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Located in northwestern Germany, mostly on the right bank of the Rhine River, Dusseldorf has been the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia state since World War II. It is also the center of the Rhine-Ruhr industrial area. The city's chief industry is iron and steel. Other products are chemicals, glass, textiles and clothing, precision tools, automobiles, paper, and printing presses. Dusseldorf is also a banking, wholesale, and business center. It boasts Germany's first skyscraper, the Wilhelm-Marx-Haus, which was built in 1924. The city is the home of the Hetjensmuseum of ceramics and the state museum. Its library has a collection of works by the poet Heinrich Heine (see Heine). The Konigsallee is a fashionable treelined shopping street. Landmarks include the 13th- to 14th-century church, St. Lambertuskirche, and the old town hall, completed in 1588. The town historical collection is housed in Castle Jagerhof, which dates from 1763. The remains of the palace of Frederick I are in the northern district of Kaiserwerth. In the nearby Neanderthal Valley is the Feldhofer Cave, where the remains of a prehistoric man were found in 1856. Dusseldorf dates from 1159. It was chartered in 1288 by the count of Berg, became the capital of the duchies of Berg and Julich in 1511, and passed to the Palatinate-Neuberg line in 1609. From 1805 to 1813 it was the capital of the short-lived Napoleonic grand duchy of Berg. It passed to Prussia in 1815. (See also Germany.) Population (1989 estimate), 570,200.
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