Kaiserswerth

Kaiserswerth is one of the oldest parts of the City of Düsseldorf. It is in the north of the city and next to the river Rhine. It houses the Deaconess's Institute of Kaiserswerth where Florence Nightingale worked Kaiserswerth has about 7,000 inhabitants and an area of 4.71 km².

About the year 700 the monk Saint Suitbert founded a Benedictine abbey at Werth, a river island that formed an important crossing point of the Rhine. The abbey was destroyed 88 years later. On that area there is now the "Erzbischöfliches Suitbertus-Gymnasium", an archiepiscopal secondary school with the old chapel and parts of the abbey. The former monastery garden is a meeting point for the upper school between lesson times.

The Kaiserpfalz which is a general term for a temporary seat of the Holy Roman Emperor was built at an unknown date but before the year 1016. In 1062, the archbishop of Cologne, Anno II, kidnapped the underage German King Heinrich IV from here and in this way obtained the unofficial regency of the Holy Roman Empire. At this time the island's name changed from Werth to Kaiserswerth. In 1174, Friederick I Barbarossa moved the Rhine customs collection to Kaiserswerth. The eastern branch of the Rhine around the island silted up connecting Kaiserswerth to the east bank of the river. In 1273, the emperor pledged Kaiserswerth to the Archbishop of Cologne forming a de facto enclave within the Duchy of Jülich-Berg. In 1591, Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld was born in Kaiserswerth.

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