ESSEN, a manufacturing town of Germany, in the Prus sian Rhine province, 22 m. N.E. from Dusseldorf on the main line of railway to Berlin. Pop. Essen was originally the seat of a Benedictine nunnery, and was formed into a town about the middle of the loth century by the abbess Hedwig. The abbess of the nunnery governed the town until 1803, when it was secularized and incorporated with Prussia. In 1807 it came into the possession of the grand dukes of Berg, but was transferred to Prussia in 1814. In 192o the Communists held, for a time, the factories, which were only retaken after heavy fighting. Occupied by the French after the Armistice, Essen was evacuated by them on Aug. 1, 1925.
Railways radiate from it to all the principal towns of the West phalian iron and coal fields. The minster, dating from the loth century, with fine pictures, relics and wall frescoes, is noteworthy and is very similar to the Pfalz-Kapelle (capella in palatio) at Aix-la-Chapelle. The town originally owed its prosperity to the large iron and coal fields underlying the basin in which it is situ ated. Chief among its industrial establishments are the famous iron and steel works of Krupp (q.v.), and the whole of Essen may be said to depend for its livelihood upon this firm, which now produces locomotives, agricultural machinery, etc., and was em ploying in 1925 some 35,000 workers. There are also manu factories of woollen goods and cigars, dyeworks and breweries.