Six villages found a city
The rampant growth of villages since the onset of the 20th century necessitated increasingly more communal tasks, which could only be handled to a limited extent within the confines of the village borders. At the beginning of the 1960s, the villages in the Bergkamen area voluntarily banded together. On 14 June 1966, the community of Bergkamen received city rights after the integration of the villages of Bergkamen, Weddinghofen, Oberaden, Rünthe and Heil. As a result of the so-called Unna Act, Overberge joined as the sixth village on 1 January 1968.
This conglomeration of six villages is prominent in the official city arms, represented by red and white hexagons linked in a circle on a gold background. At the same time, the city arms represent the chemical structure of benzene – a reference to the importance of the chemical industry and previous mining for Bergkamen. The colour of the city arms is a result of formerly belonging to the territory of the County of Mark.
