Walking on downtown of the city of Soest, state of North Rhine-Westphalia(NRW), Germany
Soest is a city with around 50,000 inhabitants and a well-preserved old town in the region North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 50 km east of Dortmund.
Soest was first mentioned in a document dating from 836, making it one of the oldest towns in the region. It was located on the Hellweg, an important medieval trade route, crossing Westphalia in a west-east direction. Soest's town charter, noted on cowhides, was a model for the municipal laws of about 70 other towns in Germany.
During the Middle Ages, Soest became one of the most important and prosperous trade places in Central Europe and a principal member of the Hanseatic League. The town's confident citizenry even tried to win their independence from the Archbishops of Cologne. This led to a five-year feud (Soester Fehde), during which an imperial ban was put on the town. The conflict ended with Soest becoming part of the Duchy of Kleve-Mark and receiving far-reaching privileges. This was however a pyrrhic victory: cut off from its hinterland that still belonged to the Archbishops' territory, the city lost most of its economic affluence during the following decades and centuries.
The old pond mill now hosts Soest's tourist information
The merchants' residences decayed and most citizens had to subsist on agriculture. Therefore, the town maintained its medieval-to-Renaissance outline rather than expanding and modernising. Even today, two thirds of the city's Medieval wall still exist, enough for you to circle the city. Both the walls and churches are made from green sandstone that was quarried in the region. This special material contributes to the old town's unique appearance. In addition, there are several hundred half-timbered houses from the 15th to 19th century—once a sign of poverty, as the owners could not afford a stone building—now providing a picturesque, old German townscape.
Under Prussian rule, Soest was made a county seat and major railway station, but unlike most cities in the nearby Ruhr region, never developed major industries or population growth. The upside of this development (or rather lack thereof) is that the medieval townscape is mostly preserved and was not replaced by modern buildings.
Soest was an important motif of German Impressionism and Expressionism, being "still quite a medieval city, a splendid nest," as Christian Rohlfs enthusiastically wrote in 1904. In the 1910s and 1920s, the city was home to an artists' colony. Its most important members were Wilhelm Morgner, Eberhard Viegener and Arnold Topp. Famous artists such as Otto Modersohn, Karl Schmidt-Rotluff and Christian Rohlfs often joined the local artist group.
In addition to the painters, also Bruno Paul—a pioneer of modern architecture and teacher of, inter alia, Mies van der Rohe—had worked in Soest several times by creating three city villas there between 1928 and 1931. He was also a prominent cartoonist of the satirical magazine Simplicissimus.
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