I

J. Beckmann Nachf. / IBENA

The Beckmann family can be traced back to 1650. They originated from Krechting and were initially bleachers and merchants.

Franz Beckmann moved to Bocholt at the beginning of the 19th century and ran the tree silk trade here. His brother Joseph Philipp built a weaving mill on his property in front of the Neutor (now Karstadt). Around 1860, the company already had more than 100 employees.

In 1926, the disused Friedrich Baldus company on Teutonenstraße was acquired. After the construction of a new 4000 square metre weaving hall, the company moved in 1927.

The company was badly destroyed in 1945. It was immediately rebuilt. In addition, the weaving mill Kayser, Liebau & Lotze on Dingdener Straße was taken over in 1959. In 1968, the company merged with H. Beckmann & Söhne. The managing director at the time was Josef Beckmann, later his son Josef-Albert.

From the mid-1950s, the company name IBENA was also established as a trade mark.

At the end of the last century, the entire production was moved to Rhede.

The company mainly produces blankets, bed linen and technical fabrics. In 2006, the company went bankrupt. It was subsequently sold.

The task of the association is to provide organisational support for its members, e.g. in queen rearing, beekeeping, the construction of beehives (hives) and bee houses, advice on honey treatment and marketing, the central purchase of bee feed and all working materials. The association also liaises with supra-regional associations. The preservation of a healthy environment is important to the organisation, as this is the only way to guarantee the continued existence of bees.

Up until the last century, honey was the only sweetener and therefore an expensive luxury item. Beekeeping was therefore a welcome sideline, especially for people in rural areas. This also applied to the Bocholt area until the beginning of the 20th century. The first complete list of members of the Bocholt Beekeepers' Association shows 23 farmers and peasants among its 50 members, as well as many teachers and clergymen.

According to earlier documents, around 1930, the original full name of the association was: "Imkerverein Bocholt und Umgegend von 1919". The founding members were the master chimney sweep H. Becker (Bocholt), the farmers J. Demming, J. Nienhaus and the teacher P. Schulz (these from Stenern), the miller H. Lensing (from Liedern) and the clog maker W. Sieverding from Herzebocholt. In the following years, the number of members fluctuated, partly due to the decline in the sugar shortage in the 1950s and partly due to a more conscious diet since the 1980s. In the past 10 years, 55 members have kept around 430 bee colonies.

The beekeepers' association is actively involved in monitoring the quality of the honey marketed: honey bottled in original German Beekeepers' Association jars and labelled with an individual control number.

The aim of the Bocholt breeders is to breed a pure bee that is gentle and swarming, forms strong colonies and thus produces a good honey harvest. The association has maintained a hive for over 40 years, originally in the Vardingholter Külve and currently in Lankern. It is managed by a beekeeper who, together with the breeding supervisor, looks after the breeding programme.

The Bocholt breeding results are impressive: The cubital index (measurement and calculation of the veins in the bee's wings) is very high. On average, around 20 beekeepers breed around 350 queens every year!

Immigration means that someone leaves their ancestral home voluntarily or is forced to do so in order to find a place to stay in a foreign country or territory.

For example, the Dutch Catholics who fled from the harassment of their Calvinist compatriots to Catholic Bocholt can be described as immigrants, while conversely, reformed Bocholters emigrated to the Netherlands.

Immigrants were also the French, especially cardinals, archbishops, abbés, priests, nuns and monks who, fearing the excesses of the French Revolution, flocked to what was then the German Empire and also to Bocholt (including the Abbé Baston) from 1792 onwards, where they settled permanently (in the bishoprics of Paderborn and Münster around 4000 to 5000, 16 of them in Bocholt and 78 in Borken! At times, more than 40 French priests who had refused to swear an oath to the new French constitution settled in Coesfeld)

However, the many Germans who found a new home in Bocholt in 1945 and afterwards as refugees and displaced persons from the former German eastern territories and the neighbouring ancient German settlement areas should not be regarded as immigrants. Strictly speaking, they remained Germans in their homeland, but involuntarily became displaced persons who were often not welcomed enthusiastically by the local population.

