Walder church could have created a small town. But the development of the monastery founded in 1187 in Gräfrath led to a settlement there, which was granted freedom rights in 1402. Thus Gräfrath, and not Wald with its parish church, became the urban centre in the parish of Wald. Only after the sale of the monastery property, which surrounded the church from all sides except in the west, and the extension of the country road, which connected Wald and Gräfrath with the Rhine port of Monheim, did the "Wauler Dorp" get a rounded village centre at the beginning of the 19th century through new buildings around the church. In 1808 Wald became an independent municipality, in 1816 the mayor's office Wald had 2767 inhabitants. Their municipality stretched from Weyer in the west to Foche in the east. In the southeast, Wald am Schlagbaum and Mangenberg bordered Solingen. By the middle of the 19th century the population had grown to 5278 inhabitants. In 1856 Wald was granted town rights and the main source of income for the Walder population for centuries, as in the entire Solingen region, was the production of small-scale cutlery. But with the umbrella manufacture industry, Wald was already able to make the leap into the factory age at the beginning of the 19th century. In the course of the high industrialization further modern metal enterprises were added starting from 1870. Tool factories, iron and metal foundries, lock and key factories, drop forges and factories for bicycle parts were established. The Walder railway station, built in 1887, played a particularly important role in the economic upswing, although it was only located on the side line from Solingen to Vohwinkel, known as the "Corkscrew Railway". Not even the neighbouring cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf could be reached directly. For industrial freight traffic, however, it was of extraordinary importance at the turn of the century. New factories and new jobs led to a rapid increase in the Walder population. In 1910 the town had 25311 inhabitants. The urban lifeline of the city was the main street between the railway station in the east and the Catholic church built in 1831/33 in the west. The Protestant church Wald formed the centre of urban life. Trade, services (Walder Bank, savings bank, post office) and administration (town hall) were concentrated in their vicinity. Since 1899 the tram has been winding its way through the narrow town centre. With the steady increase of individual motorized traffic, the solution of the problems on the roads in the "Wauler Dorp" became more and more urgent. In particular, the narrowness of the "Walder Schlauchs", as the part of the main street between the Protestant church and the junction of the Poststrasse - today Wiedenkamper Strasse - is popularly known, caused city planners and architects headaches even before the 1929 city unification. In order to relieve the main road of through traffic, a bypass was planned that would lead from the Catholic church to the railway station. This project could not be realised due to the world economic crisis and the Second World War. It was not until 1961 that the narrowest section of the Walder Hauptstraße, now known as Friedrich-Ebert-Straße, was relieved of through traffic by the construction of a small bypass. For this purpose, a large part of the historic buildings around the Protestant church were demolished, the "Walder Rundling" disappeared. The "Walder Schlauch", called Stresemannstraße since 1962, was converted into a pedestrian zone in 1978. At the same time, the renewed planning of a southern bypass of the entire town centre began. In 1982 the first construction measures of the Walder urban redevelopment were started. Citizens' initiatives fought on the one hand against the demolition of old houses in the centre of the "Wauler Dorps" and on the other hand against the extension of Liebermannstraße to the southern bypass around Wald. The city administration defended the redevelopment. Only in this way could Friedrich-Ebert-Straße be freed from through traffic (25,000 cars a day) and the Walder town centre be restored to its old form. In the summer of 1998, the completion of the new "Walder Rundling", which with its commercial and residential buildings follows the form of the historical model, marked the completion of the district redevelopment. But forest does not only offer an old village centre and industrial culture from the time of the high industrialization. With the Itter Valley, the district has an area which until the 19th century, with its Schleifkotten on the Itterbach, was one of the most important sources of income for the Walder. With the loss of function of the hydropower-driven workshops, the Ittertal valley was transformed into a recreational and leisure area. As early as 1914, the entrepreneur Carl-Friedrich Ern from the Walde region, who had his company on the Wittkulle, had a public lido built in the Ittertal valley. In 1936 the city of Solingen took over responsibility for the Ittertal open-air swimming pool and in 1975 an ice rink was added. In order to avoid its closure, the recreational facility was transferred to the non-profit association "Sport- und Kulturzentrum Ittertal" in 1987. In the immediate vicinity of the Ittertal lido, the "Fairytale Forest" opened its doors at the beginning of the 1930s. For decades it has been a popular destination for young and old, and for some time now new operators have been trying to revive its former attractiveness. Another remarkable monument in the district is the Jahnkampfbahn, a stadium for 10,000 spectators, opened on 27 May 1928. The area in the upper Krausener Bachtal was already acquired by the town of Wald in the years 1912 to 1920, originally to create a park in the valley marshed by sewage. From 1921 to 1926 the area between two road dams was made usable by emergency works. The construction work on the actual sports facility then took two years. With the already existing Wald-Merscheid gymnasium in the west and the erection of the Fallenen memorial in the east, a connected recreation and play area was created in the immediate vicinity of the city centre. The history of the development of the collection After the town unification in 1929, the old registries of the formerly independent towns were first accommodated in the newly established Solingen town archive under the direction of Richard Erntges in the new administration building Cronenberger Straße (formerly WKC). None of the formerly independent cities had previously had their own archives. Erntges - with the help of auxiliary staff - developed these six stocks according to a uniform file plan. Therefore there are gaps in the systematics in all files of the formerly independent cities. In most cases, the individual classification group titles also served as file titles, usually only differentiated according to "generalia" (usually without local subjects) and "specialia" (the files created by the respective city administration for the local occur. Some files, which according to the file plan or tape count had originally once been available, were included in the directory by Erntges because he probably had the hope that the files could possibly appear again. To date, this has not happened, so that in these cases we have to assume cassations before 1929. In the search book you will find the note "empty" in these files. For reasons of completeness, the data records from the "Historical Archive" were also duplicated into this collection, the term of which ends after 1808. Likewise a part of the files (above all school chronicles and trade or restaurant concessions) ends only after 1930, thus correctly belongs to the stock SG. A further distortion has been omitted until today due to time reasons. Only in the forest stock were notes recorded by Mrs. Gisela Jacobs at the end of the 1980s. May 2008 Ralf Rogge
