Nieuw-Wehl
Nieuw-Wehl is a village in the eastern Netherlands, about 10 km west of Doetinchem. It has a population of about 500. Before 1 January 2005, it was part of the municipality of Wehl, along with neighboring village Wehl. After the division, Nieuw-Wehl joined the municipality of Doetinchem. In 1925, a Roman Catholic church was built
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a country located in Northwestern Europe. The European portion of the Netherlands consists of twelve separate provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium and the United Kingdom. Together with three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba— it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the official language is Dutch, but a secondary official language in the province of Friesland is West Frisian. The six largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Tilburg. Amsterdam is the country's capital, while The Hague holds the seat of the States General and Supreme Court; the Port of Rotterdam is the largest port in Europe, the largest in any country outside Asia. The country is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union.
It hosts several intergovernmental organisations and international courts, many of which are centered in The Hague, dubbed'the world's legal capital'. Netherlands means'lower countries' in reference to its low elevation and flat topography, with only about 50% of its land exceeding 1 metre above sea level, nearly 17% falling below sea level. Most of the areas below sea level, known as polders, are the result of land reclamation that began in the 16th century. With a population of 17.30 million people, all living within a total area of 41,500 square kilometres —of which the land area is 33,700 square kilometres —the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. It is the world's second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products, owing to its fertile soil, mild climate, intensive agriculture; the Netherlands was the third country in the world to have representative government, it has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since 1848.
The country has a tradition of pillarisation and a long record of social tolerance, having legalised abortion and human euthanasia, along with maintaining a progressive drug policy. The Netherlands abolished the death penalty in 1870, allowed women's suffrage in 1917, became the world's first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001, its mixed-market advanced economy had the thirteenth-highest per capita income globally. The Netherlands ranks among the highest in international indexes of press freedom, economic freedom, human development, quality of life, as well as happiness; the Netherlands' turbulent history and shifts of power resulted in exceptionally many and varying names in different languages. There is diversity within languages; this holds for English, where Dutch is the adjective form and the misnomer Holland a synonym for the country "Netherlands". Dutch comes from Theodiscus and in the past centuries, the hub of Dutch culture is found in its most populous region, home to the capital city of Amsterdam.
Referring to the Netherlands as Holland in the English language is similar to calling the United Kingdom "Britain" by people outside the UK. The term is so pervasive among potential investors and tourists, that the Dutch government's international websites for tourism and trade are "holland.com" and "hollandtradeandinvest.com". The region of Holland consists of North and South Holland, two of the nation's twelve provinces a single province, earlier still, the County of Holland, a remnant of the dissolved Frisian Kingdom. Following the decline of the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Flanders, Holland became the most economically and politically important county in the Low Countries region; the emphasis on Holland during the formation of the Dutch Republic, the Eighty Years' War and the Anglo-Dutch Wars in the 16th, 17th and 18th century, made Holland serve as a pars pro toto for the entire country, now considered either incorrect, informal, or, depending on context, opprobrious. Nonetheless, Holland is used in reference to the Netherlands national football team.
The region called the Low Countries and the Country of the Netherlands. Place names with Neder, Nieder and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in places all over Europe, they are sometimes used in a deictic relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Oben, Superior or Haut. In the case of the Low Countries / Netherlands the geographical location of the lower region has been more or less downstream and near the sea; the geographical location of the upper region, changed tremendously over time, depending on the location of the economic and military power governing the Low Countries area. The Romans made a distinction between the Roman provinces of downstream Germania Inferior and upstream Germania Superior; the designation'Low' to refer to the region returns again in the 10th century Duchy of Lower Lorraine, that covered much of the Low Countries. But this time the corresponding Upper region is Upper Lorraine, in nowadays Northern France; the Dukes of Burgundy, who ruled the Low Countries in the 15th century, used the term les pays de par deçà for the Low Countries as opposed to les pays de par delà for their original
Prussia
Prussia was a prominent German state that originated in 1525 with a duchy centred on the region of Prussia on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen in 1932 and de jure by an Allied decree in 1947. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organised and effective army. Prussia, with its capital in Königsberg and from 1701 in Berlin, decisively shaped the history of Germany. In 1871, German states united to create the German Empire under Prussian leadership. In November 1918, the monarchies were abolished and the nobility lost its political power during the German Revolution of 1918–19; the Kingdom of Prussia was thus abolished in favour of a republic—the Free State of Prussia, a state of Germany from 1918 until 1933. From 1933, Prussia lost its independence as a result of the Prussian coup, when the Nazi regime was establishing its Gleichschaltung laws in pursuit of a unitary state.
