Located on the ancient trade route "
strata coloniensis" the
Lotharingian hamlet of Medamana (
engl. between the
streams, which bears an
etymological similarity to the origins of the name for the
Northern Italian city of
Milan (
lat. Mediolanum)) first appeared in the charter of the last
Carolingian King,
Louis the Child, 904 AD, thus existing "officially" for more than 1100 years. In 1363 Mettmann was one of eight administrative
burghs in the
Earldom of Berg and Jülich. Later the burgh became independent at the hand of
Counsellor to the Earl of
Cleves and was allowed to build a wall and choose a mayor. The ability to toll and tax allowed the burgh to develop in commerce and trade. In 1806 Mettmann became a part of the
Grand Duchy of Berg under the rule of
Napoleon's brother-in-law,
Joachim Murat. During this time, Mettmann's
burgomaster was called "
Monsieur le Maire." Mettmann remained French for about 10 years and became a part of Prussia's
Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg following Napoleon's defeat at the
Battle of Leipzig in 1813. As the result of the
Congress of Vienna (1814–15), in 1822 it was adsorbed into the Prussian
Rhine Province. However, the Prussian rulers did not prove to be very popular, as during the bread-riots of 1848–49 and the ensuing political upheavals, which hit the district of Düsseldorf among the hardest, policing was done from Berlin, excluding local accountability. Thus, the Prussian government regarded the Rhinelands as more of a colony, furnishing the bureaucracy, which was based in Düsseldorf, with civil servants that were drafted in from other regions of Prussia. Mettmann was liberated from the
National Socialist Dictatorship April 16, 1945, by a vanguard of the
US Ninth Army and then became a part of the
British military administration under which the Northern Rhineland was
redemocratised. Since 1946, Mettmann is a part of the
Land North Rhine-Westphalia and from 1949 of
West Germany. Since 1990 it belongs to the
unified Federal Republic of Germany. ==Demographics==