Minden Weser-Mittelland Kanal Lock 01.jpg

Minden () is a middle-sized town in the very north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, the greatest town between Bielefeld and Hanover. It is the capital of the district (''Kreis'') of Minden-Lübbecke, which is part of the region of Detmold. The town extends along both sides of the River Weser, and is crossed by the Mittelland Canal, which is passing the river on the Minden Aqueduct.

In the 1,200 years longing time of written history, Minden had functions as diocesan town from 800 AD to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, as capital of the Prince-Bishopric of Minden as imperial territory since the 12th century, afterwards as capital of the Prussian territory of Minden-Ravensberg until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and as capital of the East-Westphalian region from the Congress of Vienna until 1947. Furthermore Minden has been of great military importance with fortifications from the 15th to the late 19th century, and is yet place of a garrison.

Minden is location of diverse industry without a dominating branch. The town has been terminus of one of the oldest German railway trunks since 1847, and is knot in a network of multimodal transport in connection with a harbour, federal roads, and a nearby highway junction.

Geography

Location

Minden is a town in the northeastern part of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The town is crossed by the River Weser in northern direction. The town centre lies on a plateau on the western side of the river north of the Porta Westfalica gap between the ridges of the Weser Hills and Wiehen Hills, where the Weser leaves the Weser Uplands and flows into the North German Plain. The small Bastau stream flows into the Weser from the west near the town centre. The edge of the plateau marks the transition from the Middle Weser Valley to the Lübbecke Loessland, divides the upper town from the lower town, and marks the boundary between two ecological zones.

In the frame of Natural regions of Germany, the western part of Minden belongs to a sequence of geomorphological units (from south to north): the Wiehen Hills, the Lübbecke Loessland, therein the Bastau depression, and the Dümmer Geest Lowland. The eastern part lies in the Middle Weser Valley depression.

Crossing the Weser valley was once favoured by a ford with a small hill in the middle; there the Weser meander touches the western edge of the valley, the eastern floodplain is usually meadowland, but inundated in times of flood, so that the central bridgehead () becomes a river island. Today a system of two bridges crosses the valley.

The Mittelland Canal connecting the river systems of Ems, Weser and Elbe traverses the town from west to east, while the Weser flows from south to north. These waterways cross in the northern area of the town at the Minden Aqueduct ().

The Weser leaves the Minden area at its lowest part in the quarter of Leteln, at , while the highest part is the top of ''Häverstädter Berg'' with , at the edge of the Wiehen Hills in the quarter of Haddenhausen. The altitude of the town is given officially as , based on the elevation of the town hall.

The town covers an area of . It extends from north to south and from east to west.

Minden is NE of Bielefeld, W of Hanover, S of Bremen and E of Osnabrück.

Neighbouring settlements

The neighbouring towns and communities of Minden are (clockwise from north): Petershagen, Bückeburg ( Schaumburg District in Lower Saxony), Porta Westfalica, Bad Oeynhausen, and Hille.

Town subdivision

Minden consists of 19 quarters:

* Bärenkämpen
* Bölhorst
* Dankersen
* Dützen
* Haddenhausen
* Häverstädt
* Hahlen
* Innenstadt (town centre)
* Königstor
* Kutenhausen
* Leteln-Aminghausen
* Meißen
* Minderheide
* Nordstadt
* Päpinghausen
* Rechtes Weserufer
* Rodenbeck
* Stemmer
* Todtenhausen

Geology, mineral deposits and their use

The Wiehen Hills escarpment extends more than 100 kilometers from west of Osnabrück to the Porta Westfalica gap and is continued in the Weser Hills range. The escarpment forming horizons incline gently flattening to the north; they are of jurassic age, overlayed by cretaceous sediments that form the hill of Bölhorst, and tertiary layers further to the north. The underground basis is of palaeozoic material from Devonian to Permian. A new described genus of dinosaur, the Wiehenvenator, was found in the Wiehen Hills near Haddenhausen, popularly referred to as the "Monster of Minden".

