Hard times for the city

Shaken by the removal of the Rhineland’s heavy industry and the high rate of inflation, hard times also commenced for the people of Bonn after the First World War. Public life did not normalise again to any great extent until towards the end of the 1920s upon the withdrawal of the occupation army. But this comparatively peaceful period was just a respite. 8,000 Bonn citizens lost their lives in the Second World War; the members of Bonn’s Jewish community fled or were deported and killed in concentration camps. At the end of the Second World War only seven Jewish citizens had survived the holocaust.

Data and facts:

1918:
First air raid on Bonn.

1918/26:
The city and area of Bonn was occupied by allied troops as a consequence of the First World War.

1926:
Foundation of the Pedagogic Academy.

1935:
Godesberg that had been called Bad Godesberg (spa town of Godesberg) since 1926, receives town privileges.

1938:
Meeting of Hitler and Chamberlain in Bad Godesberg.

1938:
“Reichs-Kristallnacht” (Night of the Broken Glass). Burning of the synagogues in Bonn, Poppelsdorf, Bad Godesberg, Mehlem and Beuel, plundering of Jewish shops.

1942:
Deportation of 474 Jews from Bonn and the surrounding area to Theresienstadt, Lodz and other locations in the east, only seven survived.

1944/45:
Destruction of Bonn’s inner city and of parts of Beuel due to a bomb attack.

1945:
Occupation of the city and the area of Bonn by American troops.