City history: Restaurant "Zum Neutor" around 1910

What was that building opposite the new fire station on Dingdener Straße that was demolished two years after a roof fire in 2019? "... I was a guest there recently," the former newspaper editor Josef Stanik knew to report about it more than 60 years ago. He looked back even further into the past, when the innkeeper Bernhard Klein-Wiele invited "to a pleasurable and cheerful stay" in his inn "Zum Neutor". This is now recalled by the Bocholt city archive.

It was the merchant Heinrich Gerbaulet who built this house in Ellerings Kamp on the Chaussee from Bocholt to Dingden and received permission to operate an inn and tavern on February 21, 1899.

Just two years later, Johann Schwinges from Duisburg took over the inn, which he handed over to Karl Stuwe at the beginning of 1904 for health reasons. "Stuwe is not in the best of reputations; he and his wife tend to drink," was the verdict of police inspector Wilhelm Korn on the new owner at the time. The officer suspected that the penniless Stuwe "would be the straw man of the local Social Democrats". The funds for the pub would be raised by the Social Democrats, and Stuwe would then be their landlord, Korn stated.

In 1908, the master shaper Magnus Fladung unsuccessfully applied for the business concession. The SPD member was also a tenant of the Glückauf-Brauerei AG in Gelsenkirchen. Instead, police inspector Korn supported the application of the haulage contractor Bernhard Klein-Wiele, whom he assumed with certainty would not leave his business to the Social Democrats as a meeting place. Klein-Wiele had previously failed several times with applications to operate a restaurant in his own nearby house.

On June 9, 1908, he received a permit to run the inn "Zum Neutor," which he then renovated and opened with a grand concert on August 17, 1908. At that time the house included a garden restaurant and a grocery store. As can be seen in the picture, family members and neighbors probably placed themselves in front of the inn at that time and posed for the photographer. The high tree population along the road is also striking.

After nine decades with frequently changing owners, the inn on Dingdener Straße was finally abandoned. As a result of fire damage in December 2017, the building was recently replaced by a modern apartment building.