The Porta sandstone () of the Wiehen Hills has been used as building material for centuries and is yet to be seen at a lot of public and private buildings in Minden and the whole Region. Another valuable material is iron ore, that was being mined until the first half of the 20th century. Mining relics are remaining: e.g. the ''Potts Park'', an amusement park in Dützen, is located at the place of a former ore mine.

The Bölhorst hill two kilometers north of the Wiehen Hills is formed by horizons of lower cretaceous age and, in geological sense, is the western extension of the eastward Bückeberg in the Schaumburg district. In both elevations the hard coal containing Berriasian layers reach near to the surface. By reason of the correspondence of the Bückeberg Formation to the Wealden Group, the type of coal found here was named "Wealdenkohle" in German language. Mining in the Minden Coalfield started in the 17th century during the Swedish occupation and ended in the late 19th century. Another coal mine in the eastern quarter of Meißen worked from 1878 to 1958.

A source of 10-percentage brine with origin in the deep Zechstein series was pumped in the Bölhorst mine and once used for balneotherapy.

The last relief forming age was the pleistocene. During the Saalian glaciation the whole region was ice-covered, now verified by lots of glacial erratic rocks from Scandinavia placed for decoration in the town area. The Bastau depression, a late-Saalian Weser bed, became a marshy peat-covered area; the peat is completely exhausted for its use as firing material. In the time of Weichselian glaciation the glacier did not reach this region. In the periglacial climate of that time fine material (silt) was blown and accumulated north of the Wiehen Hills as well as north of the Bastau depression in either small west–east stripes of loess.

In the Weser depression Weichselian gravel deposits are found and used in gravel pits.

Land use

The forestal use of the considerably inclined Wiehen Hills shows a striking contrast to the nearly woodless loess stripes of the northern foothills as well as north of the Bastau depression. The loess developed to most fertile soils (luvisols) and is used as arable land since prehistoric times. Both of the stripes are also important running lines of traffic, today the federal road No. 65 form Minden to Lübbecke and the regional road from Minden to Espelkamp. The villages thus connected have developed to settlements of considerable size.

In clear contrast, the Bastau depression is free of settlement and forests and is only in agricultural use. Only one north to south directed road passes through this area in the southwest of the town area. The gleysols of this area as well as in the Weser valley depression are in agricultural use after drainage.

Four nature conservation areas extend completely or partly over Minden territory. The most northern of them provides a biological station () for ecological education.

Compared to other towns of the same type in North Rhine-Westphalia the percentage of woodland is remarkably small.

Climate

Minden has no meteorological station, therefore the data of the next station Bad Salzuflen in distance of 25 km (16 mi) are given.

The meteorological data of the whole East-Westphalian region comply with zone ''Cfb'' of the Köppen climate classification, named as Temperate Oceanic climate. This rough classification gives no suitable and detailed description of the regional situation. The furthest northern part of East-Westphalia is the driest of the state, though located in a small distance to the sea. This situation is caused by the main direction of the cyclones from roughly west to east with its prevailing south-westerly rain-bringing weather fronts. So the Minden region lies in the leeward rain shadow of the Teutoburg Forest and the Wiehen Hills. A cloudy weather south of the Wiehen Hills is often connected with clear sky in the north of the hills.

History

Ancient history

The Minden area shows continuing settlement activity from the 1st to the 4th century, when it belonged to the Weser-Rhine Germanic development sphere. During the Roman campaigns in Germania (12 BC – AD 16), this part of Westphalia came in the focus of military activities. It has been a matter of discussion, whether the Minden region could have been the location of that military camp where commander Publius Quinctilius Varus started from marching to the disastrous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD. Likewise the localization of the Battle of Idistaviso and the Battle of the Angrivarian Wall as well, both took place in 16 AD, to the eastern part of Minden or its neighbour town Porta Westfalica is doubtful. Definite archaeological proofs for these locations have yet been missing. In 2008, relicts of a temporary Roman military camp have been found in Barkhausen, about 3.5 km (2.2 mi) south from the centre of Minden.

