Vaals

Vaals ( [fa ː ɫs ] ) is located in the extreme southeast of the Dutch province of Limburg, about 23 km east of the provincial capital of Maastricht and 5.5 km west of the city center of Aachen. Vaals local dialect is called " Vols ", the inhabitants call themselves " Voelser ".

Geography

Vaals is located right on the German border and enters the district of Aachen Vaalserquartier.

The border community is composed of the three cores Vaals, Lemiers and Vijlen. Vaals to include the settlements Raren and Wolfhaag to Lemiers Holset and Mamelis to Vijlen Camerig, Cottessen Harles, Melleschet and Rott.

The municipal area is the Vaalserberg, the highest peak in the continental Netherlands. On this 322.50 m above NAP -lying mountain lies the border triangle Germany - Belgium - Netherlands. Since then, the Caribbean island of Saba is officially a town of the Netherlands, is there the highest point of land with 877 meters above sea level on the volcano Mount Scenery. Also found on the territory of the municipality of Vaals, on the road to Gemmenich (Belgium ), the highest altitude of 275 m border crossing in the Netherlands. At the confluence of the Akenerstraat - Old Vaalserstraße reminds a tiny museum ( about 1 m ) to the time when the borders were not yet open.

History

The area around Vaals was settled very early. Grave mounds from the band ceramic culture ( 5300-4900 BC) were found in Vijlen and remains of a Roman villa in Lemiers. Vaals was first documented in 1041 as Vaels ( vallis from Latin =, valley ') mentioned. Emperor Henry III. presented according to this deed lands in Holset, Lemiers, Vijlen and Mamelis the St. Adalbert pin in Aachen. The name in vallis this country should be clearly distinguished from estates on the hills (Aachen).

From the Middle Ages to the Napoleonic conquest included the lands of the duchy of Limburg, a fief to different landlords that allowed them to manage through a Hofgenossenschaft of Aldermen (so-called Laatbank ).

In the early modern period Vaals was an industrial site. Characteristic of the region was the Aachen textile manufacturer Johann Arnold of Clermont (1728-1795), who had to leave his homeland in 1761 under pressure from the Counter-Reformation. He built several businesses and earned nationwide land to Vaals. Its products found in Europe doffer to Russian Tsar house.

Dutch Vaals was only in 1815 slammed the Congress of Vienna, the Prussians Aachen and Vaals the Kingdom of the Netherlands. When Belgium declared itself independent in 1830, Vaals was temporarily 1830-1839 Belgian, Dutch and then again.

On 10 May 1940 the German Wehrmacht marched into Vaals. In the corner house Prins-Bernhardstraat/Maastrichterlaan, where today there is a doctor's office, pulled out a the NSDAP Ortskommandatur. Previously, the local chapter of Vaals the Dutch National Socialist Movement ( NSB) was there already home.

Policy

Vaals is the place in the Netherlands with the highest population share of German citizens ( 26%). In the local elections on March 7, 2006, a German citizen, was with Georg Götz for the first time in the Netherlands elected to a municipal council - first for the local party " Castle Heritage Long" ( citizens' interests ), which he left in 2007, and again in the municipal elections on March 3 2010 for his own new party " betaalbaar & Duurzaam Vaals " (B &DV; about: Affordable & Sustainable Vaals ). For " Vrij & Onafhankelijk " (V &O; Free & Independent ) also increases since Babette Lemmer as another German court Vaalser council. Currently Vaals is managed by a coalition of V & O (3 seats), PvdA ( social democrats, 2 seats) and B & DV ( 2 seats).

Economy

After 1840 stagnated industrial development due to increasing competition and political isolation from the German and Belgian countryside. Vaals was now to rest and relaxation for the people of Aachen; one spoke of the " Vaalser paradise ". From 1889 there was a horse-drawn railway to Aachen that the first electric tram in the Netherlands in 1895. 1925 built the Limburger Tramweg Maatschappij (LTM ) is a steam tram on Vaals Wijlre to Maastricht, whereby the German border tourism in the Weimar Republic became increasingly animated transition. There was also a transfer possibility in the Aachen tram. After the Second World War, the Aachen tram was only up to the border in Vaalserquartier; she was hired as the last tram in the Aachen 1974. Today buses of the GCU and Belgium operate across the border to Vaals.

