Kempen, Germany


Kempen is a town in the district of Viersen, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated approximately northwest of Düsseldorf, and east of Venlo.

Notable persons

Kempen is the birthplace of Thomas à Kempis.
Thomas was born in either 1379 or 1380 in Kempen. His birthplace was on the Kirchplatz about where the house "St. Marien 11" stands today.
Thomas was the second son of the craftsman Johann Hemerken and his wife Gertrud Kuyt, who was most probably a teacher.
In Kempen, Thomas attended the Latin School until the age of 12. Afterwards, he left Kempen to attend the town school in Deventer, which had a very good reputation and therefore would have been well known in the Lower Rhine region. The school served as a preparatory institution for university study and taught mainly grammar, logic, ethics and philosophy.
In 1836, the Thomas Society was founded in Kempen to foster the memory of the greatest son of the city. In the twentieth century, there have been two other foundations: in 1979, the married couple Heinrich and Christine Kiefer founded the Thomas Foundation and in 1987, the Provost's parish, the town of Kempen and the Thomas Society jointly founded the Thomas Archive, which can be found in the Cultural Forum of the Franciscan Monastery.