Landwehr Section at Kleinheierweg

A Landwehr was a medieval border fortification made of an earthen rampart and ditch, often reinforced by dense hedgerows, and it served to secure territorial boundaries. Several such sections have survived around Kempen — the stretch along the Kleinheierweg is one of them and forms a monument in its own right.

It documents how the region sought to protect its borders in the late Middle Ages with simple yet effective earthworks.

Schmalbroich covers the rural western part of present-day Kempen and was an independent municipality until it was incorporated into the town on 1 January 1970. Before that it had belonged to the Kempen-Krefeld district since 1929, and its roots reach back historically to a Honnschaft (rural community) within the Electorate of Cologne's Amt Kempen.

The district has always been a scattered settlement without a real village centre, divided into the three settlement areas of Wall, Klixdorf and Ziegelheide. Its western edge runs along the Schleck, which also marks Kempen's town boundary with Grefrath.

Notably, one of these areas bears the name "Wall" (rampart) itself — an observation of naming that fits the region's history of border fortifications, though no documented link to the Landwehr can be drawn from it.