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47-936: The town is in the central part of the Emsland, at the mouth of the Hase River where it meets the Ems, between the cities of Lingen and Papenburg . About 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the Dutch border, Meppen has an area of 188.45 square kilometres (72.76 sq mi) and is 15 metres (49 ft) above sea level . The population was 34,196 as of 30 June 2005. [REDACTED] 1st Altstadt Historical centre of Meppen with historical town hall. 2nd Esterfeld 3rd Feldkamp 4th Kuhweide 5th Neustadt 6th Nödike 7th Schleusengruppe In 1974, 13 independent, surrounding municipalities were integrated into Meppen. [REDACTED] Meppen, formerly

94-427: A ban on sexual relations between Germans and foreign workers . Repeated efforts were made to propagate Volkstum ('racial consciousness'), to prevent such relations. Pamphlets, for instance, instructed all German women to avoid physical contact with any foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their blood. Women who disobeyed were imprisoned although executions also took place. Even fraternization with

141-459: A heat wave affecting much of Europe. The Lingen weather station has recorded the following extreme values: Lingen is twinned with: Forced labour under German rule during World War II The use of slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany ( German : Zwangsarbeit ) and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It

188-746: A direct result of forced labour under the Nazis. After the invasion of Poland , Polish Jews over the age of 12 and Poles over the age of 12 living in the General Government territory were subject to forced labor. Historian Jan Gross estimates that "no more than 15 percent" of Polish workers volunteered to go to work in Germany. In 1942, all non-Germans living in the General Government were subject to forced labor. The largest number of labour camps held civilians forcibly abducted in

235-403: A forced labour fund paid out more than €4.37   billion to close to 1.7   million of then-living victims around the world (one-off payments of between €2,500 and €7,500). German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated in 2007 that "Many former forced labourers have finally received the promised humanitarian aid"; she also conceded that before the fund was established nothing had gone directly to

282-557: A fortified town, boasts 12 centuries of history. The first documented mention of Meppen dates from 834, in a deed of donation by Frankish emperor Louis the Pious , transferring a missionary establishment of that name to the abbey of Corvey . 945 -- Emperor Otto the Great grants the town the rights to mint coins and collect tolls , followed in 946 by market rights. 1252—Countess Jutta von Vechta-Ravensberg sells her possessions to

329-689: A huge range of engineering projects both in pre- World War II Germany , and in occupied Europe from France to Russia. Todt became notorious for using forced labour . Most so-called "volunteer" Soviet POW workers were assigned to the Organisation Todt. The history of the organization falls into three main phases: Millions of Jews were forced labourers in ghettos , before they were shipped off to extermination camps . The Nazis also operated concentration camps , some of which provided free forced labour for industrial and other jobs while others existed solely to exterminate their inmates . To mislead

376-619: Is abolished after the World War II . Meppen becomes part of the newly created Land of Lower Saxony . 1977—District reforms in Lower Saxony unite the former districts of Lingen , Meppen and Aschendorf-Hümmling in the district of Emsland, with Meppen as administrative seat. Between September and April the Meppen Theatre Group ( Theatergemeinde Meppen ) offers a comprehensive programme. Productions take place in

423-536: The Reichskreditkassen shall be deferred until the final settlement of the problem of reparations. To this day, there are arguments that such settlement has never been fully carried out. German post-war development has been greatly aided, while the development of victim countries has stalled. A prominent example of a group which received almost no compensation is the Polish forced labourers. According to

470-647: The Bishop of Münster . Meppen becomes part of the Niederstift Münster (i.e. Lower Prince-Bishopric of Münster ). 1360—Meppen is granted the right to build city fortifications by Bishop Adolf of Münster , and thereby, town rights. Over the next three centuries until 1660, Meppen is built up as a fortified town. 1762—at the end of the Seven Years' War , the fortifications are demolished. Some walls remain standing today, however. 1803—Resolutions of

517-768: The Duchy of Arenberg to the Kingdom of Hanover . 1855—Meppen connected to the Hannoverschen Westbahn railway line upon its opening. 1866—Hanover becomes a province of Prussia. 1871—Part of the German Empire . 1938— Kristallnacht : the German police and SA broke down into Jewish houses and carried out mass arrests, beatings and tortures of Jews. Germans burned down the synagogue and destroyed Jewish homes and enterprises. Some Jews were deported to

