In Drenthe we have towns and villages, hamlets, hamlets, you name it. Sometimes these places raise questions: when is something a city or a village? What is the criterion?
Erica’s Ap Oost also had such a question in her stomach: “I see in many places that Emmen is called a city. But as far as I know, Emmen is a village. How and why is that so?” She turned to Find Out!.
As always, it’s wise to start at the beginning. Because how did Emmen start, how was it born?
Emmen originated on the southeastern tip of the Hondsrug. He was first mentioned in a charter from 1139, when he was described as Curtis Emne (Hof van Emmen). The names Emne and Empne are often mentioned as ancient names of Emmen. Most likely it means ‘the plain, the low land’. This is what the municipality of Emmen writes on its website.
Thanks to the reclamation of the surrounding peat bogs, the Emmer Venen, Emmen has become an important location. This development continued after the Second World War, and after 1945 Emmen became the largest regional industrial center, partly thanks to the founding of numerous textile and metal factories.
The industrialization of Emmen attracted many workers to the region, which meant that new housing estates had to be built to provide housing for these people.
Erica’s Ap Oost is right when she says: “I always thought that Emmen was a village”, if you look at city rights. Emmen never received city rights. In Drenthe, only Assen, Meppel and Coevorden have city rights. City rights were granted by a lord. A city could do more things than a village, such as building a wall to adequately defend itself.
Giving city rights to a place was a medieval phenomenon, used mainly by earls, bishops, dukes and the like to bind certain places to themselves. Since the introduction of the Municipalities Act in 1851, there is no longer any administrative distinction between towns and villages and the Netherlands only has municipalities.
In law there is no difference between a city or a village. Classical town rights were abolished between 1848 and 1851, and since then “municipality”, “inhabited” and “residence” have become the formal names of towns, villages, hamlets and hamlets. The difference between them therefore exists only in popular language.
If we want to know whether Emmen is a city or a village, we cannot look at the rules laid down by law. From a legal point of view one could only say: Emmen is a municipality. And no one will question it.
Then we need to consider when a place is colloquially called a city. Nowadays, people mainly look at the size of the place, the number of inhabitants and the facilities.
Emmen is the largest town in the municipality of the same name Emmen. On January 1, 2021, 56,640 people lived in Emmen. In the Netherlands, places without historic city rights with a population of around 50,000 are referred to as cities. Whether a place is considered a city also depends on the population density of the surrounding area.
In terms of structures, a place would be called a city if it can function independently, apart from the surrounding rural towns. In the case of Emmen this seems to be the case, with a strong city centre, numerous churches, schools, the town hall and numerous sports facilities.
Even though Emmen does not have city rights and would be seen as a village by medieval standards, we can simply call Emmen a city. City rights no longer exist, and legally neither cities nor villages exist anymore. Emmen is the largest city in the south-east of Drenthe and therefore has every right to be called a city.
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2024-01-24 10:58:31
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