NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne The NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne () was founded by a resolution passed by the Cologne city council on December 13, 1979 and has become the largest regional memorial site in all of Germany for the victims of the Nazis. Since 1988, it has been housed in "EL-DE Haus," the EL-DE building, named for the initials of its owner, Catholic businessman Leopold Dahmen. This building was the headquarters of the Cologne Gestapo (secret police) between December 1935 and March 1945. In the final months of the war, several hundred
Demographics of Cologne over the old city walls in 1794, just short before the arrival of French troops and Cologne's incorporation into the First French Empire. After 1815, the Kingdom of Prussia enforced the construction of fortifications which again hindered any growth for the city. Only with the acquisition of these fortifications in 1881, the city of Cologne had the possibility of a gradual territorial expansion. On 12. November 1883 a strip of territory from parts of the municipalities of Ehrenfeld, Kriel, Longerich, Müngersdorf and Rondorf was added to the city. Since 1886, the Cologne City Council intensified negotiations with the surrounding communities,