City of Lemgo in Germany Lemgo (Low German: Lemge, Lemje) is a university town with around 41,000 inhabitants. It is the oldest and third largest city in the Lippe district and is located 25 kilometers east of Bielefeld in the middle of the East Westphalia-Lippe region. The city belongs to the Detmold administrative district in the northeast of North Rhine-Westphalia. Lemgo was founded in 1190 as a planned city by the Lords of Lippe at a crossroads of important trade routes. This makes the town one of the oldest cities in Lippe, alongside Lippstadt, which is now in the Soest district. Lemgo has had city rights since 1245, was a member of the Hanseatic League in the late Middle Ages and is therefore also called the Old Hanseatic City of Lemgo. (This recognition was given in 1916 by Prince Leopold IV of Lippe - and was a political issue at the time.) The cityscape is characterized by numerous late medieval buildings. Until 1973, Lemgo was the administrative seat of the Lemgo district, which was absorbed into the Lippe district as part of a district reform. Since 1980, Lemgo has been the seat of the Lippe regional association. Founding of the city and the late Middle Ages The first documented settlement was dated in 2008 to the time of the Saxon Wars under Charlemagne around the year 780 by determining the age of a small piece of bone from a body buried in an east-west direction in the former cemetery of the original St. John's Church at what is now known as the Stumpfen Turm. The area in which the present-day city of Lemgo is located was called Limgauwe or Limga at the beginning of the 11th century. The settlement history documented in documents shows that several settlements existed there in the 11th and 12th centuries. Brake Castle was built before 1190, but was located in a swampy floodplain of the Bega river, which did not offer suitable land for the construction of a city. Lemgo was founded around 1190 by Bernhard II to the north-west of the city on dry land and, thanks to its location at the intersection of two important trade routes of the Middle Ages, developed for a long time into the largest and most important city in the county of Lippe. In 1215, the parish church of St. Nicolai was consecrated. In 1231, the diocese of Paderborn elevated the city to the seat of the archdeacon, the bishop's representative, and around 1235 the Civitas, which now had its own seal, had coins minted. After Lemgo had acquired city rights in 1245 and the tailor's privilege granted privileges to the trade, the city applied for admission to the Hanseatic League in 1295. However, it was not admitted as a Hanseatic city until 1324. Lemgo then joined the cities of Herford and Bielefeld in the so-called Cologne Quarter to trade in cloth, yarn and linen. The trade relations of the Lemgo merchants led via Lübeck to Visby, Stockholm and Turku in Scandinavia and via Bremen and Elberfeld (now part of Wuppertal) to Flanders, and Lemgo increasingly gained economic importance. Together with Lippstadt, it was also able to gain influence over the count's politics. The city also secured control of the financial administration. The city also played a certain role in peace treaties, especially to secure long-distance trade, and in the first half of the 15th century it also took part in Hanseatic day trips. The city may have already had 3,500 inhabitants by 1300. Like Lippstadt, Lemgo was laid out according to a three-street scheme and had to be expanded by 1265 due to its economic success with the construction of the new town. In a document dated November 11, 1283, the nobleman Simon I granted this new town the same privileges as his other existing towns, namely Lippstadt, Lemgo (meaning the old town), Horn and Blomberg, which were explicitly named in the document. The new town was located south of the old town in the damp Begaaue and was laid out in a two-street system. It was more artisanal and separated from the old town by markings. In 1365, both parts of the city were united and secured with a common moat and rampart. The street system thus arose from five streets running east-west and connected by a north-south axis. This is considered unique in the entire Lippe and East Westphalia region.