Etten-Leur is a
municipalityA municipality is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly denotes a city, town, or village, or a small grouping of them. A municipality is typically governed by a mayor and a city council or municipal council.The notion of municipality...
in the southern
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
. Its name is a combination of the two towns from which the municipality originally arose: Etten and Leur. Nowadays both towns have merged into one.
Both towns, created in the Middle Ages, were relatively prosperous during the period of the
Dutch RepublicThe Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was a European republic between 1581 and 1795, in about the same location as the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands,...
, the exception being the period of the Eighty Years War in which the area was a major battleground.
Discussion
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Etten-Leur is a
municipalityA municipality is an administrative entity composed of a clearly defined territory and its population and commonly denotes a city, town, or village, or a small grouping of them. A municipality is typically governed by a mayor and a city council or municipal council.The notion of municipality...
in the southern
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
. Its name is a combination of the two towns from which the municipality originally arose: Etten and Leur. Nowadays both towns have merged into one.
History
Both towns, created in the Middle Ages, were relatively prosperous during the period of the
Dutch RepublicThe Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was a European republic between 1581 and 1795, in about the same location as the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands,...
, the exception being the period of the Eighty Years War in which the area was a major battleground. This prosperity was caused by the fact that Etten was a centre for the production of
peatPeat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter. Peat forms in wetlandbogs, moors, muskegs, pocosins, mires, and peat swamp forests...
, and Leur was a local trading port as it had a harbour.
Decline in economic importance marked both towns during the nineteenth century. During this time the painter
Vincent van GoghVincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life, and died largely unknown, at the age...
briefly lived in the municipality, making him the most famous citizen in the history of Etten and Leur. However, this decline was halted when, in 1950, the Dutch government decided to encourage population growth and industrial development. As a result of this development both towns have grown towards each other and merged into one: Etten-Leur.
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