Apart from individual cases (transfers of civil servants, soldiers, economic reasons, etc., marriages and subsequent integration) that have always been recorded, the times of the so-called economic miracle saw a renewed wave of immigration by the many guest workers who initially arrived alone but soon brought their families or started families here. It was not uncommon for some of them to be naturalised as Germans after years of living in Bocholt, renouncing the "citizenship they had brought with them or being the first to retain it. Despite naturalisation, the Turks living here, who are by far the largest group of foreigners in Bocholt (May 2005: 1214 people with Turkish as their first citizenship), hold on to their inherited citizenship.

The immigration of foreigners to Germany was initially regulated by a separate Aliens Act, and since 2005 the Immigration Act has been in force. In recent decades, more and more asylum seekers from all over the world have registered in Bocholt.

Lit:
Hermann Terhalle, Umbruchzeit im Westmünsterland, Die Folgen der Französischen Revolution von 1789, in: UNSER BOCHOLT Jg. 54 (2003) H. 2, p. 17-25.
Eti Güven, Bocholt from the perspective of a foreign citizen, in: UNSER BOCHOLT Jg. 23 (1972) H. 1/2, pp. 22-24 (ill.).
Helgi and Maimu Kivi, Estonians in Bocholt, in: UNSER BOCHOLT Jg. 28 (1977) H. 4, pp. 52-53 (ill.).
Charlotte von Loeper, Eine Stadt stellt sich dem Gastarbeiterproblem, in: UNSER BOCHOLT Jg. 24 (1973) H. 3/4, p. 81.
Emanuele Mascolo, Reflections of an Italian, in: UNSER BOCHOLT Jg. 20 (1969) pp. 61-69 (ill.).
Rogelio Vences, Spanish children among us in: UNSER BOCHOLT Jg. 28 (1977) H.2, p. 47 (ill.).
Josef Bennemann, Asylum seekers in Germany, in: UNSER BOCHOLT Jg. 31 (1980) H. 1, pp. 41-44 (ill.).
Heinrich Weber, French emigrants in Bocholt, in: UNSER BOCHOLT vol. 14 (1963) p. 1, pp. 8-9.
Anna Lindenberg, Families in the borderland, in: UNSER BOCHOLT (1963) H. 1, pp. 10-14.
Anna Lindenberg, Families in the borderland, contributions on family connections from this side and the other side of the border, in: UNSER BOCHOLT (1963) H. 3, pp. 34-39.

Josef Inderfurth (1905-1968) was initially a plant manager in various companies before founding a contract weaving mill in the buildings of the Alfred Kornbusch company at Westend 27 in 1948. In 1950, the company moved to its own premises in Königsesch.

From 1960 onwards, the company produced on its own account and sold the manufactured articles itself. With a built-up area of 4,000 square metres, the Königsesch premises became too small. In 1983, the company acquired a plot of land in the Bocholt-Mussum industrial park, to which the production facility with its weaving machines was relocated. Administration, manufacturing and finishing remained at the old site.

In 2001, the company was taken over by the textile company Dobnigk, Dingden.

Lit:
Eduard Westerhoff, The Bocholt textile industry. Unternehmer und Unternehmen, 2nd revised edition, Verlag Temming Bocholt 1984, p. 111.

At the end of 2001, the "InnoCent Bocholt GmbH" was founded on the initiative of Stadtsparkasse Bocholt. This new innovation centre is intended as a kind of "throughflow heater" from the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences to the technology park and is able to provide a variety of impulses for the local regional and, not least, cross-border economy.

In addition to the Borken district, the city of Bocholt, BEW and Stadtsparkasse, five innovative entrepreneurs from Bocholt also provided the share capital of 650 thousand euros. These companies also advise and support the start-ups as part of this project.