Middle Ages

The name "Minda" is firstly mentioned in a Royal Frankish Annals record referring to an army assembly held by Charlemagne in 798. The location of the so-named settlement is supposed at the left river side, where today's ''Fischerstadt'' exists. Directly neighbouring was the suspected site of a permanent frankish army camp and a royal estate, located favourably, where ways from the south were bundled by the Porta Westfalica gap, connected with a west-east way parallel to the Wiehen and Weser hills, and at a ford through the Weser. The region had already been converted to christianity, when about 800 a bishopric was founded in Minden, one of the seven diocese foundations established under the rule of Charlemagne. The first cathedral was built nearby to the older village. After the dissolution of the Duchy of Saxony in 1180 the bishop became sovereign of the Prince-Bishopric of Minden as a constitutional territory of the Holy Roman Empire, and remained in this status until 1648. During the Investiture Controversy two bishops were nominated at the same time in 1080 both by the papal supporters and those of King Henry IV.

The Cathedral close on the lower Weser terrace was soon surrounded to the north and west by a settlement of artisans and merchants, who lived in a parish of their own. The development of the upper town began with the activities of ecclesiastical convents. A convent of Benedictine nuns removed from the Wiehen Hills to the northwestern edge of the town round St Mary c. 1000 AD. In 1029 the Canonical Convent of St Martin appears, and a 1042 founded Benedictine monastery removed in 1434 from the Weser shore to a new upper site, where the monastery of St Mauritius was founded. The Dominicane convent St Paul was established in 1236.

German medieval sovereigns governed their realms with an itinerant court, travelling from town to town. Louis the German hold an imperial assembly in Minden in 852. The Emperors of the Ottonian and Salian dynasty visited Minden several times. When Henry IV came to visit in 1062, a dispute between members of his entourage and citizens caused a fire that destroyed the cathedral and parts of the town. The imperial visit of Charles IV in October 1377 was the last one until the end of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.

In 1168 Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, married his second wife Matilda, daughter of Henry II of England, in Minden Cathedral; with this marriage Henry maintained the continuance of the House of Welf.

The rights to hold a market, to mint coins, and to collect customs duties were granted in 977 by Emperor Otto II. Until the beginning of the 13th century, the bishop appointed the ''Wichgraf'' as secular administrator of the town. The citizens of Minden and their council obtained independence from the bishop's rule around 1230 and received a town charter in 1301. The increased self-confidence of the citizens was demonstrated by the construction of the town hall, probably adjoining the separately governed cathedral precinct. As a result the Bishop moved his official residence from Minden to Petershagen in 1307.

The economic development of Minden was influenced by its location on a navigable river and by its success in grain trading since the Middle Ages. Minden got the right to store goods and could force passing ships to unload their cargo; furtheron the town was member of the Hanseatic League. The year of construction of the first Weser bridge is not known. A previous wooden pedestrian bridge was replaced in the late 13th century by another one fit for wagon transport. In the early 16th century Minden got a stone arch bridge.

Modern era since the Reformation

At the end of the medieval age the papal legate Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa visited some German church provinces in order to remedy deficits in pastoral care and clerical administration. During his journey he stayed in Minden for one week in August 1451, where he signed various decrees, but on the whole this project could not achieve the intended aims. The Lutheran Reformation was introduced in 1529 during a vacancy after the death of the not very respected Bishop Francis of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and a 36-man unit constituted itself as town regiment. A new church order, based on Martin Luther's principles, was announced from the pulpit of St Martin's Church (''Martinikirche'') on 13 February 1530. The Dominican convent was dissolved in 1529, and its buildings were used since 1530 as the site of the new founded municipal Gymnasium, the first Protestant de , Gymnasium , label = none in Westphalia.

Imperial Catholic troops occupied Minden from 1625 to 1634 during the Thirty Years' War. Protestant Swedish troops laid siege to Minden and captured it in 1634. Queen Christina of Sweden () granted Minden full sovereignty in internal and external affairs. During the Catholic occupation the bishop ordered the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1630; the calendar was re-set in 1634 under the Swedish régime, but finally standardized in 1668.