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564-594: The German war economy inside Nazi Germany during the war. The German need for slave labour grew to the point that even children were kidnapped as labor, in an operation called the Heu-Aktion . More than 2,000 German companies profited from slave labour during the Nazi era, including Deutsche Bank and Siemens . A class system was created amongst Fremdarbeiter ('foreign workers') brought to Germany to work for

611-589: The Oranienburg concentration camp . 1939—German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag VI-B established in Meppen-Versen, in which initially around 5,000 Polish prisoners of war were held after the German invasion of Poland , which started World War II , and then from 1940 to 1942 French , Belgian , Polish, Soviet and other POWs were held there. 1943— Italian prisoners of war brought by the Germans to

658-731: The Potsdam Agreements of 1945, the Poles were to receive reparations not from Germany itself, but from the Soviet Union 's share of those reparations; under Soviet pressure on the Polish Communist government, the Poles agreed to a system of repayment that de facto meant that few Polish victims received adequate compensation in any way comparable to the victims in Western Europe or Soviet Union itself. Most of

705-680: The Reichsdeputationshauptschluss assign Meppen to Louis Engelbert, 6th Duke of Arenberg , to compensate for the loss of his possessions on the west bank of the Rhine . Meppen becomes the capital of the dukedom of Arenberg . 1811—Meppen is incorporated into the First French Empire as a cantonal seat. 1813–1814—Occupation by Prussia . 1814–1815—Resolutions of the Congress of Vienna assign Meppen and

752-520: The fall of communism in Poland in 1989/1990 did the Polish government try to renegotiate the issue of reparations, but found little support in this from the German side and none from the Soviet (later, Russian) side. The total number of forced labourers under Nazi rule who were still alive as of August 1999 was 2.3   million. The German Forced Labour Compensation Programme was established in 2000;

799-549: The Calvinist Union of Utrecht . For two years the Prince-Bishopric of Münster had the city, which then from 1674 to 1713 was part of the Calvinist Union of Utrecht again, when Frederick I of Prussia inherited the county. From 1807 to 1813 the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the region, and from 1810 to 1813 Lingen was part of France . In 1814 it again was part of Prussia, and in 1815 became part of

846-463: The French navy in the occupied zone, stated "We have a special interest in that the workers at our arsenals work, and that they work in the arsenals and not in Germany." From a practical point of view, French workers needed employment and could have been conscripted to work in Germany (as happened to 1   million of them). A small number objected to carrying out war work but the majority were found by

893-654: The German government to compensate forced labourers from the war period. As stated in the London Debt Agreement of 1953 : Consideration of claims arising out of the Second World War by countries which were at war with or were occupied by Germany during that war, and by nationals of such countries, against the Reich and agencies of the Reich, including costs of German occupation, credits acquired during occupation on clearing accounts and claims against

940-538: The German subsidiaries of foreign firms, such as Fordwerke (a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company ) and Adam Opel AG (a subsidiary of General Motors ) among others. Once the war had begun, the foreign subsidiaries were seized and nationalized by the Nazi-controlled German state, and work conditions deteriorated, as they did throughout German industry. About 12   million forced labourers, most of whom were Eastern Europeans , were employed in

987-433: The German war industry with only basic tools and minimal food rations until totally exhausted. To benefit the economy after the war, certain categories of victims of Nazism were excluded from compensation by the German government; these groups had the least political influence they could have brought to bear, and many forced labourers from Eastern Europe fall into this category. There has been little effort by businesses or

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1034-416: The Germans to be willing and efficient workers. In the late summer of 1944, German records listed 7.6   million foreign civilian workers and prisoners of war in the German territory, most of whom had been brought there by coercion. By 1944, slave labour made up one quarter of Germany's entire work force, and the majority of German factories had a contingent of prisoners. The Nazis also had plans for

1081-715: The Meppen Theatre and Concert Hall, which was designed by Eberhard Kulenkampff and completed in 1959. It also acts as a school hall for the Windthorst Gymnasium. The programme includes both touring theatre productions as well as musical events of various genres. From May to September, the Emsland Open Air Stage at Meppen ( Emsländische Freilichtbühne Meppen ) offers visitors a family musical and an evening event, mostly based on musical productions. More than 30,000 visitors come each year to

1128-602: The Polish share of reparations was "given" to Poland by Soviet Union under the Comecon framework, which was not only highly inefficient, but benefited Soviet Union much more than Poland. Under further Soviet pressure (related to the London Agreement on German External Debts ), in 1953 the People's Republic of Poland renounced its right to further claims of reparations from the successor states of Nazi Germany. Only after

