Erftstadt Verwaltungsgliederung Ahrem hergehoben mit Beschriftung

Ahrem was a village in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

near

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

. Ahrem is now part of the town

Erftstadt Erftstadt () is a town located about 20 km south-west of Cologne in the Rhein-Erft-Kreis, state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The name of the town derives from the river that flows through it, the Erft. The neighbouring towns are Brüh ...

. Geographical location , population 1,103 (2003). The first written documentation about Ahrem was in 1256, when the

archbishop of Cologne The Archbishop of Cologne governs the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cologne in western North Rhine-Westphalia. Historically, the archbishop was ''ex officio'' one of the prince-electors of the Holy Roman Empire and ruled the Electorate of Cologne ...

mentions ''Ainhem''. However the name of the village points to roots in the time of the

Franks file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...

; it means "village of Arn (or Arno)". This dating is supported by a cemetery which was dated to the 6th century. Ahrem belonged to the clerical state of Cologne, in the ''Amt Lechenich''. Originally it was a few separated farm buildings, but during the centuries grew a core settlement around the main street and the small brook ''Lechenicher Mühlengraben''. The village remained small - in 1801 it had just 215 citizens. During the communal reform of 1968 the village was incorporated into the new city of Erftstadt.

References

Erftstadt {{RheinErftKreis-geo-stub