With the end of the Nazi regime, in 1945, the division of Germany into allied-occupation zones and the separation of its territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, which were incorporated into Poland and the Soviet Union, the State of Prussia ceased to exist de facto. Prussia existed de jure until its formal abolition by the Allied Control Council Enactment No. 46 of 25 February 1947. The name Prussia derives from the Old Prussians. In 1308, the Teutonic Knights conquered the region of Pomerelia with Gdańsk, their monastic state was Germanised through immigration from central and western Germany, and, in the south, it was Polonised by settlers from Masovia. The Second Peace of Thorn split Prussia into the western Royal Prussia, a province of Poland, the eastern part, from 1525 called the Duchy of Prussia, a fief of the Crown of Poland up to 1657; the union of Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia in 1618 led to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701. Prussia entered the ranks of the great powers shortly after becoming a kingdom, exercised most influence in the 18th and 19th centuries.
During the 18th century it had a major say in many international affairs under the reign of Frederick the Great. During the 19th century, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck united the German principalities into a "Lesser Germany", which excluded the Austrian Empire. At the Congress of Vienna, which redrew the map of Europe following Napoleon's defeat, Prussia acquired rich new territories, including the coal-rich Ruhr; the country grew in influence economically and politically, became the core of the North German Confederation in 1867, of the German Empire in 1871. The Kingdom of Prussia was now so large and so dominant in the new Germany that Junkers and other Prussian élites identified more and more as Germans and less as Prussians; the Kingdom ended in 1918 along with other German monarchies that collapsed as a result of the German Revolution. In the Weimar Republic, the Free State of Prussia lost nearly all of its legal and political importance following the 1932 coup led by Franz von Papen. Subsequently, it was dismantled into Nazi German Gaue in 1935.
Some Prussian ministries were kept and Hermann Göring remained in his role as Minister President of Prussia until the end of World War II. Former eastern territories of Germany that made up a significant part of Prussia lost the majority of their German population after 1945 as the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union both absorbed these territories and had most of its German inhabitants expelled by 1950. Prussia, deemed a bearer of militarism and reaction by the Allies, was abolished by an Allied declaration in 1947; the international status of the former eastern territories of Germany was disputed until the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in 1990, while its return to Germany remains a topic among far right politicians, the Federation of Expellees and various political revisionists. The term Prussian has been used outside Germany, to emphasise professionalism, aggressiveness and conservatism of the Junker class of landed aristocrats in the East who dominated first Prussia and the German Empire.
The main coat of arms of Prussia, as well as the flag of Prussia, depicted a black eagle on a white background. The black and white national colours were used by the Teutonic Knights and by the Hohenzollern dynasty; the Teutonic Order wore a white coat embroidered with a black cross with gold insert and black imperial eagle. The combination of the black and white colours with the white and red Hanseatic colours of the free cities Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck, as well as of Brandenburg, resulted in the black-white-red commercial flag of the North German Confederation, which became the flag of the German Empire in 1871. Suum cuique, the motto of the Order of the Black Eagle created by King Frederick I in 1701, was associated with the whole of Prussia; the Iron Cross, a military decoration created by King Frederick William III in 1813, was commonly associated with the country. The region populated by Baltic Old Prussians who were Christianised, became a favoured location for immigration by Germans, as well as Poles and Lithuanians along the border regions.
