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Wikipedia 2024:

Vreden is a town in western Münsterland in the northwest of North Rhine-Westphalia. It belongs to the Borken district in the Münster administrative district.

The municipal profile of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Office for Information and Technology identifies Vreden as a “small medium-sized town”.

Story:

Excavation finds show that the area of the Zwillbrocker Fens was inhabited more than 10,000 years ago. In the area of today's urban development, archaeological finds date back to around the fifth century BC. BC.

The Xanten Annals show that the relics of three saints were transferred to Vreden in 839. The bone dust of St. Felicitas still lies in the altar of the collegiate church. The other two saints were Felicissimus and Agapitus. This is the first documented mention of Vreden and probably coincides with the founding of the women's monastery in Vreden.

In 1016, Count Wichmann III, a Billunger and relative of the royal family, was buried in Vreden.

At the end of 1024, the newly elected King Conrad II visited Vreden as part of his royal tour. There he was received by the abbess Adelheid von Vreden and Sophia von Essen, the daughters of Emperor Otto II and his wife Theophanu and sisters of the late Emperor Otto III. were.

While the imperial monastery belonged to the Archdiocese of Cologne, the municipality belonged to the Diocese of Münster. In 1252 - in an unusual collaboration between two bishops as city founders - the Archbishop of Cologne and the Bishop of Münster committed themselves to expanding and fortifying Vreden as a city by building the new town. Vreden thus received city rights. In 1324, the previously unlocated castle in the old town burned down and was replaced in 1398 by a new building on the site of today's town hall. As part of the Münster collegiate feud, Vreden was besieged and captured several times between 1451 and 1455. In 1470 Vreden became a member of the Hanseatic League. Within the Hanseatic League, Vreden belonged to the Braemquartier. The Braem Quarter was one of the two sub-quarters in the Münster Hanseatic Quarter. Its suburb (principal town) was Coesfeld.

The Eighty Years' War in the neighboring Netherlands and the Thirty Years' War also affected Vreden. In 1598 Vreden was occupied by Spanish troops. It was not until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that hostilities ended. The border between the diocese of Münster and the archdiocese of Utrecht became the state border that exists today. Berkel shipping began around the same time.

In 1811 Vreden temporarily fell to France. In the same year, a fire destroyed large parts of the city. A second catastrophic fire occurred in 1857. To promote the local economy, the Sparkasse was founded in 1841, the third in Münsterland. Many industrial companies, especially weaving and spinning mills, began production in the course of the 19th century. Nevertheless, it took until 1903 until Vreden received a connection to the Northern Railway of the Westphalian State Railway.

Large parts of the city and the industry were destroyed by air raids shortly before the end of the war during the Second World War, including the two churches. While the collegiate church was rebuilt, the rubble of the parish church of St. George had to make way for a new building. As part of the construction work, the foundations of several previous churches were discovered under St. George, which date back to the first millennium AD.

After the war, the city grew steadily and exceeded the 20,000 population mark in the 1990s. The textile industry increasingly gave way to a well-diversified mix of different sectors.

On July 1, 1969, the municipality of Ammeloe (131.88 km²), which had been administratively independent as a rural municipality since the beginning of the 19th century, and the town of Vreden (then 3.71 km²) were merged to form the new town of Vreden.

As part of the municipal reorganization, the previous Ahaus district, to which Vreden had been a part since 1816, was incorporated into the expanded, new Borken district on January 1, 1975 with the Münster/Hamm Act. The Vreden district court was dissolved shortly before, and the responsible district court has since been Ahaus.