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 secularized the Prince-Bishopric to the Principality of Minden and assigned the territory to the Prince Electorate of Brandenburg, later named Brandenburg-Prussia. Swedish troops moved back in 1650, and the principality administration was restored from Petershagen to Minden in 1668. The Prussian "Great Elector" Frederick William () confirmed all traditional rights of the town, but under his successors King Frederick I () and Frederick William I () the town was subordinated to the strongly centralized Prussian government in the spirit of absolutism. The 400-year civil self-determination ended with two town regulations from 1711 and 1721; the representatives of the town were no longer elected for a certain period, but for life, and they needed royal confirmation for inauguration.

The Battle of Minden took place some miles to the north of Minden on 1 August 1759, during the Seven Years' War of 1756 to 1763. The allied forces of Prussia, Great Britain, and some German allies defeated the allied French and Saxonian troops in a decisive battle. The region remained Prussian, with the adjacent region in the possession of the British King George II (being the Prince-elector of Hanover in personal union). Because French troops had occupied the town twice during the war, King Frederick the Great realized that it could no more be defended in the old manner; thus he gave order to annul Minden's status as a fortress in 1764.

The town functioned as the capital of the Prussian territory of Minden-Ravensberg from 1719 to 1807 and as the seat of the upper administrative authority named ' (Chamber of War Affairs and State Property), that ruled Minden-Ravensberg together with the Prussian territories of the County of Lingen and the County of Tecklenburg. The most prominent president of the chamber was the Baron vom Stein (in office from 1796 to 1803).

The Weser had long been an important trade route, and the legal regulation of trading had immense significance. In 1552 Emperor Charles V conferred the privilege of its merchants' unhindered trading on the whole Weser to the town of Minden. During the Thirty Years' War, Emperor Ferdinand II confirmed the staple right to Minden in 1627, meaning that all passing merchants had to offer their goods for sale for some days. As other towns on the Weser - like Bremen or Münden - had similar rights, many conflicts arose about the partly contradictory legal positions.

From the Napoleonic Wars to World War I

In course of the War of the Fourth Coalition French troops occupied the town on 13 November 1806. In the following year Napoleon founded the Kingdom of Westphalia, governed by his brother Jerome Bonaparte as the King; Minden became part of this client state until 1810 as district capital in the Weser department. On 1 January 1811 Napoleon put Minden to the department Ems-Supérieur of the French Empire; now the Weser formed the eastern frontier between France and Westphalia. The rights of the Cathedral chapter in the cathedral close were abolished, the still existing convents were dissolved, and some ecclesiastical buildings like St John's church were secularized and used for military purpose. Before the French troops abandoned Minden on 3 November 1813 after the disastrous Battle of Leipzig, they blew up some arches of the Weser bridge; the defect was repaired with a wooden auxiliary construction for the following decades.

Minden became part of the Kingdom of Prussia again as capital both of the District of Minden and the government region ('' Regierungsbezirk Minden'') in the new formed Province of Westphalia. By royal order it was declared a fortress once more. The fortress regulations ordered a 600-meters area in front of the wall being free of any buildings, not even vertical gravestones were allowed. The refortification had severe consequences, it hindered any extension of the town area and thus the economic development. The ''Infanterie-Regiment „Prinz Friedrich der Niederlande“ (2. Westfälisches) Nr. 15'' was stationed in the garrison from 1820 to 1919, when it was dissolved; the naming Colonel-in-chief was Prince Frederick of the Netherlands and after his death Queen Emma of the Netherlands. Frederick's wife Princess Louise of Prussia was Colonel-in-chief of the ''Infanterie-Regiment „ Graf Bülow von Dennewitz“ (6. Westfälisches) Nr. 55'', that was partly stationed in Minden, too. Since 1999, the ''Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 58'' encamped a new barracks area in the nordwest of the town centre. The Hanoveran Pionier-Battalion No. 10 was part of the X Corps, that was incorporated to the Prussian Army after the Austro-Prussian War 1866, and had its barracks near to Minden station. The main military training area was a large location in the today quarter of Minderheide at the very northwest frontier of the town; this area had already been part of the main fighting place during the Battle of Minden in 1759.

After the Congress of Vienna of 1815 had passed general principles of free traffic on the main rivers, the six Weser-states of the German Confederation annulated all restrictions and most of the financial burdens for shipping on the river by the Weser Shipping Act () of 1823.
The first steam ship was put in operation in 1836; a first harbour basin was built in 1859 on the east side of the river, connected with the railway in 1863. In the first decades, the great majority of transferred goods were imported goods, export was of low importance. Inland shipment grew enormously after the completion of the Mittelland Canal and its connection to the Weser by the shaft lock in 1915.

