Erkrath

Erkrath is situated on the river Düssel, directly east of Düsseldorf and west of Wuppertal, close to the famous Neandertal. It has two stations, Erkrath station, which is served by Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn line S 8, and Erkrath Nord station, which is served by S-Bahn line S 28, both at 20-minute intervals.

In that part of Neandertal, which is located in Erkrath, in the summer of 1856, quarry workers discovered the fossilised remains of what became known as the Neanderthal man or Homo Neanderthalensis in Feldhof cave. The name Erkrath was first mentioned in 1148. Erkrath received town rights in 1966. In 1975, the municipality of Hochdahl was incorporated into Erkrath. As well its former borough Unterbach was incorporated into Düsseldorf. Only a part of Unterbach called Unterfeldhaus remained as now a borough of its own with Erkrath. Erkrath today has three local parts: Erkrath, Hochdahl and Unterfeldhaus.

[2]

• Johann Kaiser (1898–1907) (the old town hall was built in 1899)
• Franz Zahren (1907–1930)
• Werner Hallauer (1930–1935)
• Heinrich Rasche (1935–1945), NSDAP, later FDP
• Wilhelm Broch (1945–1946)
• August Westerholz (1946), SPD
• Hermann Moritz (1946–1949), CDU
• Alex Bendt (1949–1954), SPD
• Gertrud Thomé (later: Küpper) (1954–1956), CDU
• Alex Bendt (1956–1961), SPD
• Gertrud Küpper (geb. Thomé) (1961–1963), CDU
• Johannes van Oost (1963–1964),
• Gertrud Küpper (geb. Thomé) (1964–1972), CDU
• Hans Weyer (1972–1974), SPD
• Aloys Kiefer (1975–1983), CDU
• Gloria Ziller (1983–1989), CDU
• Rudolf Unger (1989–1999), SPD
• Arno Werner (1999–2015), CDU
• Christoph Schultz (since 2015), CDU[3]

• 
  Heilig-Geist-Kirche (Erkrath)
• 
  Neanderkirche (Erkrath)

Erkrath is twinned with:[4]

• West Lancashire, England, United Kingdom

Johann Heinrich Bongard around 1840

• Johann Heinrich Bongard (1779-1857), eye and wound surgeon and royal Prussian Hofrat, first author of a publication on the Neandertal
• Karl Wenders (1841-1905), mayor of Neuss, Member of Reichstag and member of Landtag
• Friedrich Hünermann (1886-1969), Catholic theologian and auxiliary bishop in Aachen
• Manfred Lahnstein (born 1937) politician (SPD), former Federal Finance Minister and Member of the Management Board and Supervisory Board of Bertelsmann AG
• Heiner Baltes (born 1949), German footballer

Joachim Neander

• Joachim Neander (born circa 1650 in Bremen-1680 ibid.) German pastor, church poet and composer, first author about the Neandertal
• Karl Sudhoff (1853-1938), founder of the medical history as a scientific discipline in Germany, was from 1885 to 1905 doctor of the Hochdahl iron foundry and Armenian physician, later also councilor of Hochdahl-Millrath
• Toni Turek (1919-1984), national goalkeeper and world champion of Bern 1954, lived during his years with Fortuna Düsseldorf and his world title in Erkrath. 50 years after Bern the Erkrath Stadium was named after him (Toni Turek Stadium)
• Klaus Hänsch (born 1938 in Sprottau, Silesia), former President of the European Parliament
• Aleksandar Ristić (born 1944 in Sarajevo), footballer and coach (among others Fortuna Düsseldorf), lived in Erkrath at this time
• Flemming Lund (born 1952 in Copenhagen), Danish footballer for Fortuna Düsseldorf and Rot-Weiss Essen, lived in Hochdahl
• Klaus Allofs (born 1956), German footballer, manager of VfL Wolfsburg, lived for a long time in Erkrath-Unterfeldhaus.
• Thomas Allofs (born 1959), German footballer, lives in Erkrath-Unterfeldhaus and runs a disposal company in Düsseldorf
• Werner Koch (born 1961), German developer of Free Software and founder of the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG), lives in Hochdahl

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Erkrath.

• Official website (in German)
• Homepage of the Neanderthal Museum (in German)
• Homepage of the Lokschuppen Museum (in German)