Before its abolition, the territory of the Kingdom of Prussia included the provinces of West Prussia.
Gelderland
Gelderland is a province of the Netherlands, located in the central eastern part of the country. With a land area of nearly 5,000 km2, it is the largest province of the Netherlands and shares borders with six other provinces and Germany; the capital is Arnhem. Other major regional centres in Gelderland are Ede, Zutphen, Tiel, Wageningen and Winterswijk. Gelderland had a population of just over two million in 2018; the province dates from states of the Holy Roman Empire and takes its name from the nearby German city of Geldern. According to the Wichard saga, the city was named by the Lords of Pont who fought and killed a dragon in 878 AD, they named the town they founded after the death rattle of the dragon: "Gelre!"The County of Guelders arose out of the Frankish pagus Hamaland in the 11th century around castles near Roermond and Geldern. The counts of Gelre acquired the Betuwe and Veluwe regions and, through marriage, the County of Zutphen, thus the counts of Guelders laid the foundation for a territorial power that, through control of the Rhine, Meuse and IJssel rivers, was to play an important role in the Middle Ages.
The geographical position of their territory dictated the external policy of the counts during the following centuries. Further enlarged by the acquisition of the imperial city of Nijmegen in the 13th century, the countship was raised to a duchy in 1339 by the Holy Roman Emperor, Louis IV. After 1379, the duchy was ruled by the counts of Egmond and Cleves; the duchy resisted Burgundian domination, but William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg was forced to cede it to Charles V in 1543, after which it formed part of the Burgundian-Habsburg hereditary lands. The duchy revolted with the rest of the Netherlands against Philip II of Spain and joined the Union of Utrecht. After the deposition of Philip II, its sovereignty was vested in the States of Gelderland, the princes of Orange were stadtholders. In 1672, the province was temporarily occupied by Louis XIV and, in 1713, the southeastern part including the ducal capital of Geldern fell to Prussia. Part of the Batavian Republic, of Louis Bonaparte’s Kingdom of Holland, of the French Empire, Gelderland became a province of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815.
During the Second World War, it saw heavy fighting between Allied Paratroopers, British XXX Corps and the German II SS Panzer Corps, at the Battle of Arnhem. Gelderland can be divided into four geographical regions: the Veluwe in the north, the Rivierenland including the Betuwe in the southwest, the Achterhoek or Graafschap in the east and the city-region of Arnhem and Nijmegen in the centre-south. In 2015, the 54 municipalities in Gelderland were divided into four COROPs: These municipalities were merged with neighbouring ones: Angerlo was merged into Zevenaar Dinxperlo was merged into Aalten Gorssel was merged into Lochem Hoevelaken was merged into Nijkerk Lichtenvoorde was merged into Groenlo Warnsveld was merged into Zutphen Wehl was merged into Doetinchem Millingen aan de Rijn and Ubbergen were merged into Groesbeek These municipalities were merged and given a new name: Borculo, Eibergen and Ruurlo have become Berkelland Hengelo, Hummelo en Keppel, Steenderen and Zelhem have become Bronckhorst Bergh and Didam has become Montferland Gendringen and Wisch have become Oude IJsselstreek In the 2001 movie A Knight's Tale, the protagonist, William Thatcher pretends to be a knight known as "Ulrich von Lichtenstein from Gelderland".
