Wachtendonk – fortress town between the Niers and Nette

Before the Franks conquered the region in the 3rd and 4th centuries, the Romans left only a few traces. The area around present-day Wachtendonk bore the name Land Geißern and, according to Germanic division, belonged to the Mühlgau. In the 12th century the archbishops of Cologne took possession of this territory. Their bailiffs built a moated castle on a rise in the marshland, a so-called Donk. From this Vogtendonk the place name Wachtendonk developed.

From 1326 the town belonged to the Upper Quarter of the Duchy of Geldern and received town rights in 1343. The settlement was secured with ditches and a town wall and received its own church. For a time Wachtendonk was pledged to the Duchy of Kleve, which caused tension between Geldern and Kleve and led in 1468 to the Battle of Straelen. As a result, Wachtendonk fell again to Geldern.

Because of its location on Geldern's eastern border, Wachtendonk was fought over repeatedly during the Eighty Years' War. In 1572 troops of William of Orange took the fortress; in 1578 forces of the States General occupied the town for ten years. In 1588 Count Ernst von Mansfeld recaptured the place for Spain, which had to hand it back to the Dutch in 1600. Despite being strengthened with ramparts and ditches, the fortress again passed to Spain. In 1607 the fortifications were razed. The nearby lowland castle on the left bank of the Niers was also affected in these conflicts; during a capture in 1603 it was so badly damaged that it was not rebuilt. In the 1960s excavations uncovered its foundations.

After the War of the Spanish Succession, Wachtendonk fell to Prussia in 1713 through the Peace of Utrecht, together with parts of the Duchy of Geldern. From 1794 the French revolutionary armies held the left bank of the Rhine for twenty years; for a time the town belonged to the Département de la Roer, established in 1798, and formed a Mairie in the Canton of Wankum, Arrondissement of Kleve. After Napoleon's abdication, Wachtendonk returned to Prussia at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and remained there until the Second World War, which for the town ended on 3 March 1945 with the arrival of the 8th US Armored Division.

The name Wankum derives from the Frankish Wankheim. The parish of Saint Martin is dated to around 500; the place first appears in a document dated 28 August 1279 as Wanchheim, when the later Wankum Land Peace was concluded here — a treaty against counterfeiting and robber knights.

The present municipality of Wachtendonk was formed on 1 July 1969 from the merger of the town of Wachtendonk and the community of Wankum. Since the rights of the titular town persisted, a "town" here is a district of a municipality. In 1975 the place was assigned to the newly formed enlarged district of Kleve.

Wankum covers the south-western half of the municipality and was first mentioned as 'Wanchheim' in the charter of the Wankum Landfriede of 28 August 1279 — Franconian for 'home in the meadows and pastures'.

From 1798 to 1814 Wankum was under French rule and seat of its own mairie, which later became the Prussian Bürgermeisterei Wankum. Only on 1 July 1969 did the previously independent municipality become part of Wachtendonk.

Besides the village itself, the locality includes the hamlets of Aerbeck, Harzbeck, Langdorf, Müllem and Vorst. In the south-west lie the Wankumer Heide nature reserve and the Blaue Lagune bathing lake. Local tradition is carried by the United St. Johannes & St. Martini marksmen's brotherhood of 1532, and the Catholic parish church of St. Martin shapes the village scene. The Wankum junction connects the municipality to the A 40 motorway.