Barmen is a former industrial metropolis of the region of Bergisches Land, Germany, which merged with four other towns in 1929 to form the city of Wuppertal.
Barmen, together with the neighbouring town of Elberfeld founded the first electric suspended monorail tramway system, the Schwebebahn floating tram.
Wuppertal (German pronunciation: [ˈvʊpɐtaːl] ; lit. 'Wupper Dale') is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, with a population of 355,000. Wuppertal is the seventh-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and 17th-largest in Germany. It was founded in 1929 by the merger of Elberfeld, Barmen, Ronsdorf, Cronenberg and Vohwinkel, and was initially called "Barmen-Elberfeld" before adopting its present name in 1930. It is the capital and largest city of the Bergisches Land.
The city straddles the densely populated banks of the River Wupper, a tributary of the Rhine. Wuppertal is located between the Ruhr (Essen) to the north, Düsseldorf to the west, and Cologne to the southwest, and over time has grown together with Solingen, Remscheid and Hagen. The stretching of the city in a long band along the narrow Wupper Valley leads to a spatial impression of Wuppertal being larger than it actually is. The city is known for its steep slopes, its woods and parks, and for being the greenest city in Germany, with two-thirds green space of the total municipal area. From any part of the city, it is only a ten-minute walk to one of the public parks or woodland paths.
Friedrich Engels (/ˈɛŋɡəlz/ ENG-gəlz; German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈɛŋl̩s]; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, political theorist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman and Karl Marx's lifelong friend and closest collaborator, serving as the co-founder of Marxism.
Born in Barmen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Engels was the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer. Despite his bourgeois background, he became a staunch critic of capitalism, influenced by his observations of industrial working conditions in Manchester, England, as published in his early work The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). He met Marx in 1844, after which they jointly authored works including The Holy Family (1844), The German Ideology (written 1846), and The Communist Manifesto (1848), and worked as political activists in the Communist League and First International. Engels also supported Marx financially for much of his life, enabling him to continue his writing in London. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels edited from his manuscripts to complete Volumes II and III of his work Das Kapital (1885 and 1894).
Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution was centred in south Lancashire and the towns on both sides of the Pennines in the United Kingdom. The main drivers of the Industrial Revolution were textile manufacturing, iron founding, steam power, oil drilling, the discovery of electricity and its many industrial applications, the telegraph and many others. Railroads, steamboats, the telegraph and other innovations massively increased worker productivity and raised standards of living by greatly reducing time spent during travel, transportation and communications.
Before the 18th century, the manufacture of cloth was performed by individual workers, in the premises in which they lived and goods were transported around the country by packhorses or by river navigations and contour-following canals that had been constructed in the early 18th century. In the mid-18th century, artisans were inventing ways to become more productive. Silk, wool, and linen fabrics were being eclipsed by cotton which became the most important textile.
Bayer AG (English: /ˈbaɪ.ər/, commonly pronounced /ˈbeɪər/; German: [ˈbaɪɐ] ) is a German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company and is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies and biomedical companies in the world. Headquartered in Leverkusen, Bayer's areas of business include pharmaceuticals, consumer healthcare products, agricultural chemicals, seeds and biotechnology products. The company is a component of the EURO STOXX 50 stock market index.
Bayer was founded in 1863 in Barmen as a partnership between dye salesman Friedrich Bayer (1825–1880) and dyer Johann Friedrich Weskott (1821–1876). The company was established as a dyestuffs producer, but the versatility of aniline chemistry led Bayer to expand its business into other areas. In 1899, Bayer launched the compound acetylsalicylic acid under the trademarked name Aspirin. Aspirin is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. In 2021, it was the 34th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 17 million prescriptions.
The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn (English: Wuppertal's Suspension Railway) is a suspension railway in Wuppertal, Germany. The line was originally called in German: Einschienige Hängebahn System Eugen Langen (English: Single-Rail Hanging Railway, System of Eugen Langen) named after its inventor, Eugen Langen. It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world. Being grade-separated, it is considered rapid transit.
Langen first offered the technology to the cities of Berlin, Munich, and Breslau which all turned it down. However, the towns of Barmen, Elberfeld, and Vohwinkel along the banks of the river Wupper were intrigued by the technology’s ability to connect their communities. The elevated tracks and stations were built between 1897 and 1903; the first track opened in 1901. The railway line is credited with growth of the original cities and their eventual merger into Wuppertal. The Schwebebahn is still in use as a local public transport line, moving 25 million passengers annually, per the 2008 annual report. New rail cars were ordered in 2015, called Generation 15, and the first new car went into service in December 2016.
Oberbarmen is the eastern terminal of the Wuppertal Schwebebahn; it is located in the Barmen area of Wuppertal. The terminal consists of two buildings, the station proper and the depot with the loop for the train to turn around. The depot holds trains during the night. The buildings are suspended above the Wupper and separated by a bridge, the Wupperbrücke Berliner Platz. The main works for maintenance and repair are at the Vohwinkel Schwebebahn terminal.
The Oberbarmen station is at kilometer 13.3 of the Schwebebahn track.