KAISERSWERTH, an ancient town in the circle and government district of Diisseldorf, Prussia, is situated on the right bank of the Rhine, 6 miles below Diisseldorf. It contains an old Romanesque church of the 12th or 13th century, and has several benevolent institutions, of which the chief is the training-school for Protestant sisters of charity. This institution, founded by Pastor Fliedner in 1836, has more than 100 branches, some even in Asia and America; the head establishment at Kaiserswerth includes an orphanage, a lunatic asylum, and a Magdalen institution. The Roman Catholic hospital occupies the former Franciscan convent. The population in 1875 was 2135, chiefly engaged in silk-weaving and tobacco manufacture.

In 710 Pippin of Heristal presented the site of the town to Bishop Suitbert, who built the Benedictine monastery round which the town gradually formed. Until 1214 Kaiserswerth lay on an island, but in that year Count Adolphus V. of Berg, who was besieging it, dammed up effectually one arm of the Rhine. About the beginning of the 14th century Kaiserswerth was pawned by the empire to Jülich, whence, after some vicissitudes, it finally passed into the possession of the princes of the Palatinate, whose rights, long disputed by the elector of Cologne, were legally settled in 1762. In 1702 the fortress was captured by the Austrians and Prussians, and the Kaiserburg, whence the young emperor Henry IV. was abducted by Archbishop Hanno in 1062, blown up.