[em-duh
n] 
| a seaport in NW Germany. 53,400. |
[em-duhn] | one of a breed of large, white domestic geese having orange shanks, toes, and bill. |
Emden
city, Lower Saxony Land (state), northwestern Germany. It lies near the Ems River estuary and the North Sea coast of Ostfriesland (East Frisia). Founded about 800, it developed as a port for trade with the Baltic countries. It became the capital of the county of Ostfriesland in the 15th century and received storage and customs rights, by which it dominated the Ems trade. During the 16th-century Dutch wars of independence, it gained much of Holland's trade and became for a time the most important northwestern European port and a centre of Calvinism for Dutch refugees. Their return to the Netherlands and the development of a new course of the Ems farther from the town led to its decline in the 17th century. It passed to Prussia in 1744, to France in 1810-14, and to Hanover in 1815.
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