Emil Irrgang (NSDAP), Protestant, left the church in 1934, thereafter a believer in God, married, childless, born on 10 May 1890 in Linderode, district of Sorau (Lower Lusatia), died on 16 December 1951 in Northeim (Hanover). Emil Irrgang attended primary school in Sorau (Lower Lusatia) until 1903, then commercial school in Sorau. He abandoned an apprenticeship as a businessman and trained as a dental technician from 1906 to 1909. He then worked as a dental technician in Forst, Königsberg and Tilsit and from 1911 in Bielefeld. He opened his own dental technician laboratory there on 1 January 1914, which he handed over to his brother-in-law in the summer of 1933. Irrgang had been Lord Mayor of Bottrop since 5 August 1933 and was appointed Lord Mayor of Bocholt on 1 January 1935 by decree of the Prussian Minister of the Interior on 22 December 1934. On 6 June 1939, he took office as Lord Mayor of Recklinghausen, to which he was appointed by decree of the Chief President of the Province of Westphalia on 23 June 1939 with effect from 1 July 1939. His term of office there ended with the end of the war. On 1 October 1929, he joined the NSDAP - membership number 150690 - and also the SA, having been a member of the Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei since 1923, for which he had also sat in the Bielefeld city council from 1924 to 1929. After changing parties, he was a Nazi city councillor and head of the city council in Bielefeld. In the party, he rose to the position of Gauamtsleiter für Kommunalpolitik in the NSDAP-Gau Westfalen-Nord (since July 1930), and in the SA to the rank of Sturmbannführer honorary. From 19 May 1945 to 17 February 1948, he was imprisoned in the Fallingbostel internment camp.

Source: Bocholt City Archives, Sign. 2190/K 499.

Carl Friedrich August Isert was born on 5 March 1875 in Bocholt. He was a businessman and ran a trading agency. When the Bocholt Association for the Preservation of Local History was founded, he became its first managing director and in this role, together with Rudolf Fischer, initiated the Bocholt St Martin's procession in 1910. He died on 15 December 1956.

On 3 March 1976, Carl-Isert-Weg was named after him.

On 25 February 1965, the town council decides to establish a second secondary school, as the existing secondary school can no longer cope with the increased number of pupils. The new school is given the name "Israhel-van-Meckenem-Realschule". Teaching initially takes place with 7 classes in alternating shifts with the Albert-Schweitzer-Realschule in its building and the building of the Kaufmännische Berufschule. Paul Robert becomes the first headmaster.

This difficult situation for all schools involved only changes when the Israhel-van-Meckenem-Realschule is given its own building in the north-east school centre (Hohe Giethorst). The school grows in the following years, with 505 children attending in 1981/82.

At the end of the 83/84 school year, secondary school headmaster Paul Robert retires and is succeeded by Hans-Karl Eder.

In the meantime, the premises in the north-east school centre are barely sufficient for the schools involved - Euregio-Gymnasium, Israhel-van-Meckenem-Realschule and Hohe-Giethorst-Schule - especially as parents, teachers and pupils apply to set up the school as an all-day school.

On 30 May 1989, the city's school committee approves these plans and obliges the school to develop a concept for an all-day secondary school by the end of the year. In connection with this, the council decides to relocate the school to the former Kreuzbergschule on Münsterstraße, the building is to be remodelled to meet the requirements of an all-day secondary school.

At the beginning of the 1993 school year, the three starting classes of year 5 can move. The pupils initially eat lunch in a Greek restaurant. Further remodelling is delayed, however, and four more classes are able to move in 1994. It is not until the start of the 95/96 school year that all classes are taught in the new building. At this time, the school has 416 pupils. In the meantime, further remodelling (canteen, group rooms) has been completed.

The school maintains a school partnership with the Collège Athénée Royal in Liège. Currently, 518 children attend the Israhel van Meckenem secondary school. In January 2007, the school was awarded the seal of approval of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Lit:
Chronicle of the Israhel-van Meckenem School, 1965-2006 Elisabeth Bröker, A walk through Bocholt's school history, secondary schools, in: UNSER BOCHOLT, Vol. 30 (1979) H.3, pp. 26-27.