HERFORD  , a

town in the Prussian province of Westphalia, situated at the confluence of the Werre and Aa, on the Minden & Cologne railway, 9 M . N.E. of Bielefeld, and at the junction of the railway to Detmold and Altenbeken . Pop . (1885) 15,902; (1905) 24,821 . It possesses six Evangelical churches, notably the Munsterkirche, a Romanesque building with a Gothic apse of the 15th century; the Marienkirche, in the Gothic style; and the Johanniskirche, with a steeple 280 ft. high . The other principal buildings are the Roman Catholic church, the synagogue, the gymnasium founded in 1540, the agricultural school and the theatre . There is a statue of Frederick William of Brandenburg . The industries include cotton and flax-spinning, and the manufacture of linen cloth, carpets, furniture, machinery, sugar, tobacco and leather . Herford owes its origin to a Benedictine nunnery which is said to have been founded in 832, and was confirmed by the emperor Louis the Pious in 839 . From the emperor Frederick I. the abbess obtained princely rank and a seat in the imperial diet . Among the abbesses was the celebrated Elizabeth (r618-168o), eldest daughter of the elector palatine Frederick V., who was a philosophical princess, and a pupil of Descartes . Under her rule the sect of the Labadists settled for some time in Herford .

The

foundation was secularized in 1803 . Herford was a member of the Hanseatic League, and its suzerainty passed in 1547 from the abbesses to the dukes of Juliers . In 1631 it became a free imperial town, but in 1647 it was subjugated by the elector of Brandenburg . It came into the possession of Westphalia in 1807, and in 1813 into that of Prussia . See L . Holscher, Ref ormationsgeschichte der Stadt Herford (Giitersloh, 1888) .