Ahaus

Ahaus grew around a noble residence on the Aa, recorded about 1030. The lords of Ahaus built a castle here in the twelfth century and held a small Westphalian lordship amid the territories of more powerful neighbours. After a dispute over allegiance, the prince-bishop of Münster destroyed their castles of Ahaus and Diepenheim in 1177, although the family retained its lordship. The castle settlement received an excise privilege in 1389 and town rights two years later. In 1406 Bishop Otto IV of Hoya bought the lordship and incorporated it into Münster. Ahaus became the centre of an administrative district encompassing parishes across western Münsterland, an arrangement that lasted until the secularisation of the bishopric in 1803.