Old Sachsenhausen is ... different. (It's original name is now used for the much vaster area of wards 30-33. While from 1891 to ? [but after 1933 and before 1961] 30 & 31 were sometimes collectively referred to as Inner Sachsenhausen and 32 & 33 as Outer Sachsenhausen, nowadays 30 + 32 I, II, and IV + 33 I is sometimes referred to as Sachsenhausen North, and 32 III, V, and VI + 33 II as Sachsenhausen South...) Because the two are hard to tear apart, I will discuss the whole of Sachsenhausen here, with special attention to Old Sachsenhausen.
While Old Sachsenhausen was certainly a working class area in the 19th and early 20th century (not as much so as the Old Town itself though, which by the early 20th was a slum, pure and simple. 39% KPD in July 32.
) it was never really an industrial area. Down to the late 18th century, most inhabitants were small-scale farmers who just lived behind city walls, but tended fields and gardens outside. In 1877, all of the small remaining number of professional river fishermen lived in Old Sachsenhausen. The area just southeast and east of Old Sachsenhausen (in Ward 33) certainly had some early industrial development - the slaughterhouse was here, the breweries still are, at a somewhat larger distance - and some of the oldest council housing in Frankfurt as well. Ward 32 was mostly middle class early on (and nowadays has some 30s and 50s built estates, as well as some of the poshest areas of Frankfurt).
Ward 33 as a whole has certainly gentrified a lot - but this is (largely, not entirely) because back in, say 1905, the bulk of the population still lived very close to Old Sachsenhausen in the old working class part, the South of the district was still nearly devoid of population. When that was built up, it was not as a working class area. Meanwhile, apart from the normal trend to lower pop. density in inner city areas that still remain densely populated afterwards in normal terms (look at 12,13,20-24, ie the Nordend, since 1961), the area also suffered heavy bombing damage - and more to the point, parts of it weren't rebuilt as residential area as all.
Old Sachsenhausen's frame houses just next door, meanwhile, survived the war relatively little scathed... but not 1960s and 70s city planning.
Here's a map:
Modern ward 30 is the area is the area north of Schifferstraße (hitting the river outside the map) and west of Dreieichstraße. That area is now quite diverse. In the Southwest (near Schifferstr.) and in the far NE (Frankensteiner Straße) you got late 19th/early 20th century houses. Needless to say, these areas vote Green these days (can't say about the NE one for sure, of course, as it can't dominate a precinct). In the center, you get postwar housing - 1950s working class, highly immigrant, tiny flats around Elisabethenstraße and Paradiesgasse; and 1960s, not-sure-how-posh-but-certainly-very-geriatric, as well as posh 1980s, around Walter-Kolb-Straße, which was hacked through the area in the 60s to make the area more easily traversable by car, and on the Sachsenhäuser Ufer.
In between them, you get several remaining odd nooks of ancient Sachsenhausen houses - around the western one of the churches, around the roads just marked as 1 and 2... and most of all, the relatively large area here marked with purple roads (to signify a pedestrian zone). Thing is, not that many people live there anymore - although some do. It's a big loud tourist trap swarming with pubs and nightclubs of every description, including a large number of traditional Frankfurt applewine places as well. Almost all of it in ancient, protected buildings... (My favorite ones are the tiny Drei Steuber, open tuesday to friday and run by two guys in their seventies, and the Eichkatzerl [Squirrel], both on Dreieichstraße). Anyways, when most people speak of Old Sachsenhausen these days, they're thinking exclusively of this area.
Oh yeah, right in the middle of that 1980s-built development, they left standing the
Oldest surviving residential building in Frankfurt, from 1292 (not used residentially anymore, though).
The area now has three precincts, 300-01, 300-02 and 300-03. 01 is by the river, 02 combines the poor part and the tourist trap, 03 is the southwest.
01 always has the CDU's best result, 02 always has the lowest turnout and the SPD#s best result, and 03 always has the Greens' best result. They're not necessarily won by the respective party - that depends on how the election goes in general - although they frequently are.
Of course Old Sachsenhausen isn't big enough to affect the results of its State House constituency, or even of it's district council (which includes Oberrad and Niederrad [37 and 38] as well as all of Sachsenhausen), but... if we had fptp constituencies... if we had 93 fptp constituencies for Frankfurt#s city council rather than electing them all by pr, then Old Sachsenhausen plus the Northern parts of the former 33 (now 33 I) which the SPD still sort of dominates, could be one of these constituencies.
