Qualla: Ratingen https://qualla.com/ratingen en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:34 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/g/ratingen-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Ratingen https://qualla.com/ratingen Ratingen: Introduction https://qualla.com/ratingen/ Photo credit Tuxyso, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1783, Richard Arkwright's mechanized cotton mill at Cromford, Derbyshire, was the closely guarded crown jewel of the British Industrial Revolution. Britain had laws against exporting the machinery, the plans, even the trained workers. A Bergisch industrialist named Johann Gottfried Brugelmann smuggled the technology to a tributary of the Dussel river east of Dusseldorf anyway, named his new venture after the English town he had copied, and in 1784 opened the first mechanized factory on the European continent. The building is still there. You can walk through it. The room where the spinning frames first turned at water-power speed is now part of the Rhine Industry Museum.

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Image: Tuxyso | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/g/ratingen-wp/u1hg-ratingen-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Ratingen: City Rights in 1276 https://qualla.com/ratingen/ Photo credit Globe-trotter, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ratingen had been around for a long time before the Industrial Revolution found it. The first documentary mention dates from 849. On 11 December 1276 the settlement received formal city rights, making it one of the four major towns of the Duchy of Berg - the others being Wipperfu...

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Image: Globe-trotter | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/g/ratingen-wp/u1hg-ratingen-city-rights-in-1276.mp3 0:06 2 full Ratingen: The Cromford Mill https://qualla.com/ratingen/ Photo credit Sastognuti, CC BY-SA 4.0. What Brugelmann built in 1784 was not just a factory but a model. He took the entire Arkwright system and translated it: the multi-story stone building with water-powered shafts, the disciplined work-force housed on site, the careful separation of carding, drawing, and spinning i...

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Image: Sastognuti | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/g/ratingen-wp/u1hg-ratingen-the-cromford-mill.mp3 0:06 3 full Ratingen: From Prussia to Now https://qualla.com/ratingen/ Photo credit D.fer, CC BY-SA 3.0. Napoleon absorbed the Duchy of Berg into his Grand Duchy in 1806, and Ratingen with it. After Waterloo the Congress of Vienna handed the whole Rhineland to Prussia, which brought efficient bureaucracy, military conscription, and a steady investment in roads and railways. The 1929...

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Image: D.fer | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/g/ratingen-wp/u1hg-ratingen-from-prussia-to-now.mp3 0:06 4 full Ratingen: A Marshal in the Woods https://qualla.com/ratingen/ Photo credit Knabenchor Hoesel, CC0. In the closing days of the war, Field Marshal Walter Model - the commander of Army Group B, trapped in the Ruhr Pocket as the American Ninth Army closed in - walked into a forest just outside Ratingen and shot himself. The date was 21 April 1945. He was 54. Model had been an extr...

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Image: Knabenchor Hoesel | CC0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/g/ratingen-wp/u1hg-ratingen-a-marshal-in-the-woods.mp3 0:06 5 full Ratingen: Headquarters Country https://qualla.com/ratingen/ Photo credit H005, CC BY-SA 3.0. Modern Ratingen is, improbably, a corporate hub. Vodafone Germany maintains a major operational campus here. ASUS, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, CEMEX, and Esprit all maintain major German operations in the city. Trading Hub Europe, the operator of the unified German natural gas market, ...

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Image: H005 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/h/g/ratingen-wp/u1hg-ratingen-headquarters-country.mp3 0:06 6 full