The trunk line of the Cologne-Minden Railway Company was opened in 1847 with a solidly fortified station and connected with the Hanover–Minden railway. After the defortification the railway got an important momentum for economic growth in Minden.

The spatial narrowness in the fortress restricted the development of industrial firms of different branches only to a certain degree, but did not prevent it.
The dominant industry, as well as in the whole district, was the manufacture of cigars; this branch decreased after World War I and finally vanished, because the growing market share of cigarettes had been ignored. Minden was seat of a Chamber of commerce from 1849 to 1932, when it was merged with those of Bielefeld.

Overpopulation and unemployment were the reasons for an enormous emigration from the Minden Land; various emigration agencies had their location in Minden.

The town remained a Prussian fortress until 1873, when Germany's Imperial Diet () passed the law to remove the fortress status of several fortified places, among them Minden. The fortress walls were razed until 1880 – the town had to pay for it –, and a new Weser bridge was constructed, permitting the town to catch up economically. However, it was never able to regain its former political and economic importance.

The upper class used the new conditions for construction of a new town quarter in a half-circle to the north and west of the old centre with prestigious buildings on spacious plots, but the urgent narrowness inside the centre maintained. A lot of buildings in the style of historicism replaced older ones at the market place and in the main streets.
The lack of buildings outside the fortifications was favourable for planning a road network in the outer areas of the town. Since the 1890s a sequence of six ring roads in the west and north of the town has formed the backbone of the road network.

Grandiose festivities took place, when Emperor William II and Empress Auguste Victoria visited Minden and the southern village of Barkhausen for inauguration of the Emperor William Monument on the Wittekindsberg above the Porta Westfalica gap on 18 October 1896; since then the monument is a remarkable element of the southern horizont view from Minden. The first line of the Minden tramway connected the basic site of the memorial with Minden since 1893, when it was yet under construction. p. 187.

The Minden District Railways (), founded in 1898, built up a narrow-gauge railway net with three lines until World War I. Minden got a municipal water supply system in the 1880s and an electric power station in 1902.

The Weimar Republic and the Nazi Regime

The republican November Revolution of 1918 passed with only small disturbances that occurred in a few barracks of the Minden garrison on 7 and 8 November 1918. A Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, most of them members or supporters of the Social Democratic Party, took control in the afternoon of 18 November, but co-operated both with the town council and the military and civil administration as well and was successful in calming the situation.

The situation got more critical during the Kapp Putsch of March 1920, when right-wing officers tried to overthrow the legal government of the ''German Reich''. The majority of the town council declared their loyalty to President Friedrich Ebert and Chancellor Gustav Bauer, who for their part confirmed the authority of the Minden Workers' Council. The assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau on 24 June 1922 resulted in serious rioting in Minden. A demonstration of 15,000 people in support of the government was held at the market square on 27 June. The public opinion changed during the time of the Great Depression : in the 1930-election of the town council the NSDAP got 6 of 31 seats, in the 1933-election, the last democratic one, they won the majority with 16 of 28 seats. The NSDAP increased their Minden results of the Reichstag elections from 2.0 percent in May 1928 to 40.1 percent in July 1932.

Although the German armed forces were considerably restricted by the regulations of the Treaty of Versailles, Minden remained a garrison town of the ''Reichswehr'' with the Pioneer Battalion No. 6 and the Artillery Regiment No. 6, both parts of the 6th Division. The soldiers got more and more in connection with right-wing groups, though officially obliged to political neutrality. The military units put forward the construction of sporting facilities : a stadium (, now ), a public open-air pool (now ), and a horse racecourse. Minden was career ladder station of two later army leaders: Lieutenant-Colonel Walther von Brauchitsch organized annual horse tournaments from 1925 to 1927, and Wilhelm Keitel succeeded him in the same function until 1929.