1175-464: The Reich. The system was based on layers of increasingly less privileged workers, starting with well-paid workers from German allies or neutral countries to forced labourers from conquered Untermenschen ('sub-humans') populations. In general, foreign labourers from Western Europe had similar gross earnings and were subject to similar taxation as German workers. In contrast, Central and Eastern European forced labourers received at most about one-half

1222-617: The Soviet Union, 1.6   million to Poland, 1.5   million to France, and 900,000 to Italy, along with 300,000 to 400,000 each to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Belgium. Hitler 's policy of Lebensraum ('room for living') strongly emphasized conquest of lands in the East, known as Generalplan Ost , and the exploitation of these lands to provide cheap goods and labour for Germany. Even before

1269-633: The Stalag VI-B. 1944—Stalag VI-B converted into a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp . Over 1,700 men were imprisoned there and used as forced labour , and over 20% of them died. 1945—Prisoners of the subcamp were evacuated by the Germans to Bremen , most in a death march , in which at least 50 prisoners died, sick ones by train, and then they were mostly transported to the Neuengamme concentration camp. 1946—The state of Prussia

1316-672: The city as their secondary residence. Lingen, specifically "Lingen (Ems)" is located on the river Ems in the southern part of the Emsland District, which borders North Rhine-Westphalia in the south and the Netherlands in the west. Lingen was first mentioned in the Middle Ages (975 AD). From 804 to 1180 the region was part of the Duchy of Saxony inside the Carolingian Empire , and then remained part of

1363-724: The county and city and in 1550 gave it to his sister Mary , Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands . From 1555 to 1597 Lingen was the easternmost point of the Spanish Empire of Philip II and became part of the Eighty Years' War . From 1597 to 1605 Lingen was conquered by the Calvinist and Dutch Union of Utrecht , then retaken by the Catholic Spanish troops and from 1632 to 1672 again was part of

1410-430: The german-speaking Holy Roman Empire until 1806. A initially independent county of Lingen ( Grafschaft Lingen ) was erected in 1388 and remained until 1713, when Prussia took over. In detail though, the county and city in the 17th and 18th were repeatedly conquered by Dutch and Spanish troops: initially Catholic, from 1541 to 1547 the citizens were forced to become Lutheran, then the troops of Catholic Charles V conquered

1457-434: The gross earnings paid to German workers and had far fewer social benefits. Prisoners of labour or concentration camps received little if any wages or benefits. The deficiency in net earnings of Central and Eastern European forced labourers (versus forced labourers from Western countries) is illustrated by the wage savings forced labourers were able to transfer to their families at home or abroad (see table). The Nazis issued

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1504-534: The internment and transportation to Europe of "the able-bodied male population between the ages of seventeen and forty-five" in the event of a successful invasion of the United Kingdom . Organisation Todt was a Nazi era civil and military engineering group in Nazi Germany, eponymously named for its founder Fritz Todt , an engineer and senior Nazi figure. The organization was responsible for

1551-440: The main causes of death. Many more became civilian casualties from enemy (Allied) bombing and shelling of their workplaces throughout the war. At the peak of the program, the forced labourers constituted 20% of the German work force. Counting deaths and turnover, about 15   million men and women were forced labourers at one point during the war. Besides Jews, the harshest deportation and forced labor policies were applied to

1598-491: The newly founded kingdom of Hanover . As result of the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 the kingdom of Hanover and also Lingen were annexed by the kingdom of Prussia , and in 1871 became part of the German Empire . Lingen is known for its offshore- and nuclear industry ( Emsland Nuclear Power Plant ). The University of Applied Sciences Osnabrueck has set up a branch campus, located in the centre of Lingen, with

1645-763: The occupied countries (see Łapanka ) to provide labour in the German war industry, repair bombed railroads and bridges, or work on farms. Manual labour was in high demand, as much of the work that today would be done with machines was still done by hand in the 1930s and 1940s, such as digging, material handling , or machining . As the war progressed, the use of slave labour increased massively. Prisoners of war and civilian "undesirables" were brought in from occupied territories. Millions of Jews, Slavs and other conquered peoples were used as slave labourers by German corporations including Thyssen , Krupp , IG Farben , Bosch , Daimler-Benz , Demag , Henschel , Junkers , Messerschmitt , Siemens , and Volkswagen , not to mention

