The goods shed on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse

A freight shed on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse is the subject of this month's series of historical photos presented by the city archive. The background to this was a legal dispute that the city was conducting at the time against the Reichsbahn company.

"Of this historical photograph, which has been part of a municipal road construction file for more than 90 years, we know not only the motif and the time of its creation, but also the particular reason for taking it. If it were not for this reason, we would not have a comparable picture of the former goods shed on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse today," reports city archivist Wolfgang Tembrink.

The photo was taken in March 1929 in connection with an administrative dispute between the city of Bocholt and the Deutsche Reichsbahngesellschaft (Reichsbahndirektion Münster). In the 1920s, the municipal civil engineering office had repaired the embankment of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse from Bahnhofstrasse to the southern railroad overpass with curbs, gutters, sidewalks and street lighting.

Now the Reichsbahn, as the owner of the adjacent property, was to reimburse the municipality for abutting costs of 9,090 Reichsmark for the construction of the road. The city justified this with the construction of an extension to the freight shed on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse in 1927. The railroad management rejected the claim and opposed it. In its complaint before the district committee in Münster, it disputed the fact that the main traffic would be handled from the extended road to the freight facilities. It was argued, among other things, that the freight shed was not located on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse at all, but had been built along a private railroad path called "Zum Bahnhof," which was also the main access route.

As proof to the contrary, the city presented this photo to the district committee. The viewer is on the western side of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, at the present administrative headquarters of the city of Bocholt (formerly Siemens) and is looking at the freight shed 15 meters from the road. Two rail tracks lead past the dispatch, whose building was 205 meters long in its entirety. Behind the group of trees on the right, the roof of the Fildeken School can be seen. In the foreground, the fence is interrupted by an iron gate that allowed access to the railroad facilities from the street.

In the legal dispute, the city insisted that the goods shed was to be regarded as lying on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse in terms of its accessibility, its traffic relations and on the basis of the local position it occupied on the property. The IV Senate of the Higher Administrative Court in Berlin-Charlottenburg finally ruled in favor of the municipal authority in 1931, and the railroad had to pay the abutting costs, including interest on arrears, to the city treasury.