When the ''Reichswehr'' was transformed to the ''Wehrmacht'' in 1935, the army unities were enlarged. Minden got another pioneer battalion (No. 46), new barracks (, after WWII "Clifton barracks") and an exercise place at the Weser shore were built. After the last priosoners of war had left the camp area Minderheide in 1922, the place was used again for military exercise, horse and motorcycle sport, and a part from it as place to land for small planes, as it already had happened since 1910. Two hangars and workshops for repairing and overhauling were built since 1936 on this area, where also new types of planes were tested.

After the war, the Minden District railway opened a fourth line to the coal mine of Meißen and the ore mine of Kleinenbremen, and in 1924 began to convert the narrow gauge to standard gauge tracks. The Minden tram was electrified in 1920, and three lines were added until 1930.

In 1929 the Melitta firm transferred its production from Dresden to Minden. Since 1935 the produced chemicals for pharmaceutical use, e.g. codeine; because of potentially military interest the producing company ''Knoll AG'' in Ludwigshafen had decided for a more inner-German producing location.

From 1934 to 1940 two suburbs with single-family houses of modest size ( and ) were created in considerable distance to the previous settlements. Like in other communities, the names of some streets or places were changed by political reasons during the Nazi time, but most of them were reverted in 1945.

World War II

During World War II, underground factories were built in the Weser Hills and Wiehen Hills near Minden. Slave labourers from a nearby subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp were forced to produce weapons and other war materiel. After the war the machinery was removed by American troops, the entrances were sealed.

Most of the Jewish citizens were deported, dispossessed and murdered. The '' Stolpersteine'' (stumbling stones) have been laid on Minden's pavements as a memorial to them.

Minden sustained severe damage from bombardment during World War II. These attacks were minor during the early phase of the war. The raid on 26 October 1944 on the canal aqueduct damaged the wall of the Mittelland Canal, and numerous workers in a nearby air raid shelter were drowned. The last and most devastating air raid was conducted by United States Army Air Forces Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft on 28 March 1945 and destroyed great parts of the town centre, including the town hall and cathedral, and resulted in the death of over 180 people. At the end of the war 13% of all buildings were destroyed or damaged.

When the Allied troops were approaching, the Nazi officials were ordered to leave the town to the east or the north; even the police and the firebrigade draw back, but Mayor ''Werner Holle'' remained. The 1st Canadian Airborne Battalion of the 3rd Parachute Brigade came from Bad Oeynhausen in the south, not through the Porta Westfalica gap but over the Wiehen Hills at the pass of Bergkirchen. On the evening of 4 April 1945 they took the town centre nearly without resistance. Almost all the bridges over the Weser and Mittelland Canal as well as the canal aqueduct had just been blown up by the German Army in a futile attempt to delay the Allied advance, according to Hitler's Nero Decree. Before the retreat the army set fire to the Granary and the Army bakery; the spreading out of fire to the St Martin's church could be avoided only with great difficulties for lack of the firebrigade. In the first days of occupation a lot of plunder took place in the now police-less town.

Postwar time

In the early post-war time the Minden region became a important part of the British Occupation Zone. The British Military Government took its main location in Bad Oeynhausen before it moved to Berlin. The headquarter of the British Forces remained there until 1954. All the German Wehrmacht barracks in Minden were taken by the British Army, as well as the former exercise area on Minderheide, where the St George's barracks were built in the following years, and on a nearby location the Kingsley barracks. 466 houses were confiscated in 1945. As immediate measure, the British Army set up an auxiliary bridge ("Francis bridge"), that was in use until the restoring of the regular bridge in 1947. (with photo of the Francis bridge 1945)

The ("Economic Council for the British Occupation Zone") was founded in Minden on 11 March 1946 for reactivation of German economic power and supervised the work of the ("Central Office for Economy") at the same place. The under its head ''Viktor Agartz'' fought against the policy of industrial dismantling and tried to reorganize the economy with perspectives of planned economy. After the partial conjunction of the American and British Occupation Zones in 1947 to the Bizone, the Bizonal Economic Council continued the activities of the Minden in Frankfurt in the American occupation zone, where with Ludwig Erhard the course was changed to a market economy.