Since 1948, the economy flourished again. The Aachen used Vaals, because of the cheaper prices compared to Germany, to show a preference for shopping, the so-called butter rides. End of the 1960s, the grocery shopping was worth ( and thus its smuggling to Germany ) no longer particularly since the founded in 1957, European Economic Community ( EEC), the food prices gradually adapting. However, coffee, tea, and especially cigarettes for many years were much cheaper than in Germany, and therefore flourished this " cross-border trade " extraordinarily well - and thus also the smuggling. Gasoline and diesel fuels were so cheap that it was worthwhile not only for the Aachener population, but far up in the Cologne area into it, to go to refuel across the border and at the same shop still large. On Saturdays you could often see a vehicle backwater from the border crossing a kilometer or two in the direction of Aachen. These decades of circumstances, it was thanks to them that the municipality of Vaals by such trade experienced a quite remarkable economic growth. It was not until the opening of the border in 1969, and subsequently with the Schengen agreement and finally the introduction of the common currency of the Euro, the prices for these goods developed on an approximately equally high level as in Germany.

Economically, tourism is the main source of income for Vaals, since from the 1960s until the adjacent carbon and, later, the textile industry was lost. Most residents commute to work today in the larger neighboring cities Heerlen, Kerkrade and Maastricht and Aachen and the surrounding area. A sixth of the population is classified as poor according to the current national poverty monitor in the Netherlands.

Tourism

Tourist offers Vaals with buildings mainly from the 17th to the 19th century and the Art Weeks Tri -Arte (visual arts, literature, music ) in July of Culture. With borders with Belgium and Germany as well as the tri- old smuggler trails in the nature reserves in the Netherlands and smallest museum are ( Limburg: De Kleng wax, German: The small guard ) back to life. 2006, the nature reserve Cottessen was declared the most beautiful natural area in the Netherlands. The Church of Vijlen is also the highest church in the Netherlands.

In addition to bike paths and hiking trails, there are several golf courses in the area around the border triangle. Historical possessions of the textile manufacturer Johann Arnold of Clermont, such as Castle Vaalsbroek and Bloemendal, were converted into upscale hotels.

Personalities

Sons and daughters:

  • Willi Hoss (1929-2003), German trade unionist and politician

People with relationship to the city:

  • Johann Joseph Couven (1701-1763), German architect and builder of the Baroque, designed the baroque manufactory Clermont in Vaals
  • Jacob Engelbert Teschemacher (1711-1782), German organ builder, built in 1772, the organ of the Hervormde Kerk
  • Johann Arnold of Clermont (1728-1795), German textile manufacturer, builder of Kasteel Bloemendal and many other structures
  • Intze Otto (1843-1904), German architect, professor of hydraulic engineering, building construction and building materials at the Technical University of Aachen, buried in the Protestant cemetery in Tentstraat
  • Dominic Böhm (1880-1955), German architect and church builder, designed the 1921 Built to 1923 Abbey of St. Benedict in Mamelis
  • Theodore von Kármán (1881-1963), Hungarian - German - American engineer; Pioneer of modern aerodynamics and aeronautics research; Professor and Head of the Institute of aeronautical aerodynamics at the Technical University of Aachen; lived from 1913 to 1926 in Vaals
  • Reiner Dick, (1940-1974), German professor of business administration, died in 1974 in Vaals
  • Herbert Bardenheuer (1949-2007), German painter, draftsman and photographer
  • Bruce Darnell ( born July 19, 1957 in Colorado), American choreographer and model who lives in Vaals
  • Willi Be (* 1958), German writer, lives in Vaals
  • Leo Ketelaars (1913-1992), Dutch violinist, opera singer, singing teacher and composer who lived and died in Vaals

Others

A Martian crater with a diameter of 10.6 kilometers was named after Vaals.

Statistics Netherlands Telephone numbers in the Netherlands Amsterdam Ordnance Datum Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands Beesel Bergen (Limburg) Brunssum Echt-Susteren Eijsden-Margraten Gennep Landgraaf Leudal Maasgouw Nederweert Nuth Onderbanken Peel en Maas Roerdalen Roermond Schinnen Sittard-Geleen Stein, Limburg Valkenburg aan de Geul Venlo Venray Voerendaal Weert
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