Every design for Herzogenrath

Since 1815 a national border has run straight through this town. When the Congress of Vienna drew the line, the eastern part became Prussian Herzogenrath and the western part became Dutch Kerkrade; today the border still runs along the middle of a main road and even through the cross-border Eurode office complex. The two towns now share some public services and present themselves together as Eurode, and many people here speak the Kerkrade dialect, a Ripuarian variety heard on both sides.

Herzogenrath stretches long and narrow from north to south, where the Eifel gives way to the Lower Rhine plain, and for almost nine kilometres its western edge is the Dutch frontier. The River Wurm cuts through the heart of town, with the castle quarter to the south and Afden to the north. Until the 1950s coal mines and a coking plant dominated life; today overgrown slag heaps, the Naturpark Worm-Wildnis and glass and electronics firms such as Saint-Gobain and Aixtron tell of what came after.

The image that stays is Burg Rode by the Wurm, close to where the little settlement of Rode first grew in the 11th century.