Solingen

Solingen grew in the wooded hills of Berg, where streams supplied the workshops of blade grinders. The craft of making blades is recorded here from the early thirteenth century, and the grinders formed associations in the early fourteenth. Above the Wupper stood Burg Castle, an ancestral seat of the counts of Berg. In 1374 Solingen received a charter allowing a mayor, a weekly market and an annual fair.

Fires in 1492 and 1535 damaged the town, and plague struck in 1614. Burg Castle was almost entirely destroyed during the Thirty Years' War; plundering armies passed through Solingen again during the Seven Years' War. In 1806 the Duchy of Berg became a French client state, and after Napoleon's defeat the region passed to Prussia. Solingen's blade-making tradition endured through these changes.