Sindelfingen | |
|---|---|
 St. Martin, the Lutheran main church | |
 Coat of arms | |
Location of Sindelfingen within Böblingen district  | |
  Sindelfingen  Sindelfingen | |
| Coordinates: 48°42′48″N 9°0′10″E / 48.71333°N 9.00278°E | |
| Country | Germany |
| State | Baden-Württemberg |
| Admin. region | Stuttgart |
| District | Böblingen |
| Government | |
| • Lord mayor (2017–25) | Bernd Vöhringer[1] (CDU) |
| Area | |
| • Total | 50.85 km2 (19.63 sq mi) |
| Elevation | 449 m (1,473 ft) |
| Population (2021-12-31)[2] | |
| • Total | 64,151 |
| • Density | 1,300/km2 (3,300/sq mi) |
| Time zone | UTC+01:00 (CET) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC+02:00 (CEST) |
| Postal codes | 71043–71069 |
| Dialling codes | 07031 |
| Vehicle registration | BB |
| Website | www.sindelfingen.de |
Sindelfingen (Swabian: Sendlfenga) is a city in Baden-Württemberg in south Germany. It lies near Stuttgart at the headwaters of the Schwippe (a tributary of the river Würm), and is home to a Mercedes-Benz assembly plant.
The weaving industry survived until most of Europe's textile industry was devastated by Asian imports. Some textile distribution centres are still left in the city. Former weaving mills can still be found in the city area, now used as offices for the computer industry. This is due to the takeover of Hollerith by IBM which used the punched card technology from the weaving mills.
Neighbouring towns and cities: Böblingen (contiguous), Stuttgart (15 km), Leonberg. The highest point is 531 meters above sea level and to the north is the Glemswald (nature reserve).
Sindelfingen has an annual International Street Fair which features ethnic food and performances from the partner cities, as well as from various local ethnic clubs.
The resident counts below are either estimates, based upon census (*) or official records of respective statistical offices. All figures after 1871 are taken from the statistical office of Baden-Württemberg.[6]
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The factory was founded in 1915 by Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft to produce aircraft engines, hence why the plant initially had a runway located onsite. Post-World War I the first passenger car was manufactured, following the merger with Benz & Cie. founded by Karl Benz. In 1926, the entire body shop of the new Daimler-Benz group was relocated to the Sindelfingen plant, allowing plant manager Wilhelm Friedle to introduce assembly line production the following year, and in 1929 the first press shop was opened. By 1938 the plant employed about 6,500 people, and in the lead-in to World War II most production was aligned to military contracts, mainly trucks such as the LC 3000; passenger car production ceased by 1942. Initially replacing male workers with local women, Mercedes then took forced labour, including prisoners of war. Western European prisoners were initially housed in near-by boarding houses, but with the start of the Eastern front the local Nazi administration formed the co-located Riedmühle concentration camp, which from 1942 loaned workers to the company in return for payment to the Nazi Government in Berlin. By 1944, almost half of Daimler Benz's 63,610 Daimler Benz employees were civilian forced labourers. Post-WW2, Daimler-Benz admitted its links with the Nazi regime, and became involved in the German Industry Foundation's initiative "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future".[7]
With heavy Allied bombing, the town and plant were not suitably reconstructed until late 1946, with resumed production of the Mercedes-Benz W136. Two-shift production was introduced from 1950, with the relocation of final car assembly to the plant, meaning that by 1955 80,500 cars were manufactured. The Mercedes-Benz W116 was first produced in 1972, the first model of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, which the plant still produces today as the current model Mercedes-Benz W223. Until 2015, the plant was the top-producing Daimler AG plant, when with 319,000 vehicles manufactured it was overtaken by the Bremen plant with 324,000.
Today, covering 2,955,944 m2 with a production area 1,305,557 m2, the 37,000 people employed (April 2016 – around 10,000 are research and development), the plant still produces over 300,000 vehicles per year, around 15% of total Daimler Group vehicle production. Second in production scale to Bremen in the Daimler Group, it is the third largest vehicle manufacturing plant in Germany, behind Volkswagen's Wolfsburg plant and the Audi plant at Ingolstadt.
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Main article: 2023 Mercedes-Benz factory shooting |
Sindelfingen can be reached through the A8 and A81 motorways, and through the S-Bahn connections to Stuttgart or Herrenberg. The nearest airport is the Stuttgart Airport.
Sindelfingen is twinned with:[8]
Schaffhausen, Switzerland (1952)
Corbeil-Essonnes, France (1961)
Sondrio, Italy (1962)
Dronfield, England, United Kingdom (1981)
Torgau, Germany (1988)
Győr, Hungary (1989)
Chełm, Poland (2001)Sindelfingen also cooperates with the Eurotowns network.[9]
