Migratory Anser albifrons
geese
fly at dawn over windmill near Kekerdom, The Netherlands.
Young horses trot in the early
morning in Germany's Niederrhein
region near the Dutch
border.
A boy rides his bike at dawn near Huisberden
in Germany's Niederrhein.
Lower Rhine
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By the Banks of the Lower Rhine
The Lower Rhine region of Germany spreads out on both sides of the great river where it flows downhill from the Middle Rhine wine country and fans out into a broad delta of sloughs and backwaters at or near sea level. The region’s boundaries are indistinct. Some would say the Lower Rhine covers everything from Bonn to Hoek van Holland. Others define it much more narrowly, perhaps from Düsseldorf to the Dutch border.
With modern education, High German is standard throughout the country. In earlier times, though, and still for many people today, the regions had distinct dialects. There are cultural as well as linguistic differences to the south of Düsseldorf. For instance, inheritance in that region would traditionally be divided among children. North of that city the eldest son would receive everything.
Some of the Lower Rhine towns and cities, such as Xanten and Nijmegen, date back two millenia to the Roman colonial period. Others, such as Kleve and Kranenburg, are "only" in the 800-year-old range. For centuries, though, the Duchy of Kleve (sometimes referred to as "Cleves" by English speakers) was administered as an independent country. Today Kleve is still one of the region’s more prominent cities. In the intervening centuries, borders were more fluid and ownership changed. While the Niederrhein, or Lower Rhine, might stop at the current Dutch border in the minds of many, in fact there has been an historically close relationship between Nijmegen (called Nimwegen by Germans) and Kleve. It continues today as in medieval times.
