Düren

Düren, a town of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine province, on the right bank of the Roer, 19 m. E. from Aix-la-Chapelle on the main line of railway to Cologne. Pop. (1905) 29,270. It has two Protestant and six Roman Catholic churches, among the latter the Gothic St Annakirche, said to contain a portion of the head of the saint, to the shrine of which frequent pilgrimages are made. There are several high grade schools, monuments to the emperor William I., Bismarck and Moltke, and, in the town-hall, a collection of antiquities. It is the seat of considerable manufactures, notably cloth, paper, flax-spinning, carpet, artificial wool, sugar, iron wares and needles.

Düren derives its name, not, as was at one time believed, from the Marcodurum of the Ubii, mentioned in Tacitus, but from the Dura or Duria, assemblies held by the Carolingians in the 8th century. It received civic rights early in the 13th century. Hypothecated by the emperor Frederick II. to Count William of Jülich, it became incorporated with the duchy of that name, and with it passed to Prussia in 1816.

* * *