1692-544: The open air theatre in Esterfeld Forest to see large musical performances involving casts of up to 100. (*including the villages belonging to the town of Meppen) Meppen is twinned with: Lingen Lingen ( German pronunciation: [ˈlɪŋən] ), officially Lingen (Ems) , is a town in Lower Saxony , Germany . In 2024, its population was 59,896 with 2,262 people who had registered

1739-472: The populations of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. By the end of the war, half of Belarus' population had been either killed or deported. The defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 freed approximately 11   million foreigners (categorized as "displaced persons"), most of whom were forced labourers and POWs. During the war, German forces brought into the Reich 6.5   million civilians, in addition to Soviet POWs, for unfree labour in factories. Returning them home

1786-740: The ports of Brest , Lorient and Saint-Nazaire became available, there were insufficient Germans to man these repair and maintenance facilities, so huge reliance was made on the French workforce. At the end of 1940, the Kriegsmarine requested 2,700 skilled workers from Wilhelmshaven to work in bases on the Atlantic coast, but this was out of a total available workforce of only 3,300. This same request included 870 men skilled in machinery and engine building, but there were only 725 people with these skills in Wilhelmshaven. This massive deficit

1833-504: The potential effect of withdrawal of French dockyard workers (considered possible after 32 French fatalities in an air raid at Lorient Submarine Base ) stated that all repairs on the surface fleet would cease and U-boat repairs would be cut by 30 per cent. Admiral François Darlan stated on 30 September 1940 that it was useless to decline German requests for collaboration. In September 1942, Rear Admiral Germain Paul Jardel, commander of

1880-557: The three Institutes for Management and Engineering, Communications Management and Teaching of Theatre. In 2000 the institutes in Lingen merged into the Faculty of Society and Technology. Lingen has an oceanic climate ( Köppen : Cfb ; Trewartha : Dobk ). On 25 July 2019, Lingen set the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded within Germany with a daytime high temperature of 42.6 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit ) during

1927-517: The victims, at the entrances to a number of camps the lie 'work brings freedom' ( arbeit macht frei ) was placed, to encourage the false impression that cooperation would earn release. A notable example of a labour-concentration camp is Mittelbau-Dora , a labour camp complex that produced V-2 rockets . Extermination through labour was a Nazi German principle that regulated most of their labour and concentration camps. The rule demanded that inmates of German World War II camps be forced to work for

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1974-659: The war, Nazi Germany maintained a supply of slave labour . This practice started in the early days of labour camps for "unreliable elements" ( German : unzuverlässige Elemente ), such as homosexuals , criminals, political dissidents , communists , Jews , the homeless and anyone the regime wanted out of the way. During World War II the Nazis operated several categories of Arbeitslager (labour camps) for different categories of inmates. Prisoners in Nazi labour camps were worked to death on short rations in lethal conditions, or killed if they became unable to work. Many died as

2021-710: The workers was regarded as dangerous, and targeted by pamphlet campaigns in 1940–1942. Soldiers in the Wehrmacht and SS officers were exempt from any such restrictions. It is estimated that at least 34,140 Eastern European women apprehended in Łapankas (military kidnapping raids), were forced to serve them as sex slaves in German military brothels and camp brothels during the Third Reich. In Warsaw alone, five such establishments were set up under military guard in September 1942, with over 20 rooms each. Alcohol

2068-515: Was a high priority for the Allies. However returning citizens of the USSR were often meant suspicion of collaboration or reincarceration in a Gulag prison camp. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), Red Cross , and military operations provided food, clothing, shelter, and assistance in returning home. In all, 5.2   million foreign workers and POWs were repatriated to

2115-460: Was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in occupied Europe. The Germans abducted approximately 12   million people from almost twenty European countries; about two thirds came from Central Europe and Eastern Europe . Many workers died as a result of their living conditions – extreme mistreatment, severe malnutrition and abuse were

2162-584: Was made up of French naval dockyard workers. In February 1941, the naval dockyard at Brest had only 470 German workers, compared with 6,349 French workers. In April 1941, French workers replaced defective superheater tubes on the Scharnhorst , carrying out the work slowly but, in the opinion of Scharnhorst's captain, to a better standard than could be obtained in the yards in Germany. An assessment commissioned by Vizeadmiral Walter Matthiae in October 1942 of

2209-566: Was not allowed, unlike on the Western front, and the victims underwent genital checkups once a week. French workers at naval bases provided the Kriegsmarine with an essential workforce, thereby supporting Nazi Germany in the Battle of the Atlantic . By 1939, the Kriegsmarine 's planning had presumed that they had time to build up resources before the war started. When France fell and

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