The town administration resumed its work on 9 April 1945 on a provisional basis. Following to the foundation of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1946, the Free State of Lippe was adjoined to it in 1947; as a result of it Minden lost its position as a regional capital to the former Lippian capital Detmold in 1947. In contrast to the other Allied Powers, the British changed the German community regulation for their occupation zone in the way of strict separation of powers. Since 1946 the Mayor was merely an honorary position as head of town and chairman of the town council; a professional (town director) was chief of the administration. In North Rhine-Westphalia these regulations were in force until 1998.

Parts of the Federal Railways Central Offices were moved to Minden in 1950. In course of the West German rearmament, the (Duke of Brunswick Barracks) was built for the new garrison of the Federal Forces (''Bundeswehr'') in 1959 in the western quarter of Rodenbeck and another barracks in the quarter of Minderheide.

The town centre reconstruction adapted largely to the pre-war situation, the previous road system remained, but the destroyed houses were rebuilt in the 1950s style. Even in the undestroyed areas dilapidated buildings were replaced by new ones that deviated from the quarter's character by form and volume. The renewal of the main shopping street ''Scharn'' was planned by Werner March.

The serious lack of housing in the 1950s and 1960s, caused by bombing and the post-war migration of refugees, was sorted with new housing areas, especially in the west and north of the centre. Furthermore, some housing estates for British soldiers' families were developed.

The Minden tramway reduced the lines and finally stopped running in 1959; a trolley bus line on the right side of the Weser run from 1953 to 1965.

From the local government reorganization to present day

On 1 January 1973, the previously separate surrounding communities of Aminghausen, Bölhorst, Dankersen, Dützen, Haddenhausen, Hahlen, Häverstädt, Kutenhausen, Leteln, Meißen, Päpinghausen, Stemmer, Todtenhausen as well as parts of Barkhausen, Hartum and Holzhausen II were incorporated into the town of Minden. Thereby its area increased from 29 km to 101 km and the population number from about 54.000 to 84.000. At the same time the former districts of Minden and Lübbecke were merged to the new district () of Minden-Lübbecke, from which Minden became the capital. A new district administration building was constructed south of the town centre on the site of an old barracks; the former administrative building is since then used as a community archive.

In the 1960s the maintaining problems of the town centre got more and more urgent, as for example a high population density, a great percentage of low-income persons, houses in poor condition, business premises not up-to-date, endangered pedestrians, and severe shortage of parking lots. Therefore, an urban renewal was carried out in the 1970s, within the frame of the federal law for urban development promotion (''Städtebauförderungsgesetz'', 1971), and subsidized by public money. Dilapidated buildings were renovated or replaced by new structures, but the removal of timbered houses was later regretted. The height of buildings was restricted to four or five storeys. The main shopping areas were rearranged to a pedestrian zone. Public traffic was kept away from the inner part with a new central bus station nearby. Since then the individual traffic has been hindered crossing through the centre, but houses can be reached by a dead end system. Two large parking areas at the edge of the town centre, an underground car park and several multistorey car parks provide parking facilities. To keep away the regional traffic two new Weser bridges and a new bypass road in the very east were built; the old bridge was replaced in 1978.

The administration of the enlarged town required a new appropiate building. Architect Harald Deilmann planned this impressive complex directly from the old town hall to the cathedral court in the style of structuralism, but since its completion in 1977 it has been discussed quite controversially in Minden's public opinion, not only for the look of the façade, but also for blocking the scenic view of the cathedral from the arches of the old town hall. In 2006 a controversial resolution by the town council proposed the demolition of the town hall extensions to make room for a new shopping mall. However, a 57% majority opposed this plan in a referendum. Today the whole town hall building complex is classified as historical monument, an extensive renovation is going on since 2019.

The shoreline of the Weser was improved in 1976 by extending the promenade to the (Fishermen's Town). The ''Glacis'', a park-like open space in front of the old fortifications, which was important as a green belt, was altered and made more accessible. The old town wall fronting the Fischerstadt was restored to its former height.
The opposite shore area () has been made accessible by a footbridge. This improves access to a large parking area and festival site.

After the British troops had left Minden in 1994, their barracks areas became valuable sites for further town development ("conversion areas").

