Kranenburg

Kranenburg is the name of

Kranenburg, Lower Saxony

Kranenburg is a municipality in the district Stade, Lower Saxony, Germany, lying on the river Oste. It consists of the villages Kranenburg and Brobergen and is part of the Samtgemeinde Oldendorf-Himmelpforten. It has a population of 772 as at December 31, 2003, of which 546 in Kranenburg and 226 in Brobergen.

Both villages lie on the right side of the Oste river, but part of the municipality lies on the left side, called "Hollander Höfe", which was the old ancestral seat of the gentry family "von Brobergen". There is a ferry in Brobergen crossing the Oste, connecting the "Hollander Höfe" with the village of Brobergen. It is a station of the "Deutsche Fährstraße".

The place lies on the border of the marshland near the Oste. The river Mehe, a tributary of the Oste, has its estuary near Brobergen.

The village Brobergen was an own municipality, but then got part of Kranenburg in the course of a reformation of municipality borders in Lower Saxony in 1972.

History

Kranenburg, first mentioned in 1375 as Kronesborg (literally cranes castle), belonged to the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, established in 1180. While Brobergen was first the name of the landscape, which referred to a larger area along the Oste between Gräpel and Burweg. In a charter from 1141 it is said, that the Rudolf of Freckleben, as Rudolf II Count of Stade (from 1135 to his death in 1144), gave Brobergen as a fief to one of the three brothers Dudo, Adiko and Ricbert, after they founded the Benedictine Our Lady's Friary in Stade.

Kranenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia

Kranenburg is a town and municipality in the district of Cleves in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located near the border with the Netherlands, 12 kilometres (7 mi) south-east of Nijmegen and 11 kilometres (7 mi) west of Cleves. Since 1992, Kranenburg has evolved into a commuter town for Nijmegen, driven almost exclusively by lower real estate prices. The village has always focussed on the Dutch city of Nijmegen, and the local language was Dutch until far into the 19th century. More recent, the extremely large influx of Dutch financially driven, cross-border migrants has changed the profile of this small rural border town significantly, resulting in social discomfort and unrest with the native German population.

Towns and villages in the municipality

History

Middle Ages

First records show that Kranenburg was founded in the 13th century by the Baron of Kleve. The first castle was built in 1270 and the first church a few years later by Dietrichs Luf von Kleve († 1277). In 1294, the village raised to the status of town. In 1308 "The Miraculous Cross" („Wundertätigen Kreuzes“) was found, establishing Kranenburg as a place of pilgrimage. According to legend, a boy went into the forest after church and spit out his communion wafer. After a while he felt guilty and confessed to the pastor. Together they went back into the forest to find the wafer. At the tree where he had spit it out, the cross now stood.