Oberhausen on the river Emscher in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Northwestern Germany, is located between Duisburg and Essen. It hosts the International Short Film Festival and its Gasometer is an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage.
It was named for its 1847 railway station which had taken its name from the local castle. A new borough was formed in 1862 following inflow of people for the local coal mines and steel mills. Awarded town rights in 1874, it absorbed neighboring boroughs. The Ruhrchemie AG plant was a major bombing target of the Oil Campaign of WW2; US Forces reached the plant by 4 April 1945. By 1973, Thyssen employed 14,000 people in the steel industry, 10 years later the number had fallen to 6,000 as the industrial era turned into a more service-oriented era. The majority of foreign residents in this region are from Turkey, Syria, Serbia, Italy, and Poland.
