There used to be an oak tree outside Aurich called the Upstalsboom. Every year on the Tuesday after Pentecost, representatives from the free Frisian lands would meet beneath its branches and decide things that mattered. The tree is long gone. The free Frisian republics are long gone. But the oak still appears on old coats of arms of the district that grew up around the meeting place - a quiet reminder that this corner of Lower Saxony was once governed differently from the rest of medieval Europe.
The Upstalsboom was not just a tree. From at least the thirteenth century it was the symbolic capital of Frisian Freedom - a loose confederation of self-governing peasant communities that ran from the Zuiderzee to the Weser. Frisians did not, in their own telling, owe feudal obligations to any count. They governed themselves through elected redjeven, judges chosen from among the free farmers. The meeting at the Upstalsboom was where representatives from the different Frisian regions came together to agree on common law and common defence. It was an unusual arrangement for medieval Europe, where most peasants spent their lives swearing oaths to lords and bishops.
Frisian Freedom did not last forever. By the late fifteenth century, the Cirksena family had emerged as dominant chieftains and turned themselves into counts. Their heraldic creature was the so-called Jungfernadler - a virgin-headed eagle or harpy - and that harpy now appears on the coat of arms of the modern Aurich district, granted in 1978. Look closely at the blazon and you see the layered history: the harpy from the Cirksena dynasty, acorns for the city of Aurich (a memory of the Upstalsboom oak), and six-pointed spurs for the town of Norden, which was folded into the district when it was created in 1977. Every element is a quiet historical citation.
Aurich is the largest district in East Frisia by both area and population - around 190,000 people. It runs from the mouth of the river Ems in the west to the open North Sea in the north. Three populated East Frisian Islands fall within its boundaries. Norderney is the largest, twenty-six square kilometres of dune and beach with around 5,900 residents and a long history as a North Sea spa town. Juist, longer and thinner, is car-free, with around 1,700 people who get around by horse-drawn carriage. Baltrum is the smallest of the three at just six and a half square kilometres and five hundred year-round residents. South of Juist, the uninhabited island of Memmert serves as a bird sanctuary.
Most of the district's northern shoreline forms part of the Lower Saxony Wadden Sea National Park - a tidal flat ecosystem so distinctive it has been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Twice a day the sea retreats kilometres, exposing wet sand and mud that hosts shellfish, worms, and migratory birds in numbers measured in millions. Twice a day it returns. Locals walk out across the bare seabed at low tide; the practice is called Wattwandern, mudflat hiking, and it is a regional rite. From the air, the district looks like a patchwork of red-roofed villages, geometric polders, and the silvering pattern of channels in the wadden flats.
The Aurich district covers the westernmost part of East Frisia in Lower Saxony, Germany, from approximately 53.30°N to 53.75°N, and 6.65°E to 7.55°E. The reference point is 53.50°N, 7.33°E - near the town of Aurich itself. Nearest airports: Emden (EDWE), Norden-Norddeich (EDWY), Wilhelmshaven (EDWI), Bremen (EDDW). Best viewed from 3,000-8,000 ft on a clear day. The East Frisian Islands - Norderney, Juist, Baltrum, and uninhabited Memmert - form a chain off the northern coast, separated from the mainland by the Wadden Sea tideland. The estuary of the river Ems and the Krummhoern peninsula dominate the southwest.