Place of prosecution and imprisonment

Minden was location of criminal prosecution or imprisonment in a number of very different cases.

* After the time of reformation Minden was a stronghold of witch-hunt in Germany. There were 128 prosecutions for witchcraft between 1603 and 1684. As in nearby regions, almost all those sentenced persons were women.
* Clemens August Droste zu Vischering (1773–1845), Archbishop of Cologne, was brought to Minden, where he was taken under house arrest from November 1837 to April 1839; he never returned to Cologne. During the so-called Cologne confusions (), Droste zu Vischering got in trouble with the Prussian state on the question of interconfessional marriages and the independence of the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Bonn.
* The physician Abraham Jacobi was born in the nearby village of Hartum and educated at the gymnasium in Minden. Though being acquitted as defendant in the Cologne Communist Trial in 1852, he was afterwards imprisoned and condemned of lese-majesty by the district court of Minden. After his release he emigrated to the USA, where he became an important pediater.
* During World War I, a large prisoner-of-war camp was established in the western quarter of Minderheide. In September 1914 the first French and British soldiers were brought to that military place, and only at the end of the year baracks were built for about 3.300 prisoners, but over the years more than 25.000 prisoners lived there. The camp was a main camp ('' Stammlager'') with several external labour camps (''Arbeitslager''). Apart from British and French soldiers (incl. auxiliary troops from the colonies) Italians, Russian, Serbian, Croats, Poles, and Armenians were captured. The camp was dissolved after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, but the total dismantling lasted until 1922. The name (Cemetery of the French) of the nearby cemetery derives from a war memorial for French soldiers and is misleading, as far as the dead French, British, and Italian soldiers were transferred to their native countries after war. Until today the gravesites of Russians, Serbians, Armenians, etc. are remaining. In September 1917 Apostolic Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli visited the camp.
* Auschwitz concentration camp commander Rudolf Höss was brought to Minden after being captured by the British in Schleswig-Holstein. In Minden, he was examined in the so-called "Camp Tomato", where he, for the first time, confessed the murders of millions of Jews in his camp and signed a protocol on 15 March 1946. On 31 May he was brought to Nuremberg, where he repeated the confession as witness in the Nuremberg trials.

Demography

Population growth

(The sudden increase of population number in 1973 results from the administrative adjointment of the surrounding villages to the Minden town area.)

In the region Ostwestfalen-Lippe which is congruent to the administrative region of Detmold, Minden takes the fourth place by population after Bielefeld, Paderborn, and Gütersloh.

The earliest detailed information of population number is given from 1740. In times of prussian government, Minden as a regional capital and garrison showed a gentle population growth by officials and soldiers, and then, after the defortification, by industrial workers from the surrounding region.

After World War II the population increased by massive immigration of expelled persons and refugees mainly from former East Germany. Since the 1960s the immigration of foreign workers from the mediterranean countries to West Germany had an effect in Minden, too; initially thought to be guest workers, many of them have settled in the town permanently.

An immigration of Germans from the Soviet Union and its succeeding countries to Germany began in the 1980s, and the district of Minden-Lübbecke was one of their preferred regions. The German reunification in 1989–1990 gave East German people the opportunity to move to the west. The last current immigration period is caused by asylum seeking refugees from the Near East.

Religions

Christians

Protestant

The Reformation was carried out in Minden between 1521 and 1529. The town contains six Protestant parishes today: St Mary's, St Martin's, St Mark's, St James' and the parishes of St Peter's and St Simeon's Churches. They all are parts of the Church District () of Minden and belong to the Evangelical Church of Westphalia.

Roman Catholic

According to the regulations of the Peace of Westphalia, Minden Cathedral remained in Catholic possession. During the population growth in the 19th century the small number of Catholics rose slowly, and because of the migration of expelled persons, working migrants, and refugees after World War II, the percentage of Catholics increased considerably among the population of Minden.

There are four Roman Catholic parishes in Minden: the parish of the cathedral St Peter and Gorgonius, and parishes of St Mauritius, St Paul and St Ansgar, which are all bound together to the Pastoral Cooperation (''Pastoralverbund'') Mindener Land as part of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Paderborn

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