Official website
Zeddam
Zeddam is a village in the Dutch province of Gelderland. It is located in the municipality of Montferland, about 7 km south of Doetinchem. Zeddam was a separate municipality until 1821. J. Kuyper, Gemeente Atlas van Nederland, 1865-1870, "Zeddam". Map of the former municipality, around 1868
Doetinchem
Doetinchem is a city and municipality in the east of the Netherlands. It is situated along the Oude IJssel river in a part of the province of Gelderland called the Achterhoek; the municipality had a population of 57,292 in 2017 and consists of an area of 79.66 km2 of which 0.60 km2 is water. This makes Doetinchem the largest town in the Achterhoek. On 1 January 2005, a municipal restructuring merged the neighbouring municipality of Wehl as well as the Zelhelmse Broek area with Doetinchem; the local government organization in the Netherlands is complex and fine-grained (see municipality and Govt Stats, with municipalities being divided into various entities. The municipality of Doetinchem consists of: the city: Doetinchemthe villages: Centrum Gaanderen Wehl Dichteren Overstegen De Huet De Hoop Oosseld Schöneveld & Muziekbuurtthe neighbourhoods: IJzevoorde Langerak Wijnbergen Nieuw-WehlWehl was a separate municipality until 31 December 2004, when it merged with the municipality of Doetinchem, it is known from archaeological finds of skulls, pottery shards, flint arrowheads that the area was inhabited more than 11,000 years ago.
These prehistoric hunters were followed by Germanic tribes like the Franks and Saxons. Roman coins have been found and there is archaeological evidence of the Vikings having plundered the area; the first reference to the name of Doetinchem comes in a document from the year 838 which mentions a ‘villa Duetinghem’, a settlement with a small church. In 887, there is another mention of ‘Deutinkem’, a fortress with a church, given to the Bishop of Utrecht; the spelling has varied over the centuries, with ‘Duttichem’, ‘Duichingen’ and ‘Deutekom’ being just some examples. For a long time Doetinchem remained a small place but around 1100 it started to grow and, after suffering several attempts by plunderers, a town wall was built. In 1236, Doetinchem was granted city rights by Count Otto II of Gelre and Zutphen, in return the town provided taxes and soldiers for the Count’s army; the new city council published rules for the city, codified in the ‘Keurboek van Doetinchem’, which laid down severe punishments for infringements.
In 1226, Doetinchem faced increasing danger from plunderers, so the city wall was raised by a metre. There were four barriers in the wall which, being weak points, were replaced over time by four large city-gates known as: the Hamburgerpoort, the Waterpoort, the Gruitpoort, the Hezenpoort. A moat was dug around the wall and a rampart was built in front. Despite these defences, Doetinchem was besieged many times and during the Eighty Years' War was besieged and conquered twice; however the walls became seen as redundant and in 1672, they were torn down. However, it was not until the second half of the 19th century that the city-gates and most of the rampart were removed. From its early years, Doetinchem had been an important marketplace for farmers to sell their wares. Doetinchem has had its fair share of disasters. Apart from the sieges mentioned above, in 1527 a large fire destroyed most of the city including the city archives, in 1580 most of the city was killed by plague. There was occasional flooding.
However, despite the fact that Doetinchem is only 10 km from the German border, because the Netherlands was not involved in the First World War, Doetinchem saw nothing more than the posting of a few border guards during that time. During the Second World War, Doetinchem came off lightly at first. However, some prisoners were executed after being implicated in the shooting death in Putten of an important German officer by the Dutch Resistance and disastrously, in March and April 1945, the centre of Doetinchem was destroyed by Allied bombing, either intended for nearby German towns or, as some say, was to destroy the German defenses in Doetinchem. Which of the two is true has never been clarified and there is still some discussion about the true intentions of the bombardment; the city itself was liberated by The Calgary Highlanders in 1945 after a brief battle there. In 2018 a writer called Karel Berkhuysen researched about the Allied bombing, he found. This information was passed to the Allies.
In the decades after the war, Doetinchem grew and in a few years had outgrown its "competitors" in the Achterhoek, namely Doesburg and Zutphen. The Dutch company, had a factory for some years in the city. From 2003 till 2005, the city grew enormously as new districts such as Dichteren were built, as Doetinchem incorporates outlying villages such as Wehl into its municipality. In 2011, the city is still growing. By building new district as het Loo and Isseldoks, the opening of a brand new theatre and cinema, Doetinchem is the biggest growing city in Gelderland; the main church in the central square, St Catherine’s Church was destroyed in the World War II bombing and restoration took from 1948 to 1963. Although a Roman Catholic church, it became Dutch Reformed in 1
